The Organisational Development team, led by rector Erwin Muller, has organized numerous meetings with colleagues from a variety of university departments over the last few months. Together, they’ve looked at organisational challenges, bottlenecks and opportunities. From these meetings, a strong demand…

LEGO creations, a clothesline of visions and a journey into the past and the future: just some of the highlights of Uni-vision day, where creatives developed their vision of the future of study.

Use this step-by-step guide when you want to (re)design your course, lecture or assignment. SEEDS is here to help you every step of the way.

Students for Palestine – a group of students from Leiden and The Hague – are holding a panel discussion in the Leiden University in The Hague Wijnhaven building on Tuesday 24 May entitled ‘Silencing Palestine’.

Continuously improving education requires keen insight into quality and results. Here you will find more information about the instruments and committees that help safeguard education quality, as well as answers to questions such as: What management information does the education dashboard offer? What…

Personal development, Study support

The coronavirus pandemic has had us working and studying at home, and this has had a positive effect on Leiden University’s sustainability results. This is apparent from the university’s new Sustainability Report 2020. The report also shows that nearly all the targets from the Environmental Policy Plan…

What skills do students need to function as academic professionals and engaged citizens?

Research by The Young Academy on the length and intensity of the Dutch academic year has given us food for thought. Do our staff have enough time and space to conduct research? And do we ask too much of our students? The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science asked us universities to think about…

Our aim with the Humanities Campus is to create a sustainable and attractive campus with ample green spaces and opportunities for interaction, complemented by modern and future-proof facilities. The campus is being developed in stages. On this page, you can find information about the planning, latest…

The Citizen Science Netherlands (CS-NL) network was officially launched this month with the aid of an Open Science NL grant. The new vision for this network was presented on 28 May.

Four lecturers from Leiden University will receive a 50,000-euro Comenius Teaching Fellow grant. This will enable them and their team to realise an educational innovation within their own teaching.

Research

After a turbulent Covid year, the well-being of our students and staff has the highest priority. How can we prevent physical and mental health problems? This was the key question at the Opening of the Academic Year in Pieterskerk in Leiden on 6 September.

A culture change is needed within the University in the area of Recognition and Rewards, and a start can now be made on bringing about that change. The Recognition and Rewards steering group has published a change vision and recommendations people can start to work with. Their advice has been welcomed…

Organisation

Various meetings will be held over the next few weeks to discuss organisational development at Leiden University. On the agenda are a vision of organisation and management, an exploration of the central services organisation and a teaching logistics programme.

Leiden University’s President of the Executive Board, Professor Annetje Ottow, has been reappointed for a second term by the Board of Governors.

The Russian military assault on Ukraine has profoundly shocked knowledge institutions in the Netherlands, as represented by Universities of the Netherlands, the Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Dutch Research Council,…

A fresh vision on publishing, a broad set of quality criteria for education and research and plenty of opportunities to share good practices and learn from each other. These are all on the 2025 agenda for Academia in Motion: our university-wide programme that brings together Open Science and Recognition…

The Leiden University interdisciplinary program Liveable Planet is working on a ‘Liveable Planet Academy’ as a follow-up to its activities. The coordinating team visited the transdisciplinary Leuphana University (Germany) to get inspiration for the setup of the academy.

Active learning is one of the ambitions mentioned in the University’s educational vision (Learning@LeidenUniversity).

Are you a senior lecturer and do you play an active role in the university’s educational development and innovation? If so, you are eligible for the Senior Teaching Qualification (SKO). This qualification shows that you possess strong didactic and educational skills and that you contribute to the development…

Master

Turning down the heating is good for the climate and the energy bills. But there are also a lot more ways of saving energy. In October, the University put out a call to staff and students, asking them for their golden energy-saving tips. The best entries have now been rewarded with a warm snuggle hoodie…

Leiden University is pressing ahead with Open Science and Recognition & Rewards! This is the key message of the new Academia in Motion steering group.

Leiden University has taken eighth place in this year’s SustainaBul, the sustainability ranking for universities and universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands. It was in 18th place last year.

Leiden University’s Rector Magnificus, Professor Hester Bijl, has been reappointed for a second term by the Board of Governors.

In a topping out ceremony on Thursday 30 January, the new sports centre celebrated reaching its highest point and looked ahead to the future. The university will have a spacious and sustainable sports building by the start of 2026.

Education, Research

Leiden University has secured an impressive 12 European exchange grants. This is good news for students, lecturers and researchers from home and abroad.

How can we help our students build resilience and prevent unnecessary stress? And how do we break the taboo on failure? These and other questions are what study advisers, lecturers, deans and student support staff discussed at the staff symposium on student well-being at PLNT.

On Tuesday 25 November, Leiden University is holding the first of four sessions on ‘Building Academic Freedom’. Students and staff are invited to a conversation about today’s hot-button issues.

As of 1 November 2025, Professor Luc Sels will assume the role of President of Leiden University’s Executive Board.

Good lecturers are extremely important to our university. I therefore think it is crucial that we provide them with enough professional development opportunities. The Lecturer Development Taskforce has issued concrete recommendations on how to improve this. As the Board we welcome this advice.

Leiden University is seeking bids from developers for housing in Nieuw Rhijngeest-Zuid, the Oegstgeest part of the Leiden Bio Science Park.

Three Leiden students are in the running for the annual ECHO Award. This prize is for students from non-Western backgrounds who are actively engaged in society and promote diversity and inclusion. The three Leiden nominees are Gnimdou Yaovi Assih, Husna Jalal and Sohana Jethnani.

Over the centuries painters and photographers have depicted students at study in Leiden. An exhibition at the Hortus botanicus reveals the similarities and differences in 450 years of student life.