Salvador Santino Regilme, Jr. Associate Professor of International Relations and Program Chair of MA in International Relations, has been honored with the Cecil B. Currey Book Award for 2023. The accolade, presented by the Association for Global South Studies (AGSS), recognizes Regilme’s exceptional…

The Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) of Leiden University contributed to the design and teaching of modules of this year’s edition of the Ministry of Defence’s ‘International Military Cooperation Course Africa’.

On 7 and 8 October, a two-day workshop will be hosted by the Van Vollenhoven Institute in collaboration with the University of Oxford’s Border Criminologies network and the Social Citizenship & Migration assisted area. The theme of the workshop will be ‘Border policing, boundary creation and emotion…

Dr Jake Benson, who completed his PhD in Persian Studies at Leiden University in 2024, has been awarded a prestigious international prize for the best dissertation in manuscript studies.

Facility

After the Second World War almost three million people emigrated from the Netherlands to countries such as Canada and Australia. The government information was anything but objective, Professor by Special Appointment of Dutch Studies/Dutch Literature Ton van Kalmthout concludes in his inaugural lect…

In the past months of the coronavirus crisis, work continued steadily on constructing the Humanities Campus. The Arsenaal has been completed. Colleagues have moved to the Reuvens and Huizinga buildings, and the South Cluster is ready for the renovation to start. And now we have suddenly had to stop.

Eight scientists from Leiden University have been awarded a grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). With this Vidi funding, the researchers can set up an innovative line of research and further expand their own research group over the next five years.

You have prepared a research project, put together a plan, and you are ready to travel to the country where you will be conducting your fieldwork. What do you do when Covid suddenly makes that impossible? Nadia Sonneveld was forced to relocate her project Living on the Other Side to a hybrid form: ‘It…

Global science research serves the needs of the Global North, and is driven by the values and interests of a small number of companies, governments and funding bodies, finds a major new international study published today. As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation research is not…

Seven researchers from Leiden University have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant. This will enable them to start their own project, build their research team and put their best ideas into action.

Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing, what exactly does he do and what does his day look like? In each newsletter, Jasper gives an insight into his life.

Six Leiden University members of staff recently received the Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility grant for exchange projects with non-European partner universities. The total award of around 357,000 euros is used for approximately 50 international mobilities.

Six projects from the Faculty of Humanities recently received grants of up to 750,000 euros from the NWO Open Competition. Researchers involved tell how they will spend this money.

Finding solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the not-inconsiderable task of the new Peace Academy in The Hague. Professor Maurits Berger and twelve students from different conflict zones are starting a creative thinking process that aims to discover the basic conditions for peace in the…

How can we safeguard children’s rights in conflict zones? The winners of the 2025 Children’s Rights Moot Court Competition, team 19 from O.P. Jindal Global University in India, show unique potential to bring about positive change in this area.

On 1 July – Keti Koti, in the year ahead, our university community will be able to reflect extensively on the history of slavery by engaging in research, education and many other activities.

The Leiden African Studies Assembly (LeidenASA) held its Annual Meeting on 12 December. LeidenASA is the network of Leiden based Africa-researchers. Fifteen researchers gave pitches on their projects, and sketches of Leiden University's Africa strategy were outlined.

Annetje Ottow, president of the Executive Board of Leiden University, has been the new chair of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus (LDE) strategic alliance for just two months. What does she want to achieve during her two-year chairmanship?

After the May elections a new University Council has now taken seat. The university democracy is the result of the long-lived national student protests in 1969. Students from Leiden joined the protests for greater representation, although their actions were less revolutionary than at other universities.…

On Tuesday 20 September, David Kilcullen, one of the world’s leading experts on modern warfare, visited Campus The Hague of Leiden University to discuss future developments in special operations and the escalating competition between great powers.

Research

Rüya Akdağ is part of a research team with the aim of further studying social anxiety. The Leiden psychologist receives the grant for her doctoral research on the role of emotions and cognition in the emergence and occurrence of social anxiety in adolescents.

In November, Intigam Mamedov joined the Institute for History as a postdoctoral researcher. Below, he introduces himself.

Professor of rheumatology Annette van der Helm focuses her research on the earliest possible detection of inflammatory joint rheumatism to prevent symptoms from becoming chronic.

