North, Middle and South America together constitute the single largest area in World Archaeology that is taught as a single focus. It is also the only major world area that saw societies develop from hunter-gatherers to early empires entirely independent from developments in Eurasia & Africa. It is,…

In early modern Europe, as today, men and women with expertise in languages were indispensable to the functioning of societies and economies. The LangPro project will shed new light on these early modern language professionals and on the field that employed them: the language sector.

How did people in the latter part of the Late Bronze Age organize themselves in order to be able to erect massive structures such as tholos tombs, citadels and how did they interact with these materials and circumstances while constructing? What impact did such a changing landscape have on their day-to-day…

In an age before GoogleDocs and LinkedIn, 19th-century scholars relied on letter-writing for collaboration, peer-feedback and the building and sustaining of academic networks. Letters were a quick, efficient way to share insights, data and discoveries. Scholarly correspondence thus allows a vital behind-the-scenes…

Workshop

Workshop

Behind the relatively stable income inequality in the Netherlands, big changes have been happening. Income inequality has increased over the past 40 years, but less sharply because women in lower income groups have begun working more. In contrast, men’s income has increased very little over the past…

On Friday 23 April, Jorrit Rijpma appeared before the European Parliament’s Working Group on Frontex Scrutiny. This working group was set up by the Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) in response to allegations of serious fundamental rights violations taking place…

A complex discussion is currently taking place in the Municipality of The Hague. An alderman has shared secret information about a future shelter with a group of select residents, asking them not to share this information with others. Geerten Boogaard, Professor Local Government, talks about the issue…

Tackling key challenges of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry to aid drug discovery is one of the focus areas of Leiden University. To this end, the Leiden Early Drug Discovery & Development network (LED3) was established by the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC), the Institute of Biology Leiden…

In Dutch newspaper NRC, Pieter Omtzigt says he finds it 'unconstitutional' that he has no right to vote in committee meetings. Omtzigt believes he is as much a Member of Parliament as other MPs. However, since 2017, a breakaway group is no longer entitled to a proportional share of staff support and…

The Rural Riches research group convenes for coffee on a daily basis. Remotely, that is, to prevent the spread of coronavirus. It is the perfect way to stay connected, exchange ideas, and socialise. ‘We now are more in touch with each other than in the usual situation when we are all at the Faculty.…

Mathematician Oliver Nagy still vividly remembers the first time he learned about a random walk. ‘The lecturer told us to imagine a company of drunken students who wander in the streets. At each intersection, they would spin one of them around and all would go in the direction where he or she came to…

Professor Peter Bisschop has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant. He will invest the 2.5 million euros in his research into puranas: ancient texts, commonly written in Sanskrit, that are up to fifteen hundred years old.

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2018, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

On this page you will find an overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2025, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.

Simone van der Hof, professor of Law and Digital Technology at eLaw, has joined the EU Special Group on Code of Conduct for age-appropriate design as an expert.

The goal of the new mentor project is to help first-year students at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs find their way in a university environment that has changed dramatically due to Covid-19. The project has been running since the beginning of this academic year. Two student mentors and…

Two research groups involving Leiden University have been awarded a major European grant, the ERC Synergy Grant. This for research on the development of membranes that can clean water and purify medical drugs and research on the biological clock in certain bacteria.

On the 44th anniversary of Maastricht University, organisational psychologist Carsten de Dreu has transferred the dies lecture: 'On the Psychology and Economics of Leading Groups’. Watch Youtube for the lecture of De Dreu, winner of the Spinoza Prize in 2018.

Masses of hamburgers, steaks, cheese and a lot of eggs: Americans love their animal products. But researcher Oliver Taherzadeh discovered that only a relatively small group of high-volume consumers need to modify their diet to achieve an enormous environmental gain.

How and why governments engage with civil society as well as how civil society organizes itself and exerts political influence constitute the key focus of the research programme Public Governance & Civil Society. As such, this research programme offers unique expertise within the field of public administration…

On 18 October 2017, Leiden Law School was honored to welcome a group of experts upon invitation of Prof. M.R. Bruning, professor of Child Law and head of the Child Law Department of Leiden University, to discuss current and future research projects in the field of international child abduction law and…

In October 2024, Jannemieke Ouwerkerk, Professor of European Criminal Law, was appointed to the European Commission’s (EC) Expert Group on EU Criminal Policy. This independent advisory group focuses on improving coherence and consistency within EU criminal law policy.

