Museum De Lakenhal is displaying the smallest work of art in the world: a 3D-printed statue of Rembrandt van Rijn, made by sculptor Jeroen Spijker and researchers from Leiden University.

The Pieter de la Court Medal is awarded annually by the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences for an initiative by a student or group of students that, over the last academic year, has made a particular contribution to at least one of the Pieter de la Court themes. This year, this medal has been…

More and more European governments are slowly but surely taking steps to ease the measures against corona. In Austria cafés and restaurants will reopen on 15 May, while in Italy they are planning to reopen on 1 June. The French will have to wait until the end of May to get some clarity. The pace with…

A recently published article, Productveiligheid en aansprakelijkheid voor AI (Product Safety and Liability for AI), by Gitta Veldt and Tycho de Graaf examines the European Commission’s proposed Artificial Intelligence Regulation.

Water damage, old restorations and copper corrosion in some illustrations. De Materia Medica has been through a lot over the centuries. The manuscript dates from 1083 AD and is one of the oldest illustrated Arabic manuscripts in the world. Due to intensive use, De Materia Medica was no longer in good…

How can humans and computers learn from data? To research this, scientists often use so-called Bayesian methods. Although these methods are widely used, they also have limitations and are not always easy to interpret. In her dissertation Rianne de Heide describes some of these problems and introduces…

Bookpresentation

The world around us is changing. What does that mean for the future of Europe, on this turbulent world stage? And what does it mean for our teaching, and for the expectations that Leiden University has of its students? These were the key questions during the opening of the 2018-2019 academic year on…

A better understanding of Morocco and the Arab world is crucial for international relations and for Dutch society. This was the key message of Minister of Education, Culture and Science Jet Bussemaker and Ahmed Aboutaleb, Mayor of Rotterdam, at the opening of the renewed Netherlands Institute in Morocco…

EUROTYPES is a research project developed by political scientist Adina Akbik, for which she recently received a European Research Council Starting Grant. Her aim is to examine the impact of cultural stereotypes in European multi-level policy enforcement. One of EUROTYPES' innovations lies in its focus.…

Professor of Radiology Lioe-Fee de Geus-Oei was already a professor at LUMC and the University of Twente. As Medical Delta professor, she has now also been appointed at Delft University of Technology. 'Talking with people from other disciplines always makes me immensely humble, because they look at…

Ralph Keuning, the former director of Museum de Fundatie, a museum for the visual arts in Zwolle, stepped down in 2022 following complaints about authoritarian leadership. On top of that, an independent investigation has shown that he received almost €200,000 from the struggling museum after his departure.…

Following the murder of two Dutch people - of which Iran is suspected - Trouw investigates how usual these practices are. Paul Abels, Professor of Intelligence Studies and Ben de Jong, Researcher, both working at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), will address the subject.

On 19 July 2021, Nathan de Arriba-Sellier published an op-ed in Le Monde regarding the integration of climate change in the new monetary policy strategy of the European Central Bank (ECB).

Eric De Brabandere, Anna Marhold and Nico Schrijver of the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies have been included as arbitrators and Trade and Sustainable Development experts in the newly established European Commission pool in the framework of EU free trade agreements enforcement.

PhD defence

Lecture, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars

PhD defence

Dr Joris van der Voet has been awarded a Veni grant of € 250,000 for his research into the working of savings strategies on innovation with municipalities. Van der Voet (Institute of Public Administration) compares Dutch municipalities with those in Spain and the United Kingdom. He explains by answering…

At the end of the fifteenth century, two intriguing Christian epics were written in Virgilian Latin by the poets Sannazaro and Vida. They did so in accordance with the wishes of the pope. These epics, both praised and criticized by contemporaries, are often seen as innovative for their specific combination…

Only the fittest cyclists stand a chance of taking yellow in the brutal Tour de France. Team Jumbo-Visma is working with data scientists from Leiden. They have analysed the stages and performance of Jumbo-Visma’s riders in previous Grand Tours. And they are researching how to determine the fitness level…

The UN has christened 21 November World Philosophy Day, a day on which ‘the enduring value of philosophy for the development of human thought, for each culture and for each individual’ is celebrated. But how should we celebrate it? We ask philosopher Victor Gijsbers.

Three student athletes from Leiden University are representing the Netherlands at the FISU Summer World University Games, a kind of Olympic Games for students.

Op dinsdag 14 juni 2022 wordt aan de Universiteit Leiden een symposium georganiseerd ter gelegenheid van het naderende emeritaat van Frits van Oostrom (Universiteit Utrecht). Wie deel wil nemen aan het symposium kan zich tot uiterlijk vrijdag 15 april 2022 opgeven via w.van.anrooij@hum.leidenuniv.nl.…

In this bilingual profile, you follow university teacher training with a special focus on language, culture and diversity in bilingual and international education. Student Lauren Rutherford and educator Tessa Mearns talk about this programme.

