In what settings do great ideas turn op? Quanta Magazine follows top scientists to their favorite places to think, tinker and create. Leiden astronomer Ewine van Dischoeck showed the magazine the Noordwijk beach. 'Somebody from the Netherlands is unavoidably linked with water.'

On Wednesday 5 June, Kalin Anev Janse, Secretary-General and Management Board Member of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), was invited to give a lecture on 'Bridging decision-making: a new direction for Europe? Prioritising financial stability: the European Stability Mechanism and the Banking U…

Eva Michaels talks about the current international security environment, including intelligence issues with Sir John Sawers in an interview in El País.

The Municipality of Lelystad is using a new kind of council agreement: a general agreement that all parties are entitled to have their say on. As Professor of Constitutional Law Wim Voermans recently said on Dutch current affairs programme ‘EenVandaag’, this form of agreement would also lend itself…

As a psychologist and pilot, Bert Busscher is interested in the phenomenon often termed as fear of flying. Busscher discovered that the heart rate of a person undergoing a therapeutic flight shows how much they still suffer from fear of flying. The post-flight heart rate can even predict whether the…

A civil servant employed by the municipality of The Hague was cause for discussion after taking part in an Extinction Rebellion protest. Only under additional conditions could the employee in question stay on at the municipality. She decided to resign. According to Barend Barentsen, Professor of Labour…

Tech company Eyeball collects images and data on young amateur football players on a large scale. But is this allowed? Bart Custers, Professor of Law and Data Science, and Gerrit-Jan Zwenne, Professor of Law and Digital Technologies, comment on the issue in ‘NRC’ newspaper.

The US intervention in Venezuela and the country’s ongoing instability pose risks for the Dutch Caribbean. How serious is that threat? ‘Dutch men and women will have to defend our external borders there,’ says Professor by Special Appointment of Kingdom Relations, Wouter Veenendaal.

Piercing through the skull with an ice pick, administering electric shocks without an anaesthetic, or applying leeches to the uterus: these may seem like medieval methods of torture, but they are in fact therapies used in medicine. Willem van der Does writes about all of them in his new book. ‘Physicians…

From the Open Days and Student for a Day events to the option of following Online Experience modules: the university tries to prepare prospective students for their new study programme as well as possible. In this context, the bachelor’s programmes Dutch Language and Culture and English Language and…

Hoping to learn something about the human brain, Leiden researchers are creating a setup to shoot single photons, particles of light, into someone’s eye. ‘The eye is a passageway to the brain.’

Over the past five years, medical anthropologist Annemarie Samuels has studied palliative care in different parts of the world. Over the next five years, she will focus on end-of-life care in the Netherlands. 'Everyone has the right to good care at the end of their life, but what that means differs…

The Pre-PhD Programme offers master’s students the chance to gain research experience. ‘The programme helps you discover if doing research is something for you’, says Bastiaan Ganzen, the programme’s Academic Coordinator.

Does a snake die when it bites its lip? Why will a mongoose survive a scorpion’s sting, but we humans perish? These questions occupied the minds of toxin-enthusiasts and Master’s students Biology Jory van Thiel and Roel Wouters. They collected information from many sources and published their findings…

‘We didn’t find any mechanisms in the brain for transmitting child abuse from generation to generation. What we did find is that experiences of neglect and abuse affect the brain differently,’ concludes Lisa van den Berg (Clinical Psychology). PhD defence 30 June.

Designing innovative algorithms, thinking outside the box, and brainstorming over coffee with his colleagues — this is what physicist Stefano Polla enjoys most. His success shines through in his nomination for the C.J. Kok Jury Award 2024 for PhD thesis of the Year.

How ethical is research involving humans and robots? And can research on artificial intelligence cause problems when it ends up in the wrong hands? In any research involving humans or their data, the ethics committee assesses where the issues are. Associate professor at LIACS Suzan Verberne chairs the…

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated measures during the first lockdown in the Netherlands in March 2020 caused major changes in daily life. Parents worked from home and children followed school online. Therefore, the families were forced to spend more time together. This is particularly difficult for…

Lecture

Evenement

What can criminal courts do when the course of justice is obstructed? Countries such as England and Wales apply the instrument contempt of court, which enables the court to act according to criminal law in such a case. Could that work in the Netherlands too? PhD defence on 18 December.

