Sebastian Pomplun from the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research has recently received an ERC Proof of Concept grant for his ambitious MYSTIC project. This initiative is set to transform cancer treatment by advancing the development of HeloMYC, a pioneering therapeutic candidate designed to target…

Marcello Bonsangue will be the new Scientific Director of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) from January 2024. Bonsangue has been appointed for four years. He succeeds Aske Plaat, who led the institute for eight years.

Following a special donation, the Stichting Pro Juventute foundation is facilitating a new special chair in Educational Theory and Law. Through the chair, Pro Juventute hopes to realise optimum child protection from a coherent legal and educational perspective.

On 25 May, Professor Paul Abels retired as professor by special appointment. Abels has been working as Professor by special appointment Governance of Intelligence and Security Services at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs since 2017.

Bart Schuurman sheds light on the alarming trend in both the frequence and geographical spread of these incidents with The Parliament Magazine.

On 2 April 2025, eLaw – Center for Law and Digital Technologies of Leiden University will celebrate its 40th anniversary as the oldest digital law department in the Netherlands and the second in Europe. To mark the occasion, eLaw will host a conference with prominent speakers from academia and public…

The Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies is pleased to invite you to the round-table discussion 'International Law in Motion: Some New Insights - A Tribute to Late Professor François Rigaux'. The round-table will feature presentations from Professors Pierre d’Argent and Mohsen Mohebi, and…

On 8, 9 and 10 October 2021 'Share the LUVE' takes place. During this graduation show the works of this year's graduates of the Visual Ethnography master of Leiden University will be screened. So mark your agenda and enjoy three days full of film, photo, artwork, exhibitions, good conversations and…

The faculty Happy Holidays Drinks for all staff and student assistants was held on Tuesday 19 December. There was a great turn out and fun was had by all.

The pre-university course organized by eLaw, with the support of the Honours Academy concluded on Monday, March 18, 2024. Led by Carlotta Rigotti, the program provided students from various Dutch high schools with a rich tapestry of insights at the intersections of law, technology, and society.

On Thursday 26 June 2025, the Pavilion of the Wereldmuseum Leiden featured the first joint meeting of Leiden University and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam around the shared research theme Collecting Global Heritage. Some 50 researchers, students and collection managers came together to share knowledge,…

Organisation, Research

Writing with Light Magazine. Issue no.1 is now available for download as a open access pdf/interactive edition or purchase as limited-run print edition. The magazine builds on our prior work with the journals Cultural Anthropology and Visual Anthropology Review and the editorial collective consists…

Organisation, Social

In May 2021, Professor Bart Custers, Dr Mark Leiser and Dr Eduard Fosch Villaronga (all affiliated to eLaw, the Center for Law and Digital Technologies of Leiden University) will teach a course on Law and Technology at Haifa University, Israel.

On 25 November, Professor Ineke Sluiter received the Medal of Honour for Arts and Sciences in the Order of Orange-Nassau. She was presented with the medal by King Willem-Alexander.

On 7 November, we marked an important milestone for our Law and Criminology bachelor's students who celebrated at their graduation ceremony.

On Friday 15 January, the Dutch ‘Rutte III’ government resigned following the scathing report on the childcare benefits scandal. What are the political consequences?

Education, ICT

Education

Blended learning is a well-thought-out mix of online and on-campus learning, tailored to the learning objectives, the curriculum and the student. It contributes to the student’s learning experience and the quality of teaching.

Teachers at Leiden University are experts in their field and passionate about educating students in their discipline. It is also important that they can work effectively as a member of a team, together with colleagues and students, and that they feel committed to our organisation. We will therefore…

If you’re experiencing too much work pressure, talk about it to your colleagues and your manager. This is the only way we can jointly work towards a solution. How do you raise the issue of work pressure? And what can you do to prevent work pressure from getting out of hand?

An extra-long procession with musical accompaniment will mark the beginning of the university’s 450th birthday celebrations on 7 February.