Vera van Noort has been appointed Professor in the field of Computational Biology within the Faculty of Science at the Institute of Biology from the 1st of February 2017. Van Noort’s expertise is in bioinformatics and her research focuses on the computational analysis of large-scale biological data…

Conference

What does it sound like when you create your own words in Chichewa? Can you decipher hieroglyphs after just one workshop? Visitors found answers to these and many other questions during the first edition of the Evening of Languages, held in the brand-new Herta Mohr Building. With a sold-out programme,…

MSc Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology alumna Annelin Verkade is one of the four 'runners-up' for the IIAS Master Thesis prize 2017. Supervisor: Dr. Erik de Maaker. Award ceremony on 22 February 2018.

On Friday, November 7, 2025, the Leiden Jewish Studies Network together with the Leiden Interdisciplinary Migration Seminars (LIMS) and the MA Programme Governance of Migration and Diversity invited the German-Jewish writer, curator and activist Max Czollek to a conversation on his work.

This volume sheds light on the role played by progeny in maintaining dynasties in early modern royal courts as well as the horizontal and vertical interplay between the actors. It attempts to break through the narrative of older research that saw dynasties as a series of male rulers. Instead, these…

Pharmacologist Rob van Wijk is the Highlighted Trainee Author in the October 2019 issue of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. In his research, Van Wijk aims for a new paradigm by combining experimental work and computational data analysis.

The 2020 Physica Award has been awarded to physicist Martin van Hecke, a researcher at the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION) and the Amsterdam AMOLF. Van Hecke is one of the Netherlands most innovative researchers into the surprisingly complex behavior of systems that look simple at first sight.

Met de H.E. van Gelder Onderzoeksbeurs wordt beoogd interdisciplinair onderzoek naar munten, bankbiljetten en penningen van een impuls te voorzien. De beurs heeft een waarde van € 10.000 en stelt de onderzoeker (m/v) in de gelegenheid een publicatie voor te bereiden en aan de hand daarvan vervolgonderzoek…

Leiden University has awarded its prestigious University Medal to Emeritus Professor Lex van der Eb. As a pioneer in genetics and molecular biology, he received this honour for his services to science and his key role in the development of the Leiden Bio Science Park (LBSP).

Psychologist Floor van Meer won the first Trial & Error Award for her research on the effect of being distracted while eating on eating behavior. This award from the Journal of Trial & Error (JOTE) honors the often underappreciated aspect of research: learning from errors. For her publication, Van Meer…

Wilke Geurds graduated from the Visual Ethnography master's programme last year with her intimate and vulnerable documentary 'F*ck Endo. More than just menstrual pain.'.

Arie-Willem de Leeuw, Postdoc at LIACS, analysed the running data of the Boston Marathon. In Mare he explains how to optimise your long distance runs.

During the 7th annual meeting of the Association for Researchers in Psychology and Health (ARPH) Sylvia van Beugen, from the Health, Medical and Neuropsychology unit, was awarded with the ’Best PhD Thesis Award’ for her dissertation ‘Psychodermatology 2.0: Towards improved assessment and effective digital…

As of 1 October Rob van Nieuwpoort is the new professor of Efficient Computing and eScience at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS). Van Nieuwpoort brings with him a wealth of expertise: he is an expert in eScience, high performace computing and advanced algorithms.

Professor Wim van den Doel, dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University, has been appointed member of the Executive Board of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) with effect from 1 January 2017.

The book ‘The Riemann Hypothesis: A Million Dollar Problem’ has been elected by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) as one of the best books on mathematics. On 13 January assistant professor at Leiden University Roland van der Veen and co-author Jan van de Craats will receive the MAA Beckenbach…

Het faculteitsbestuur heeft prof. Van den Bogaert benoemd tot wetenschappelijk directeur van het Instituut voor Publiekrecht. Van den Bogaert is hoogleraar Europees recht en al meer dan 10 jaar hoofd van de afdeling Europees recht. Hij is tevens directeur van de Stichting Europa Instituut.

Jaap van den Herik was appointed Officer in the Order of Orange Nassau on 8 October on his retirement as professor of Law and Information Technology.

As of January 2022, Ivo van Vulpen has been Professor by Special Appointment of Science Communication at the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION). Van Vulpen will be researching science communication in general and will aim to underline the value and importance of science communication.

Many students dread writing a thesis. Master’s student Laura Robustella's practice-based thesis shows that it is well worth the effort. She developed an art exhibition based on her master’s thesis.

Hari Nugroho explores the role of local dynamics in shaping Indonesian labour movements. By focusing on the micro-level, this research reveals how labour organisation strategies are influenced by individual actors' personal histories, their interactions, and the way in which they respond the local economic…