Symposium

The Leiden University Academy of Creative and Performing Arts will be proudly awarding an Honorary Doctorate within the upcoming 440th Dies Natalis.

447th Dies Natalis

The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged political leaders worldwide, bringing discussion about leadership in times of crisis. In various media outlets, a recurring topic has been the relationship between the gender of a country’s leader and the success of his or her Covid-19 approach. Especially female…

Academic ceremony

From BBC film shootings to a video of snowy Leiden and from bikes in the canal to our birthday, the Dies Natalis. This was our year in 12 Facebook posts!

Hoogleraar Law & Society Maartje van der Woude is door de Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta gevraagd om een lezing te geven ter gelegenheid van de 96e dies natalis van de Indonesische universiteit.

Universiteit Leiden stond niet altijd bekend als een bolwerk van vrijheid, betoogt Egbert Koops in zijn diesoratie. Leidsch Dagblad sprak met de hoogleraar rechtsgeschiedenis over academische vrijheid: ‘Het bolwerk van vrijheid moest veroverd worden.’

Museum Boerhaave amplifies its collection with original letters and pictures from Einstein and Lorentz. Professor by special appointment Dirk van Delft, also director of Boerhaave, accepted the documents on 12 March.

During the Dies Natalis for alumni, February 11 2017, the annual university thesis awards ceremony was held. The winner of 2017 is Erik Kroon, of the Faculty of Archaeology. His thesis featured innovative research on changes in the technology of Neolithic ceramics.

Political scientist Leila Demarest tells about her research to Nigeria’s National Assembly. How do politicians cooperate and how are public resources distributed among the different regions?

Since 2000 the Leiden Student Council (LSR) yearly awards a prize for the best teacher of the university at the Dies Natalis.

You can't have missed it: Leiden University celebrated its 444th anniversary in 2019 with a year-long programme of activities for the people of Leiden and The Hague. The Dies Natalis on 7 February 2020 marks the end of this special year. High time to look back at what we did!

On 8 February 2016 prof. Jennifer Chayes received her Honorary Doctorate at Leiden University as part of the 441e Dies Natalis. A video registration of this special event has now been published. For the ceremony of Jennifer Chayes’ Honorary Doctorate, please scroll to the 82th minute.

Each year on the university’s birthday, children at primary schools in Leiden and The Hague have a lesson from a professor – about children’s rights and robots in surgery, for example. The children get to do activities. And ask questions: ‘How do you become a professor?’

Leiden University is celebrating its 450th anniversary in 2025 with a feast for the eyes, ears and spirit. The anniversary year opens with an extra special Dies Natalis on 7 February. Highlights includes an alumni festival, three exhibitions and a canal concert.

Neuroscientists Ineke van der Ham (Leiden University) and Anouk Keizer (Utrecht University) regularly use VR in their research. Their experiences with the medium raise many questions about the ways VR is experienced by different people. Therefore they conducted an VR experiment at the cinedans festival…

Microplastics are small pieces of plastic found in the environment. At CML research have been conducted in the distribution of these plastics on beaches around the world using citizen science. In addition, CML is conducting in depth case-studies in the Caribbean and along the Dutch coast. Follow-up…

Den Haag is de stad van vrede en recht. Rondom deze thema’s organiseren culturele en maatschappelijke organisaties het festival. De Universiteit Leiden is nauw betrokken bij de organisatie. Universitaire medewerkers en studenten doen bijvoorbeeld mee aan de Vredesloop, Marieke Liem van het Institute…

The city centre of Leiden is covered in them: wall poems. When roaming around, you come across poetry written in the Latin alphabet, but also in scripts that might be more difficult to understand for the average person living in Leiden. In a new series of videos, Tijmen Pronk talks more about this.

When university lecturer Martine Bruil was on exchange in Ecuador as a teenager, she fell in love with the area's ancient languages. Now, more than 20 years later, she is starting a research project on the kinship of the language Awapit with the Quechua language that was spread by the Incas.