The editorial board of the Leiden Elective Academic Periodical (LEAP) is proud to announce the release of the fourth edition, titled “Subject: Matter”!

Leiden University Libraries invites you to the public lecture by Ted Underwood, Visiting Scaliger Professor. This lecture will be held on Thursday 21 November, from 16.00-17.00 in the Lipsius building, Room 0.19, Cleveringaplaats 1, Leiden. Afterwards, you can meet the new Visiting Scaliger Professor…

Radio New Babylon, to be heard around Anna van Beurenplein, Den Haag, from 1-10-2021 onwards, is a collection of sound works by local and international artists inspired by the work of Constant Nieuwenhuys, and developed in the context of the Interdisciplinary Research Group (ACPA, KC, KABK).

On 29 and 30 January, The Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies hosted the Dutch Qualifying Round of the 2019 Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition.

Linguistic research on a unique collection of Dutch letters allowed us to gain access to the every-day language of people from various walks of life. Private letters by men, women and even children have been elaborately explored in the Letters as Loot researchprogramme, initiated and directed by prof.…

There are currently two projects in Coptic Studies that are supported by the NVIC. Both are directed by Dr. Karel Innemee and both take place in the Wadi Natrun.

Paolo Sartori is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna. In Leiden he will deliver one guest lecture on Twilight of the Persianate: The Vernacularization of Central Asia (18th - early 20th Centuries) on 12 April and a masterclass on How can we…

One way for governments to conduct foreign policy and promote national interests is through direct outreach and communication with the population of a foreign country. This is called public diplomacy. Historians such as Helmer Helmers and William T. Rossiter have shown that printed media were already…

Mazatec chants and ancient Mesoamerican pictography

Around the world, there is a growing movement to decolonise university curricula, with both students and educators seeking to disrupt existing epistemic hierarchies within higher education. This research project aims to unravel what decolonising means in general and what it means for the International…

Our immune system protects us against disease, but every now and then, something goes wrong: an enemy invades our bodies or our immune system attacks our own cells and we become ill. Doctors and researchers at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) want to be able to manipulate the immune system…

Explore the intersection of arts, literature, and media in this interdisciplinary research master’s programme. Whether you're interested in medieval manuscripts or modern digital culture, this programme offers the flexibility to tailor your studies to your interests.

Meet the people of the Resilience Center

Students in our Astronomy programme are trained by leading experts in cutting-edge astronomical research. We incorporate in our educational programme observations and data from the world’s foremost ground- and space-based telescopes as well as theoretical, computational and astrochemical modelling,…

Many of the journal's issues contain short contributions from practitioners of diplomacy. These practitioners' essays offer unique insights into the world of diplomacy and they serve as a source of inspiration for researchers.

In the Global Conflict in the Modern Era specialisation of International Relations you will explore the security measures that have been instituted locally, regionally and globally in the modern world.

Since 2023 Leiden University has been intensifying its engagement with partners in Africa.

Advanced LL.M. European and International Human Rights Law and LL.M. European Law students are semi-finalists in the final round of the Helga Pedersen Moot Court Competition in Strasbourg, following their victory in the regional round in Athens.

Research Network Institute for History 2026-2029

Leiden's Boerhaave Museum and Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have discovered parts of a skeleton in an 18th-century manikin. The manikin was once used as a teaching aid for midwives. As far as we know, this is the only one of its kind in the world.

Criminals? They are always men. At least, that’s what we tend to think. Historian Manon van der Heijden wants to show, however, that between 1600 and 1900 in Europe, women were responsible for a substantial share of the criminal activity. She has been granted a VICI award for her research.

Long into the 19th century, seascapes were considered an expression of patriotism. Artists who painted in a 17th century style were valued more. This tradition stifled innovation in the genre, Cécile Bosman has concluded. She will defend her PhD thesis on 13 October.

Baroque flautist Jed Wentz followed two years of dancing classes in order to develop the right feeling for the gestures required for the Baroque French opera genre ‘tragédie en musique’. On 9 December Wentz defended his PhD thesis on the subject, and on 8 December he gave a concert in the context of…

MIDDELBURG/GENEVA – The president of the United Nations Human Rights Council has invited the Zeeland Archives from the Netherlands, to Geneva on March 20th in order to present its project about the historical slave voyage aboard The Unity (1761-1763).

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the city of Batavia was supplied with produce by its hinterland, known as the Ommelanden. Bondan Kanumoyoso studied the history of the various ethnic groups that populated this area and in doing so has shed light on the structure of modern-day Indonesian society.…

Afro-American slaves in the 19th century did not always flee to the north of the United States, according to historical research. Most of the slaves who fled remained in the southern states and posed as free coloured people. This is the conclusion that Professor Damian Pargas from Leiden University…

More than a thousand 17th- and 18th-century Dutch letters from seized ships are now available online. The letters are a gold mine for researchers wanting to study the everyday language used by men and women during this period.

