On or around 26 November every year, Cleveringa meetings are organised for Leiden alumni throughout the world. Including in Tokyo, where Professor of Japan Studies Ivo Smits delivered his Clevering lecture to a packed hall.

The Faculty of Humanities is ranked 25th within the subject area 'Arts and Humanities' in the Times Higher Education Ranking (THE) of 2014-2015. The faculty scores particularly high in teaching, research and international outlook.

How do speakers adapt to multilingual contexts?

Halfway through his career alumnus Marc Tijhuis made a radical change: he left the corporate world to join the global battle against waste with the International Solid Waste Association.

‘We are surrounded by software and thus it is important that every child learns to program,’ says Felienne Hermans, associate professor at the Leiden Institute for Advanced Computer Science (LIACS). Hermans won the Dutch Prize for ICT Research 2021 in January, after which NRC interviewed her about her…

The Dutch Michelle Sweering became the best math girl in the world at the International Mathematical Olympiad in South Africa. She is the only girl who won a golden medal.

In November 2013, Prof.Dr. L. Jan Slikkerveer, Director of the LEAD Programme was personally invited by the former President of Indonesia, Dr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to present a lecture on The Role of Traditional Ecological Knowldege in Sustainable Development in Indonesia in the World Culture Forum…

Studying change in the course of human history, in different places, through the lens of a diverse set of core themes; World History for International Studies offers readers a set of windows into different debates historians have been conducting.

On 10 February Leiden University celebrated the official opening of Wijnhaven, the University's newest premises in The Hague. Everyone present emphasised the added value of a modern location in the heart of the city.

In this course, we will focus on the fascinating history of the Arabic Medieval World. We will take you on a journey through the Middle Ages. All along, we will present you with historiographical debates and dilemmas and travel back and forth in time explaining to you how events of the past affected…

The historiography of the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944 is dominated by the personal clash between the principal negotiators, Harry Dexter White of the United States and John Maynard Keynes of Britain.

During the period 500–1000 CE Egypt was successively part of the Byzantine, Persian and Islamic empires. All kinds of events, developments and processes occurred that would greatly affect its history and that of the eastern Mediterranean in general. This is the first volume to map Egypt's position in…

Maak kennis met digitale veiligheid in de podcast over de BSc Cybersecurity & Cybercrime. Experts bespreken actuele thema’s zoals ransomware en online fraude.

This seminal volume covers the entire global history of urbanization since the rise of cities in Mesopotamia in the 6th millennium BC. Leiden historians Wim Blockmans, Leonard Blussé, Luuk de Ligt and Leo Lucassen contributed survey and thematic chapters.

How was the future United Nations Organization promoted to global publics during WW II?

Studies on the Ottoman Jihad on the Centenary of Snouck Hurgronje's

Over the last three decades, the discovery of exoplanets has revealed the boundless variety of worlds beyond our own Solar System⁠. Majority of planetary systems contain short-period planets that are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune⁠.

Professor of Modern China Florian Schneider researches what people do with technology and what technology does with people. Social media, for example. And then mainly in China.

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer delivered the Huizinga lecture on Friday 8 December in a packed Pieterskerk. The writer seized the opportunity of the 52nd edition to point out the importance of creativity, both for artists and scientists.

An online course offered by Leiden University on the European Union is among the top 50 MOOCs in the world. This was announced recently by MOOC platform Class Central.

One of the three long-term research interests of our group concerns the Transformation of the Roman World (c AD 450-900).

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

PhD defence

Exploring the language of the lower classes in the nineteenth century

On Friday 29 August 2025, 370 students received their Bachelor's degree in International Studies. The diplomas were awarded in the historic setting of the Pieterskerk in Leiden. Family members, friends, and staff gathered to celebrate this joyous occasion with the graduates in a packed Pieterskerk.

Dividing Worlds: Tsunamis, Seawalls, and Ontological Politics in Northeast Japan

In this PhD project, we focus on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of LMs with narrative data.

Addressing the core novel objective of scalably assessing the impact of possible interventions through counterfactual prediction based on spatio-temporal data.

A remarkable population of short period transiting rocky exoplanets with equilibrium temperatures on the order of 2,000 K has recently been discovered.

‘Wonder is the beginning of insight. Don’t let that academic curiosity erode.’ This was Jan Anthonie Bruijn’s call to administrators and funding bodies in his valedictory lecture.

Hundreds of new students at Leiden University attended the opening of the 2015-2016 academic year. They came from all corners of the world for the start of their new study programme. Portraits of some of the newcomers.

China’s booming aquaculture industry is increasingly dependent on fishmeal made from wild-caught fish, a practice that depletes wild fish stocks. A new study conducted by institutions including Leiden University and Stanford offers a more sustainable path. The study appeared in the journal Science on…

More than 200 students completed their Bachelor’s degrees in combination with a three-year Honours programme last year. On 15 November, this resulted in a record number of certificates since the start of the Honours College 9 years ago. While listening to personal speeches, the students received their…

A day at the beach, games, a visit to an embassy and a pub crawl. The activities at HOPweek help new students get to know not just The Hague but each other too.

A project aimed at understanding the complicated process of religious transformation in one of the centres of the early Muslim world.

On the 13th of April, Federico Dragoni successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Federico on this achievement!

The objective of this study was to investigate the expression and function of GRHL2 in different breast cancer subtypes.

In this study, the formation of the Tocharian subjunctive is described, its use and meaning are analysed and its origins are investigated.

Great news! Leiden University ended up as 7th most sustainable university in the world, according to Green Metric. Meaning, that Leiden University moved one place up in the rankings. In this memo, participation in this ranking is evaluated, points for improvement are given and an ambition suggestion…

With her debut album ‘Itaala’, the multicultural Shishani & The Namibian Tales are taking the Dutch music scene by storm. The album, which was crowned by Mixed World Music as the best Dutch World Music Release, merges different musical traditions to create an unprecedented new genre. Shishani Vranckx,…

From master’s student to professor: scholars at all levels within the Faculty of Humanities are engaged every day in innovative, high-profile research. In Perspectives on the World,reflections of 2014-2015, students and staff talk about the research they have been working on during the past academic…

Archaeologist Mike Field spent his summer holiday riding in the toughest horse race in the world, the Mongol Derby: 1,000km in ten days across the Mongolian steppe, following in the footsteps of the Genghis Khan’s messengers. Field was thrown from his horse twice but managed to make it to the finish…