Working on superconductivity, finding an exoplanet or learning how to program with Python. More than one hundred girls visited Leiden University on Thursday 13 February during the Girls in Science Day.

The 16-year-old girl was staying in a closed juvenile care institution where, among other things, she was administered 'pain stimuli'. The charges are the first of their kind, says Mariëlle Bruning, Professor of Children and the Law, to Dutch newspaper the Volkskrant.

Girls with autism have relatively good social skills, which means that their autism is often not recognised. Autism manifests itself in girls differently from in boys. Psychologist Carolien Rieffe and colleagues from the Autism Centre and INTER-PSY (Groningen) report their findings in the Dutch Scientific…

Since 2015 the United Nations have declared 11 February the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Leiden University organized a public event for over a hundred visitors. In between a lecture on the building blocks of life and a talkshow on the impact of science on society, high school students…

Spontaneously helping one another, why do we bother? It is believed that lending a hand to others promotes social bonding, helping us to connect with each other and even build friendships. In our experiment, in which the adult researcher ‘accidentally’ dropped matches on the floor, most adolescents…

Via expedited proceedings at Leeuwarden Court of Appeal, a mother is trying to impose a relatively new treatment for her 15-year-old daughter’s eating disorder. The girl is suffering from anorexia nervosa and if she does not receive urgent treatment which the girl herself supports, there is a chance…

Postcolonial Displacements explores the multiple ways in which migration in South Asia contributes to the imagining, questioning, subverting and reframing of territories, nations and communities. The project focuses on the contested fringes of the politically divided South Asian subcontinent, across…

What are the capabilities or limitations of traveling between islands and how does this reflect seasonal variation? Is it possible to show higher levels of connectivity between islands based on generated pathways between several sites on two separate islands?

NVIC would like to invite you to Tilly Mulder's second exhibition. This time around a new series of paintings, names 'Mindscapes', will be on show.

The girls and boys from the Schilderswijk in The Hague were very keen to learn. On 20 May, 25 pupils from the Saturday school, the Schilderswijk University, came to Leiden University College in The Hague.

Leiden archaeologists investigate how people in the past impacted their environment. Together with scientists, environmental scientists, and humanities experts, they use this information to draw conclusions about the present – and show what we can learn from it for the future.

As a lawyer, how can you contribute to ensuring that the best interests of the child play a greater role in immigration law? That question was the topic of asylum lawyer Bart Toemen's guest lecture in the course ‘Kind en migratie’ (child and migration), given in the master’s programme ‘Jeugdrecht’ (Child…

A man died in Assen while being detained by bystanders. The man allegedly touched a young girl inappropriately and the girl’s father is believed to have been one of the bystanders. Five men have been arrested by the police and later released. As a result, wild rumours have started circulating. How does…

The aim of this Research Traineeship will be to analyze the underexplored reception of ancient religions in popular culture, taking Dutch spiritual magazines as a case study. There are five such magazines: Paravisie (1986- ), Paraview (1997- ), Happinez (2003- ), Bres (1965- ), and Prana/Mantra (1975-…

Anyone who follows the Faculty of Archaeology on social media must have noticed that something changed in September. Videos on research projects, interviews with staff and students, and embracing memes: the content has become more varied and engaging. We speak with students Grace Alonzo and Thomas Prins,…

On Thursday July 1, our alumna Lise Stork will defend her PhD thesis at Leiden University. It is about using AI to make sense of handwritten natural history archives.

It was the Night of Discoveries on Saturday 16 September: a summer encounter between art and science. Leiden researchers from various disciplines inspired the public with their quest to understand our world.

Translating poetry is notoriously difficult. Translating poetry in such a way that the humorous nature of a poem remains intact is even more difficult, even though it is precisely jokes that can encourage children to read more, notes PhD candidate Alice Morta.

Leiden alumnus and writer Tomas Lieske has published a novel which is set in the house of Paul Ehrenfest. Ehrenfest was a famous physicist who organized round table events every Wednesday evening at his home in Leiden in the early twentieth century. The big names from modern physics frequented these…

What starts off gently may end dramatically. Many young people these days fall victim to sexual exploitation. How can we prevent this suffering? Ieke de Vries points to the living environment of (potential) victims.

Hunter-gatherers acquire their food through complex gender-specific foraging techniques for a relatively stable and diverse supply of energy. New research indicates that this specialisation by boys and girls starts at a very young age. Most likely, this enabled the human species to evolve much larger…

In March 2015 Jonna Both started working as a postdoctoral researcher within the VICI project ‘Connecting in Times of Duress’ of professor Mirjam de Bruijn.

Psychologist Ellen de Bruijn studies the effects of hormonal fluctuations on behaviour and on the brain over a woman's life course. With an ERC Consolidator grant, she and 3 PhDs and a postdoc will further her EEG research on the different stages at which girls and women experience strong hormonal f…

Role models are key to inspiring the next generation. Fifteen female professors therefore celebrated International Women's Day with girls aged between 12 and 16. Because although the number of women at the (academic) top is increasing, we're not there yet.

