Alumnus Peter Burger – along with his colleague Alexander Pleijter – is the face of fact-checking in the Netherlands. ‘My degree led straight to this.’

Professor of Health Psychology Andrea Evers is one of the coordinators of the national Health and Wellbeing programme and of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus (LDE) programme that goes by the same name. The aim is to use technology to promote our health. LDE has already been working on this topic for some ti…

A delegation from Leiden University visited various universities in Japan at the end of March. The strong ties between the Netherlands and Japan are still based on a long tradition of knowledge exchange.

How do you co-create with researchers in other parts of the world? LDE wants to gather and share knowledge on the grand challenges and to do so across national borders. A delegation of 27 researchers will therefore travel to Indonesia at the end of October to take part in the LDE-BRIN Academy.

The ‘Contagious!’ exhibition was set to open at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in April but had to be postponed because of the corona crisis. The museum hasn’t been twiddling its thumbs in the meantime. The exhibition will now open on 16 July, and the corona crisis has a major role.

The conference 'The

The importance of science communication and cross-boundary collaboration, and the ‘mantra’ of diminishing social cohesion in society: these all came up at Leiden University’s 448th Dies Natalis. A panel discussion including Leiden’s mayor Lenferink, music and two honorary doctorates completed the special…

Confetti cannons announced the opening of HUBspot, the new venue for innovation and entrepreneurship at the Langegracht in Leiden, on 31 October. But all attention was on the young student entrepreneurs who presented their businesses.

Professor Leo Lucassen often adds his voice to the public debate on his specialist field. If there is talk of a 'flood of migration', he feels compelled to give the issue some historical perspective. 'Concerned? Yes, I am.'

Maak kennis met digitale veiligheid in de podcast over de BSc Cybersecurity & Cybercrime. Experts bespreken actuele thema’s zoals ransomware en online fraude.

ESA’s space telescope Gaia, which maps the Milky Way, completes its active phase of scanning the sky on 15 January. Over the past decade, Gaia has made more than three trillion observations of about two billion stars and other cosmic objects. ‘Gaia is already the discovery machine of the decade,’ Leiden…

Permission was recently given for all members of the examining committee and co-supervisors at PhD ceremonies to wear academic dress, even if they’re not full professors. How historic is this change?

Big celebration upcoming weekend: MIRD's 20th anniversary is on the cards. Four alumni from different periods tell what this unique two-year master's in International Relations and Diplomacy has brought them.

Seminar

Programme management of research programme “Strengthening knowledge of and dialogue with the Islamic/Arab world”

On this page you will find all information about the Bachelor of Security Studies that you need as a first-year student.

Since its founding, LUC has been a college of educational development and experimentation. Its mission statement identifies the college as “a site of innovation in pedagogy, curriculum design, and student well-being,” and it applies a student-centred approach to learning throughout its BA and BSc degree…

This research project is funded by a subsidy from Instituut Gak.

LCN2 hosts seminars on the last Friday of each month.

Three young researchers from Leiden have received an Early Career Award from KNAW for their innovative research. The award consists of the sum of 15,000 euros and an artwork.

As of the 1st of January 2021, Lisa Cheng, Professor of General Linguistics, will be the next Scientific Director of the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). She tells us about LUCL and shares some of her thoughts about her upcoming role.

Leiden University College The Hague is an international honours college of Leiden University situated in the world’s capital of Peace and Justice. LUC The Hague provides a unique combination of world-class scholarly depth, drawn from the oldest university in the Netherlands, with a cutting-edge and…

What is it like to work in the consulting industry? Twenty-five students from the bachelor programme Informatics & Economics visited the consulting firm BearingPoint, where they innovated the business model of a telecom company.

'Building 4 Belonging' is the title of Carolien Rieffe's honoured NWO proposal for research on loneliness. Psychologist Rieffe is especially proud of her super strong team. 'It is truly multidiciplinary research with a non-conventional approach.'

On 22–24 October 2025, Leiden University welcomed scholars, policymakers and higher education leaders for the Una Europa Conference on Academic Freedom. Organised by the AFITE project team and supported by Una Europa Seed Funding 2024, the three-day programme examined current pressures on academic freedom…

Jos F. Brosschot has been appointed as a professor by special appointment on the chair ‘psychophysiological mechanisms of stress in daily life’. This chair has been created by the Foundation for Research into Psychosocial Stress.