2025 was a year to remember at our faculty. We celebrated our 450th anniversary, launched new degree programmes and welcomed many inspiring speakers, yet we also felt the weight of budget constraints. Our year in a nutshell:

Nicolette Heijkant is our guest on the latest episode of Leiden Lawcast. Heijkant is an experienced lawyer who won her spurs working in the legal profession in Amsterdam’s business district, the Zuidas, and is now working for a legal-aid practice in Brabant. In this episode, we speak to her about her…

The Faculty of Humanities has made a festive start to the academic year. On 7 September, staff members were able to meet each other at a drinks party in the Hortus botanicus.

Leiden and The Hague have an extra 450 trees thanks to a special campaign to mark the 450th anniversary of the Relief of Leiden and Leiden University’s foundation. Over the past few months, Stadslab Leiden has worked on an initiative to plant young trees with the residents of the two cities.

On the first day of February, employees of the Faculty of Humanities gathered in the Faculty Club. They were there to usher in the new semester, while enjoying refreshments and drinks.

It has become tradition: the opening of the faculty year in the Hortus Botanicus. This year, too, staff and students of the Faculty of Humanities gathered in the botanical garden on the first Wednesday of September to raise a glass to the new academic year.

Global affairs, governance, security, sustainability, public administration, and urban development are topics broadly covered in FGGA's research activities. Regularly, FGGA researchers contribute to The Conversation, an independent platform for academic insights and analysis on current affairs. This…

Carel Stolker will retire as Rector Magnificus of Leiden University on 8 February. As a retirement gift he is setting up a fund for first-generation students and academics. You too can donate.

Are you working with film, photo, sounds, creative coding, drawings or other unconventional method in the social sciences and humanities? ReCNTR has a new 2-year multimodal seminar. Check it out and apply by November 15th!

In exactly 450 days’ time, on 8 February 2025, it is the university’s 450th anniversary. We are obviously going to celebrate this with our students, staff and friends. Do you have any ideas for this celebration?

Facility

Geert de Snoo is making the transition from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology to the management of KNAW. Starting 1 October, the professor of Environmental Biology will begin his role as Director of Research Policy in a new, consensus-based management team.

Using artificial intelligence to find new antibiotics. With that, researchers from Leiden University are nominated by magazine KIJK for the Best Tech-idea of 2021. From September 14 onwards people can vote to crown one of the nominees as the winner.

The Leiden University Centre for the Study of Religion (LUCSoR) and the Beheerstichting Theologische Fondsen hand out two biennial thesis prizes, one for the best bachelor thesis and one for the best master thesis. Each of the prizes comes with a cash prize of €500. The prize money comes from the Fund…

Javier Aleuanlli, an Advanced Masters graduate from the Law and Digital Technologies programme at Leiden University, has been awarded Google's Diverse Copyright Thesis Award 2021 for his LL.M. thesis "Augmented Reality and Copyright: perspective under the EU framework". In this work, Javier mapped and…

On 21 January 2021, Fachrizal Afandi defended his thesis ‘Maintaining Order: Public Prosecutors in Post-Authoritarian Countries, the case of Indonesia’. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. A.W. Bedner and Prof. J.H. Crijns.

Andrew Hoffman (CADS), Mark Westmoreland (CADS) and Yasmin Ismail (CADS) have received a KIEM grant of € 10.000 for their project 'CARMA: Community Archive and Repository for Multimodal and Artistic Research'. The grant will be used to create a 'living laboratory' that helps researchers, data management…

Carlotta Rigotti co-authors a new publication on EU law and image-based sexual abuse in the German Law Journal.

Social

Dutch election signals a return to the political centre, with voters seeking practical solutions both at home and across Europe. Bernard Steunenberg, Professor of Public Administration, cautions that losses for the PVV, the party of Geert Wilders, do not mean the far right has been defeated.

Of the 150 elected representatives, 24 studied or conducted their PhD research in Leiden. Who are they and which degrees are most popular among these MPs?

De Universiteit Leiden staat op de twaalfde plek in de UI Green Metric, een wereldwijde duurzaamheidsranglijst voor universiteiten.

Organisation, Social