The goal of alumnus International Studies Dennis Jansen (24) is to make the voice of young people heard in the climate debate. In November he is going to el-Sheikh in Egypt, where the Climate Change Conference is being held.

Over 20,000 students, lecturers, administrators, support staff and many others protested on 25 November against the plans to make billions of cuts to higher education. Students and staff from Leiden University also travelled to The Hague to voice their objections to the disastrous plans.

After a long night of partying, hundreds of people head to Leiden’s Van der Werfpark early on 3 October for a good singsong. Lecturer in Dutch literature Olga van Marion helped compile the new songbook for the occasion. Which songs were left out and which new hits have taken their place?

The prestigious journal Science Translational Medicine has published a study by researchers from the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) on a potent new antibiotic that can overcome resistance. ‘The idea was to tweak the original antibiotic and create a next-generation drug’, says Nathaniel Martin, professor…

The Netherlands is embroiled in a complex nitrogen crisis. Berent Baris wants to use his NitroGenius game to demonstrate the complexity of this crisis.

PhD candidate Agnes van Steen researched the history of the Leiden women’s rights movement (1860-1990) and found that the university produced many feminists.

Traces of the past remain hidden in rivers, lakes and seas. In his inaugural lecture Martijn Manders will explain why underwater archaeology is important to understanding our history.

Dutch and Flemish partners, including Leiden University, are joining forces as the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) in the fight against the spread of fake news, and have received the support of the European Commission.

This week we welcomed a high-level delegation from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) to Leiden’s Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML).

Research

Delft, Nov. 15th, 2022 – Today, eight professors were simultaneously inaugurated as ‘Medical Delta professors’ at Leiden University, LUMC, TU Delft, Erasmus University and/or Erasmus MC. With an appointment of two or more of these five academic institutions, they combine technology and healthcare in…

Environmental scientist Rutger Hoekstra addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations on 12 April. And that’s quite a big thing to do. How do you get there as a scientist? And, more importantly, what was his message? In eight questions, Rutger explains what he does and why.

Martijn Kitzen has been appointed professor by special appointment of Military Science at ISGA on behalf of the Royal Netherlands Society for War Studies (KVBK).

PhD defence

PhD defence

Conference

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

Lecture, European Union Seminar

Lecture, LAC Asia Academy

Young people are more likely to find long texts unappealing to read, particularly with all the digital distractions. To improve young people’s reading skills, Elise Swart and Hannah De Mulder are starting an innovative study to make reading fun again.

The 2023 Digital Humanities Pilot Project Symposium and Digital Winter School took place, 30 Jan – 2 Feb 2023.

After a process of more than two decades, the new Greek-Dutch dictionary was presented on Wednesday 5 June. University lecturer Lucien van Beek acted as manager of this project headed by Ineke Sluiter for the last nine years. He is also one of its editors-in-chief.

On 21 March 2024, the ‘learners’ at Wolfert Bilingual in Rotterdam were not teenagers, but some 180 teachers and teacher educators from around the Netherlands and beyond. Those delegates were bound by a common interest in exploring and engaging with teaching and learning in linguistically and culturally…

The Faculty of Humanities is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive community for both students and staff. With the establishment of the Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group, the faculty is a welcome step closer to creating a workplace where everyone feels at home and represented. We spoke…

Aafje de Roest turned her hobby into her job. She went from a teenager who enjoyed listening to hip hop music to a PhD candidate who focuses on how Dutch hip hop music shapes the cultural identity of young people in the Netherlands.

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.

Mirjam Oomens was working on her PhD research on language in the consulting room when she was diagnosed with metastatic cancer. Four years later, she has made it her mission to encourage doctors and other healthcare professionals to make fewer statements about life expectancy. 'Such a conviction can…

How can initiatives aimed at environmental conservation and climate change mitigation in the eastern Himalayas proceed from the cultural expectations of its indigenous ethno-linguistic minorities? Enabled by an NWO Open L grant, the research project 'Futuring Heritage: Conservation, Community and Contestation…

When it comes to literature, people mostly talk about what characters see or hear. Rarely is it about what they smell. That’s a shame, thinks university lecturer Jan van Dijkhuizen. He has been awarded an Open Competition grant from NWO to expand academic knowledge about scent in literature, and to…

Supercomputer ALICE has been expanded, making it even more powerful and faster. This means researchers and students can work with heavier models. From language research to brain activity scans, this expansion is good news for a variety of disciplines. So who gets to work with this prima donna?

Dr. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga from eLaw collaborates with researchers from the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIIT-Delhi) and University of Delhi (DU) in an effort to explore and reflect upon the potential legal, ethical and pedagogical challenges of deploying a social robot in…

Leiden University offers one full Leiden University Excellence Scholarship (LExS) to an African candidate interested in the two-year Research Master African Studies programme (ResMA AS); thus non-EEA/non-EFTA* applicants. LExS is a prestigious scholarship and includes a fee waiver up until the statutory…

On February 28th of this year Dr. Andrzej Tadeusz Antczak died of cancer after a long battle. Until his retirement in 2023 Andrzej was attached to the Faculty of Archaeology as an Associate Professor in Caribbean Archaeology. From 2017 until 2020 he was the Head of the Department of World Archaeology,…

When professors become emeriti, it usually does not mean they stop working. The Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) will therefore soon have a first: a symposium is going to be organised where all the speakers are emeriti professors. 'Science will always be part of you are.'

Leiden University is awarding an honorary doctorate to virologist Marc van Ranst. Van Ranst has been one of the main advisers of the Belgian government during the Covid pandemic. German Arabist Beatrice Gründler will also receive an honorary doctorate for her work in the field of Oriental Manuscript…

While humanities once mainly involved books and archives, nowadays we can’t imagine life without AI. Next semester a new faculty-wide course will be introduced, taking you along with this development. University lecturer and course coordinator Yann Ryan tells us more about it.

Last July saw the start of the new master programme Cosmopolis Advanced, an initiative of the Institute for History at Leiden University in partnership with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta. The Cosmopolis Advanced programma, led by prof.dr. Jos Gommans and coordinator dr. Lennart Bes, provides…

On the second floor of the Sylvius Laboratory, new labs are being built for researchers of the Faculties of Social and Behavioural Sciences and Humanities. After a successful tender construction has recently started.

Just outside Leiden city centre is the Sylvius building. This building of the Faculty of Science houses no fewer than 25 labs where FGW and FSW scientists conduct their research.

On 2 December, the Municipality of Leiden will apologise for the role previous administrations played in colonialism and slavery. A further study will be carried out.

The Leiden Africa Platform is pleased to announce that a partnership agreement between Leiden University and the University of Ghana was signed in November. The University of Ghana is a strategic partner of Leiden. Earlier this year, an agreement was also signed between LDE and the University of Nairobi…

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Vidi grants to 14 Leiden researchers. This grant of a maximum of 850,000 euros will enable them to start a new research group and develop their own line of research over the next five years.

Researchers from the Institute of Public Administration and the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at FGGA are launching a new research programme: Governing Polarized Societies (GPS). The programme will focus on the way in which governments are dealing with the increasing polarisation in society.…