It matters a lot whether a fatwa is given by a female or male Islamic scholar, discovered doctoral student Nor Ismah.

Professor of Human Genetics Willeke van Roon will give her inaugural lecture on Monday 28 March entitled: ‘Translational research, where small parts make the bigger picture.’ She will emphasise how university medical centres should take responsibility for finding treatments for very rare diseases.

Psychologist Ellen de Bruijn is investigating what hormonal fluctuations do to women's behaviour and well-being. The National science funding body NWO honoured her research with a Vici grant; earlier this year she received an ERC Consolidator Grant. Read the interview with De Bruijn about her resear…

During the summer, staff and students of the Faculty of Archaeology travel to all parts of the world, initiating or joining fieldwork projects. Read some of our students' stories here!

Even the Mohawk Indians were talking about Serv Wiemers’ thesis. This Law alumnus, who has been intrigued by the world of American Indians since he was a boy, recently wrote a book about that world.

For the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, women students and researchers from physics talk about what inspires them about their work. From quantum to cosmology and biophysics, their curiosity about how nature works is what connects these women. What do these 5 scientists want to share…

Knowledge of Islam and of Muslim societies is indispensable when trying to properly understand the globalising world, as well as changing Dutch society. Researchers from Leiden are therefore immersing themselves in the languages, culture and religion of Muslim societies. Their work and insights can…

Today Mikhail Khordorkovsky visits the Leiden University Campus of The Hague to debate with students about the future of Russia. It is the first time this critic of Putin and former captain of industry visits the Netherlands. This event has been organised by the organisation Raam op Rusland and the…

How does loneliness work? What sometimes makes friendships complicated for autistic people? And why can the school building be such an unpleasant place for some pupils? Pupils explored this during their pre-university classes. 'I now have a good idea of what studying psychology entails.'

Two radio telescopes in Green Bank, West Virginia have brought together a few remarkable people. A new photo exhibition in the Old Observatory visitor centre gives an insight into the remote community. Due to the corona crisis, the Observatory is not open to the public. That’s why we’ve selected a few…

The Executive Board of the Institute of Psychology has a new Director of Operational Management. It’s the perfect role for Paula van den Bergh. ‘For me, “connection” is a nice word. If you see the connections between things, you immediately see the logic behind the processes.’ Her career has taken her…

Gianne Derks is the MI’s new scientific director from 1 May. She has worked abroad longer than in the Netherlands and, after more than 27 years in Surrey, she dreams in English. Who is this new director and who or what managed to entice her to make the move to Leiden?

Laura Nijkamp’s biggest dream came true recently: she took a parabolic flight and was weightless for a moment. The BrainFly student team, which includes psychology students from Leiden, needed volunteers. She signed up immediately. She tells us all about her experience.

A young refugee who wants to give something back to the Netherlands; a Greek girl who wants to study in her mother's home country and, of course, a lot of Dutch bachelor's students. The visitors to the Leiden Master's Day on Friday 11 March were as diverse as the range of programmes offered.

Alfons Chorus was the ‘founding father’ of Psychology in Leiden. His son Rogier Chorus recently obtained his PhD at Leiden University based on his biography of his father. He talked to his Leiden PhD supervisor Willem Heiser about his father’s innovations, his plagiarism and how he was misunderstood…

Lecture

Bachelor's students from all different disciplines came to the Master's Open Day to explore the options for their next programme. Some of them visited several different programmes and still have all their options open, while others wanted answers to very specific questions before making their final…

Many of us are working from home at the moment, but our children are at home too. While this can be fun, parents sometimes need a bit of peace and quiet. Leiden computer scientist Felienne Hermans has developed Hedy, a programming language that teaches children how to program. An educational way to…

Professor Bussemaker and Professor Koenders draw lessons from the handling of the current corona crisis. In a blended guest lecture with some 60 students in Wijnhaven and some 250 online participants, they entered into a discussion led by Willemijn Aerdts. The guest lecture took place on May 25.

Conference, Webinar

Arbitration law has grown into a ‘sexy’ area of practice about which students are keen to write a thesis and in which many lawyers specialise.

El CID, the University introduction week, has begun! We spoke on Sunday evening to the first new arrivals who had come to Leiden to spend the night at the University Sports Centre. New students can sleep here all this week as well as at the ice rink or in a student house.

The brand-new American President Donald Trump delivered his inaugural speech on 20 January. There was little sign of conciliation and he was liberal with the truth, in the opinion of a number of Leiden academics. One professor is more positive: 'He wants to take on radical Islam.'

The life and career of art historian and Leiden alumna Gerdien Verschoor (1963) followed quite a remarkable path before she was appointed director of Camp Westerbork Memorial Centre in 2019. A woman with a deep awareness of historical places, she sees it as more of a series of coincidences, but the…

A delegation from Leiden University recently embarked on a knowledge mission to various NGOs, universities and government organisations in Indonesia. New partnerships were formed and important knowledge exchanged, and researchers from Leiden gave guest lectures.