Chris Jacobs, former PhD-student of the IBL, received the national “Dissertation Award” for best PhD thesis of the year on insects. The award was handed out last Friday, the 18th of December, by Professor Matty Berg, president of the Dutch Entomological Society.

Dr Olga Ceran has been selected as one of the re:constitution fellows of 2023/24. This distinguished group comprises 15 early-career scholars and practitioners, all set to work on diverse research projects on the rule of law and democracy in Europe. The fellowship will allow her to work on her project…

The OHBM Program Committee selected LUCL's Olga Kepinska to receive a Merit Abstract Award for the 2016 OHBM Annual Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.

Olga Ceran was a speaker at the European Constitutional Law Review (EuConst) Symposium for Young Scholars that took place in Maastricht on 18 June 2024.

On 1 July, Olga Zoutendijk will become a member of the Board of Governors of Leiden University. Zoutendijk (1961) was appointed by the Minister of Education, Culture and Science, and will succeed Mirjam Sijmons. Sijmons is leaving after two periods of membership of the Board of Governors.

On 18 July, Olga Ceran held a presentation titled ‘Family law in a united Europe: Child abduction and child relocation’ at a summer school on 'European integration at the Franco-Spanish border: A cross-border perspective' which took place at the Cité des Arts in Bayonne (France).

Christopher Berg Smiet, who defended his thesis at LION with Dirk Bouwmeester, won the Christiaan Huygens prize for his thesis '‘Knots in Plasma’. On 7 October, he received a certificate, a bronze statuette and ten thousand euros.

On 26 October 2023, Olga Ceran spoke at the inaugural conference of the newly founded ICON-S Benelux Chapter, hosted by Maastricht University, Faculty of Law. The overarching theme of the conference was Crises, Challenges, and the Future of Public Law. Olga joined the panel on Power, knowledge, and…

The Surinamese-Dutch language, Parbo Beer and, of course, football. The ‘Dear Aunt Olga’ (‘Lieve tante Olga’) exhibition focuses on the shared Surinamese-Dutch culture. Full of cheer and with life experience to spare, ‘icon’ Aunt Olga (95) leads visitors through a shared history and does not shy away…

On 23 May 2025, Olga Ceran spoke at the ICON-S Benelux Chapter conference dedicated to ‘Public Law in an Age of Contestation and Systemic Change’. This conference was organised by the Université libre de Bruxelles, in collaboration with the Centre de droit européen and the Centre de droit public et…

Olga Ceran was one of the speakers at the SCEUS Young Scholars Workshop on EU studies on 14 and 15 March 2024 in Salzburg (Austria).

Dr Olga Ceran has been selected as a 2025/26 Mellon/SAR Academic Freedom Fellow. As one of 11 fellows in this year’s cohort, she will work on a project titled ‘The Linguistic Dimension of Academic Freedom: A Human Rights Analysis of Higher
Education in Europe’.

On 24 June, Olga Ceran and Vasiliki Kosta, together with Peter Maassen from the University of Oslo, presented the Academic Freedom Monitor 2024 to the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education (CULT).

On 22 May, Olga Ceran and Vicky Kosta gave a lecture for the Eurodoc Ambassador Programme for Values and Democracy in European Research and Higher Education (ValDem). The lecture focused on discussing the protection of academic freedom in the EU from a legal perspective, including the recent proposals…

The European Rule of Law Conference 2025, hosted by re:constitution at the Berlin Social Science Center (15-16 September), brought together scholars, practitioners, and civil society to critically examine the challenges facing democracy and the rule of law in Europe and to explore ways of shaping their…

On 26 June, Dr Vicky Kosta and Dr Olga Ceran visited the University of Bologna, Italy, to present the Vidi research project ‘The EU fundamental right to

As part of the GTGC Lunch Seminars, Chris Wensink and Midas van Dijk presented their book 'Regionalizing Eurasia'. The COVID-19 pandemic restricted travel and placed free trade under scrutiny. Then, the war in Ukraine triggered unprecedented economic sanctions and severing of trade ties. By contrast,…

Have you ever seen your friend smiling, and suddenly you started grinning too? PhD student Chris Riddell is researching how and why we copy body language. As a new Face of Science, he will take us along on his research journey for the coming year.

On 5 February, Dr Kosta and Dr Ceran spoke at the high-level conference entitled ‘Perspectives on academic freedom in Europe and beyond’, organised in Brussels by the European Parliament’s Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA).

During the HALON hacking competition, 28 teams had one goal: to find as many vulnerabilities as possible in the systems of Dutch higher education institutions. Research software engineer Chris Handy participated on his own and ended up in second place in the category ‘Vulnerabilities found at the highest…

What does life look like after International Studies? For Chris Colijn who graduated in 2018, it involves working on his master’s in Russian and Eurasian Studies, in combination with a bustling traineeship for “Raam of Rusland”, a think tank, focusing on Russian and Ukrainian politics, economy and culture.…

Do you have questions or remarks? Please contact the coordinators of the Medieval and Early Modern Studies cluster.

Publications resulting from the AFITE project

The project has been done in the Biological Matter group under the supervision of Prof. dr. ir. S.J.T. van Noort and Prof. dr. M.A.G.J. Orrit.The title of the presentation is: ''Characterization of Single Gold Nanorods with Two Photon Microscopy.