The ELS lab @Leiden is looking for colleagues to join the newly introduced topic group on Goed Werkgeverschap (‘good employment practices’).

On the occassion of the appearance of new drone footage of indigenous groups living isolated in the Amazon rainforest, Meliam Gaspar was interviewed by RTL Nieuws. She spoke about the dangers these people face due to the encroaching modern world.

Transparency is seen as an important value for democratic government policy. Does that mean that we should do away with state secrets, such as confidential information involving intelligence agencies and political deals made behind closed doors? Political philosopher and ERC grant recipient Dorota Mokrosinska…

Professor of Financial Law Matthias Haentjens is recently appointed member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Conflict of Law regarding Securities and Claims. The Group’s tasks shall be to assist the Commission with its work on conflict of laws on third-party effects of transactions in securities…

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration receives the 2021 Royal Astronomical Society Group Achievement Award. In April 2019, the EHT team presented the first-ever photograph of the shadow of a black hole. Leiden professor Huib-Jan van de Langevelde has been director of EHT since last year. Three…

Glycoconjugate vaccines are composed of microbial poly- or oligosaccharides covalently linked to a carrier protein.

Uniting an international consortium of scholars, the Skandapurāṇa Project comprises a team of researchers working in fields across the Humanities. We are creating a critical edition of a foundational work of purāṇic literature and, in doing so, tracing the dynamics of a textual tradition to better understand…

Paul Brakefield, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the Institute of Biology in Leiden (IBL) has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for his research. He will receive 2.5 million euro to develop his research programme over a period of five years.

To easily take part in group decision-making research, Jörg Gross, Assistent Professor Social and Organisational Psychology, launched a platform that allows students at the social interaction lab. Sign up to receive invitations if you are interested in taking part in on-going scientific studies in the…

The interdisciplinary, English-taught minor ‘Violence Studies’ looks at violence from very diverse scientific perspectives. What are the benefits from this approach? Students and lecturers evaluate: ‘This minor’s a goldmine’.

A new discussion paper published in Policy Sciences by two Leiden researchers claims that governments are working with one hand tied when it comes to data on vulnerable groups. At the core of this paper is the idea that even though the volume of data has increased in recent years, the quality of the…

If you know a crime is about to occur, should you be able to prevent it before it has even happened? This was one of the questions that was posed in light of predictive policing as a form of mass surveillance during the debate in the elective Governance of Crime and Social Disorder class of the Crisis…

On Thursday 28 January 2016, Prof. Carsten Stahn contributed to the OPCW Sub-Working Group on Non-State Actors, together with Professors Andrew Clapham (Geneva) and Dapo Akande (Oxford), in the presence of the Ahmet Üzümcü, Director-General of the OPCW.

On Wednesday, 5 September 2018, the second group of employees of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (IenW) started the managerial track of the Data Science course given by Leiden University (LCDS).

Between 5 and 8 September, PhD Candidate Esteban Szmulewicz attended the 45th annual Conference of the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA), which was organised in close cooperation with The Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb and other key partners.

The annual Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) conference is the most important scientific event in the field of digital archaeology.

Mariëlle Bruning, Professor of Child Law, is elected Member of the Expert Group on Responses to violence against children (CAHENF-VAC), which is established to assist the Ad hoc Committee for the Rights of the Child (CAHENF) of the Council of Europe.

Promotores: B. Erez, P. Stevenhagen, Co-Promotor: B. de Smit

The ARTIVES project studies imaginaries of diversity portrayed by artists in Lisbon and Rotterdam in their films, performances and (oral) literature with the aim to explore their transgressive potential of opening up possibilities of thinking differently about migration-related diversity. Their stories…

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2017, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

In October, Sophie Starrenburg was elected as a member of the Coordinating Committee of the ESIL Interest Group on the International Law of Culture. She will work alongside Giovanni Carlo Bruno (Italian National Research Council), Andrzej Jakubowski (Polish Academy of Studies), and Lucas Lixinski (University…