Are you worried about your smartphone addiction? Trust us, it could have been far worse… A shocking discovery, by an interdisciplinary team of specialists from Leiden University, revealed that Neolithic people were heavily addicted to stone axes. The axes were produced under horrific circumstances in…

Many children have an unhealthy diet and do not get enough exercise. Sanne de Vries wants to help everyone get a healthy start in life.

What hidden nature is there in our cities and how can we use such organisms? This is what the HiddenBiodiversity project will be exploring over the next four years. The project’s kick-off meeting was held at the Hortus botanicus on Monday 26 September.

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…

The Global Summit, which took place from 12-16 January 2021, is an initiative by Richard Albert, the William Stamps Farish Professor in Law, Professor of Government, Director of Constitutional Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and Founder & Director of the International Forum on the Future…

In the context of Panama’s independence month, the Panamanian Embassy in the Kingdom of The Netherlands decided to recognize Natalia Donner’s contributions to the study of Panamanian history and culture, as well as her role in a massive repatriation project.

Matthew Canfield (Assistant Professor, Van Vollenhoven Institute) and Danielle Chevalier (Assistant Professor Law & Society, Van Vollenhoven Institute) both received XS Grants from the NWO Open Competition SSH for their respective research projects. These grants are a maximum of €50,000 and enable…

It is mid-July and as I sit in my office in the Herta Mohr building, I notice how quiet it is around campus. Yet, this is in direct contrast with a flurry of activity by LUCSoR colleagues and students in recent weeks. I highlight just a few examples here.

Each year, the Faculty awards two Meijers PhD positions to talented researchers. One position is open to participants from the Pre-PhD Programme (PPP) and one position is open to other candidates from inside and outside Leiden University.

Organisation

NUFFIC’s Orange Knowledge programme, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, awarded a grant to the proposal of Jacqueline Vel, Adriaan Bedner and Leiden alumnus Fachrizal Afandi just before the Christmas holidays.

The United Nations has declared May 22 the International Day for Biological Diversity. A moment of global reflection on everything on Earth and its indispensability. Anthropologist Marja Spierenburg stresses the importance of the interaction between natural and social sciences in addressing sustainability…

Fanny Wonu Veys was appointed Professor of Art and Material Culture of Oceania on 1 August. Time for an introduction.

Arnold Tukker has been appointed as distinguished visiting professor at Nanjing University in the field of industrial ecology.

From Wednesday 20 October 2021 to Thursday 21 April 2022, Leiden Children’s Rights Observatory and the Centre for Constitutional Studies of the Supreme Court of Mexico organize an Online Webinar Series on Children’s Access to Justice and the Optional Protocol on a Communications Procedure (OP3)

Exotic marsh frogs from distant lands are colonising the south-east of the Netherlands. This has been demonstrated by biology students from our faculty. Although the amphibians thrive in our little country, they are harmful to native biodiversity.

The final meeting which took place on Wednesday 6 September marked the end of the third cohort of master students’ time participating in the The Hague Southwest Thesis Workshop. During this last meeting, master students presented their research results to residents and stakeholders from The Hague So…

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,…

The bachelor programmes German Language and Culture, Classics, Dutch Language and Culture, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Religious studies and Linguistics have received the predicate top rated programme from the Keuzegids.

At the end of the 7th century something curious occurs in Northwestern Europe. Suddenly, people start burying the dead next to their dwellings instead of in communal cemeteries. Professor Frans Theuws recently published a book on this phenomenon. ‘We wanted to know if the study of these farmyard burials…

Three Leiden researchers have been awarded a Vici grant by the Dutch Research Council. The funding of up to 1.5 million euros supports ‘talented, adventurous and pioneering researchers’. A total of 39 projects at Dutch institutions will receive a grant.

Lecture

The brightness peak of the ring around M87's supermassive black hole has shifted 30 degrees counterclockwise in a year. This is shown by new images released by the Event Horizon Telescope consortium.

Welcome to the Expertise Centre for Teaching and Learning (ECOLe) of the Faculty of Humanities. Here you will find information on didactics, teacher development, teaching innovation, assessment and the use of teaching tools. Have a question or need advice? E-mail ecole@hum.leidenuniv.nl.

VVIK Lecture