Arnold van der Valk on Food Council MRA.

Artificial intelligence systems are smart. They can recognize patterns better than humans, for example. Yet humans are still very much needed. How can you better steer those AI systems? LIACS lecturer Jan van Rijn wrote a book about this together with a number of colleagues. We asked him a few quest…

Citizens still see great value in science communication and want to be increasingly involved in science. This is evident from research by the National Expertise Centre for Science & Society (NEWS) and researchers from the Science Communication and Society department at Leiden University.

More than 100 colleagues, students and friends attended the first annual Leiden Jewish Studies Association conference 'Jews at Home: From Creation to Corona' in December 2023. The two-day event began with a keynote panel featuring Prof. Elisheva Baumgarten, a scholar with vast expertise in Jewish and…

To give a better idea of the research at Leiden University, a new website has been launched that lists the University’s institutes together with the disciplines that they cover. But the institutes also work together intensively.

The study association of honours education SLHC established an international commission concerned with the closer involvement of international students in the Honours Community. The language of communication will become English where possible, and more upcoming activities will be organised in The Hague…

The strange tropical plants belonging to the Corsiaceae family first emerged millions of years ago on the supercontinent of Gondwana. That is what Leiden University researcher Constantijn Mennes concludes in an article in the Journal of Biogeography.

Book publication 'Artistic Research in Music: Discipline and Resistance' marks the 20th anniversary of the Orpheus Institute..

An international team of astronomers, including astronomers from Leiden University, has found the missing link in the path taken by water through star-forming clouds and young stars to comets and planets. They did so with the help of the ALMA observatory in Chile. The researchers published their findings…

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).

On 2 November, nine professors were simultaneously inaugurated as ‘Medical Delta Professor’ at Leiden University, LUMC, Delft University of Technology, Erasmus University and Erasmus MC. With an appointment at a minimum of two of these five academic institutions, they combine technology and healthcare…

The Leiden Centre of Data Science and the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science are part of a consortium that will carry out research on making illustrated and handwritten archives digitally accessible. The project is funded by NWO.

With an off-the-charts number of downloads, outstanding media coverage, and more than 300 tweets, a small team behind the Scientific Reports article led by a Leiden PhD Igor Djakovic is living every researcher’s dream.

Building the neutrino detector KM3NeT on the Mediterranean Sea floor has picked up pace. Five detection lines, each carrying eighteen detectors, have been sunk and installed, and the first measurement data are coming in, says neutrino physicist Dorothea Samtleben.

Running 520 kilometres from Paris to Rotterdam. Over the Whitsun weekend the members of the Currimus running club will take part in the Roparun, Europe's biggest relay race.

African Studies is a field notoriously lacking in African scholars. Miriam Siun, research master student in this field, noticed this from the moment she started the programme. She decided to take matters into her own hands and hold a seminar reflecting on this issue.

Young people have the right to be involved in decision-making on matters that affect them, including their education. Ben Smit, researcher at ICLON, studied how to increase student participation, among other things through participation in research. Defence on 6 September.

On 8 October, the Independent Expert, Prof. Manfred Nowak, leading the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty presented his report to the UN General Assembly. The presentation of the final report is set for 19 November 2019, at the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the…

Two research projects focused on democracy and citizen collectives have been awarded grants through the 2024 round of the National Science Agenda’s (NWA) ‘Onderzoek op Routes door Consortia (ORC)’. Each project will receive around €6.8 million to get started immediately.

Tiny selenium particles could have a therapeutic effect on ischemic brain strokes by promoting the recovery of brain damage. Pharmacologists, including Alireza Mashaghi from the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research discovered that selenium nanoparticles inhibit molecular mechanisms that are responsible…

Broader and more-transparent metrics could help improve how academic quality is assessed. This is what Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) researchers Paul Wouters (also Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences), Sarah de Rijcke and Ludo Waltman write together with colleagues in a comment…

On 16 September, the Rapenburg canal will be the setting for the Night of Art & Sciences. There will be plenty of things to do, including for international students and staff. We have selected four great acts in advance.