Lenses from Christiaan Huygens’ telescope, instruments used to demonstrate Newton’s laws, and equipment that led to the discovery of superconductivity—around 3,000 scientific instruments from the Faculty of Science at Leiden University are now officially part of the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave collection.…

This year, the Chair of Brazilian studies celebrates its 20 year anniversary. The chair invites professors from Brazilian universities to come to Leiden, where they share their knowledge of Brazil with students. For its anniversary, Leiden welcomed five (former) holders of the chair. “People from all…

The Institute for Philosophy is pleased to host the OZSW Graduate Conference in Theoretical Philosophy on 9 and 10 January 2019

The Leiden Archaeology social media team presents its first documentary on one of our faculty's research projects. A team led by Bleda Düring, Victor Klinkenberg, and Maria Hadjigavriel explores the Cypriot Chalcolithic period in Palloures, Cyprus.

HERLING (Research Lab for the Study of Heritage Languages of the Netherlands) is a new centre that aims to bridge the gap between scientific research and language communities.

Samuel Jong has won the Institute of Political Science MSc Thesis Prize 2016. With ‘Bridging the Gap: Do Ideological Differences Determine Whether Center-Right Parties Cooperate with the Radical Right?’, Jong completed his Political Science master studies. His research findings, according to the jury,…

Professor Felix Ameka and university lecturer Maria del Carmen Parafita Couta have received an NWO Open Competition grant together with Enoch Aboh (University of Amsterdam) to do research on ‘code-switching’: switching languages by multilinguals.

On 11 October, the roundtable entitled ‘Academic Freedom – Theoretical Perspectives’ took place at Leiden University's Academy Building. This event was organised as part of the Vidi research project entitled 'The EU fundamental right to 'freedom of the art and sciences': exploring the limits on the…

The first location of the Open Science Centre network was opened on 7 July in Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo, Portugal. A Portuguese Minister and a State Secretary inaugurated the Plataforma de Ciência Aberta, which is a collaboration between Leiden University and the municipality of Figueira de Castelo…

Over 80 speakers from around 15 different countries came together to discuss the latest developments in multilingualism during the Conference on Multilingualism 2019 (COM2019). This year’s conference was hosted by Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) at Leiden University.

Carla Cisternas Guasch, PhD candidate at the Leiden Institute for History, is one of the winners of the 2023 call of the Slicher van Bath de Jong Foundation for the advancement of study and research on the history of Latin America. She receives a research grant of €10.000 (max).

Speech Prosody 2024 includes several poster sessions, the description of which you can find below.

A new two year MA track was launched at the Europaeum Spring School in Oxford on May 18th 2013.

Monday June 18th the department of European Prehistory of the Faculty of Archaeology started a five-year research (2018-2022) of two newly discovered barrow groups: Baarlo-De Bong and Venlo-Zaarderheiken (northern Limburg).

During the New Year’s reception on Thursday 10 January 2019 prizes were awarded for the three best (Dutch) master’s theses in 2018.

An international team of astronomers, including Leiden PhD student Elia Pizzati, has observed several ancient quasars that, surprisingly, appear to be floating alone in the early universe (less than a billion years after the Big Bang). Until now, astronomers, based on models, assumed that quasars are…

On 15 November 2024, Gerrard Boot, Professor of Labour Law, participated at the international conference at ELTE University in Budapest. The conference dealt with the participlation of parents with young children in the labour market of EU Member States.

Pau(la) Chaves Bonilla aka La ChicaScratch is a choreographer, performance artist and queer grassroots organiser born and raised in Colombia and based in The Netherlands, co-founder of the Papaya Kuir collective led by Latinx trans and queer migrants/refugees. On the 1st and 14th of April, Paula Chaves…

On 26 May 2023 the European Constitutional Law Review (EuConst) organized a symposium on constitutional change in Europe.

Psychologists Emma ter Mors, Christine Boomsma and other research partners will share results from their work on the crucial issue of societal support for delivering carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) in Europe. You're welcome to watch the free webinar.

On 28 November 2025, Leiden University and PLNT Leiden hosted “The Knowledge Orchard” - an event aimed at starting up/ enhancing interdisciplinary cooperation between academics at Leiden University, and improving collaboration between Leiden researchers and external partners in research and educatio…

Leiden University regularly confers honorary doctorates, and presents awards and prizes.