Currently, the bill ‘Wet versterking waarborgfunctie Awb’ (strengthening the guarantee function of the Dutch General Administrative Law Act) is in preparation. The bill is intended to strengthen the human dimension in the execution and administration of justice.

The civil lawsuit against the Congregation of 'Onze Lieve Vrouw van Liefde van de Goede Herder' starts this week. A total of 19 women, aged from 62 to 91, together with the women’s rights foundation Clara Wichmann wants recognition through the courts that there was a situation of forced labour at youth…

PhDArts alumnus Joost Grootens’ book 'Blind Maps and Blue Dots: The Blurring of the Producer-User Divide in the Production of Visual Information’ has been selected in the competition the Best Dutch Book Designs 2021.

On 27 November 2019, David de Boer defended his PhD dissertation 'Religious Persecution and Transnational Compassion in the Dutch Vernacular Press 1655-1745'. For his research, he analysed several hundred pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals published primarily in the seventeenth-century Netherlands,…

Recent calculations show the new Dutch cabinet’s plans will lower the purchasing power of low- and middle-income households. Egbert Jongen, Professor of Economics, commented in ‘Trouw’ newspaper about the economic impact of the new cabinet’s policy.

On 27 September 2019, Bart Schuurman, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs spoke to Dutch regional newspaper 'de Gelderlander' about the decline in attention for jihadism.

Free trade negotiations and agreements are important instruments of EU trade policy. An increasing number of EU climate, environmental and sustainable development objectives play a role in free trade agreements.

Drs. Bart Lenselink won the oral presentation at the LACDR Spring Symposium with his presentation “Predicting Drug Potency”.

In Dutch magazine De Psycholoog, Anne-Laura van Harmelen talks about the impact traumatic experiences, especially for those who are growing up.

Professor Nira Wickramasinghe will research forgotten lineages with an NWO Open Competition grant, in particular the afterlife of Dutch slavery in the Indian Ocean World.

This programme adopts a new approach based on the paradoxical nature of these responses in early modern Italy: it draws on rhetorical discussions of lifelikeness and living presence, and it uses the anthropological theory of art as agency developed by Alfred Gell.

In the 19th century, Old English poems were claimed as cultural heritage by various non-Anglophone nations, including Scandinavians, Germans and Dutch. These competing nationalistic, cultural appropriations happened against the backdrop of a growing interest in early medieval English language and literature…

It was more than twenty years ago that the plan for a Japanese-Dutch dictionary was born. Now it contains over 65,000 words, and completion is tentatively coming into view. Dictionary makers Oscar Veltink and Hetty Geerdink-Verkoren talk about their enthusiasm for this decades-long mammoth task.

University lecturer Laurie Cosmo, having grown up in New York, came to the Hague from Rome, Italy, where she fell under the spell of the Kunstmuseum. ‘I loved the building even before I worked at Leiden University.’

What defence strategy should the Dutch government adopt for the next four years? Our experts advise investing in social resilience, strengthening ‘soft power’ and integrating defence awareness into education.

An international team of astronomers led by Dutch scientist Martijn Oei has discovered the largest pair of jets from a black hole ever seen. The 'jumbojets' extend a combined length of 140 Milky Ways. The Leiden Observatory played a prominent role in this research. The publication will feature on the…

A group of astronomers was actually examining the dust disc around the young double star CS Cha, when they saw a small dot on the edge of their images. It turned out to be a small planet of only a few million years young, which moves along with the double star. Whether it is a super-Jupiter in the making…

The programme focuses on the medieval dynamics of intellectual life in the Rhineland and the Low countries, nowadays divided over five countries (Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands) but one cultural region in the later Middle Ages.

Central to Nuranisa’s PhD project is the cultural diplomacy practiced by the Javanese courts of central Java (Surakarta, Yogyakarta, Pakualaman and Mangkunegaran) in response to the increasing Dutch colonial power in the 19th and early 20th century.

On Thursday 14 December at 16.15 hrs Michal Diamant will defend her doctoral thesis that addresses the right to assess the budget of the Dutch parliament in light of European economic governance. The defence will take place at the Academy Building of Leiden University. Supervisors are Professor Wim…

Dutch mosquitos are more resilient to saltwater than previously thought. Environmental scientist Sam Boerlijst discovered this during his PhD research at the Hortus botanicus. This knowledge is crucial for understanding how mosquito-borne disease transmission might change in the future.

For the first time in the Netherlands, an exotic insect species is released into the wild to combat a harmful plant species. The Japanese knotweed psyllid should offer relief against the rampant Asian knotweed. Suzanne Lommen of the Institute of Biology Leiden coordinates the field trials.

King Willem-Alexander has commissioned independent research into the role of the House of Orange-Nassau in Dutch colonial history. The research will take three years to complete and will cover the period from the late 16th century to the postcolonial present. The research will be carried out at Leiden…

The ROBUST consortium, which is the initiative of the Innovation Center for Artificial intelligence (ICAI), has received 25 million euros from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to strengthen fundamental AI research. The Leiden interdisciplinary research programme SAILS is part of ROBUST.

Romana Osman (24) knew one thing for sure: she wanted to work at an embassy in the Middle East. However, finding a position turned out to be rather challenging. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. After an internship at UNICEF, Romana now works as a trainee at the Dutch Embassy in Amman.

Dutch doctors hold social media platform Snapchat responsible for the illegal sale of vapes, and are threatening legal action. Bart Schermer, Professor of Law and Digital Technology, spoke to RTL news: 'Snapchat is not liable for the content of its users'.

Emergency services and governments were caught by surprise on Monday 24 June by the nationwide breakdown of the emergency phone number 112. The breakdown raises the following question: ‘Could this not have been prevented’?

De Roy van Zuijdewijn, researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, wrote an opinion piece on the ongoing threat still being posed by Jihadism in Dutch newspaper NRC.

More and more European governments are slowly but surely taking steps to ease the measures against corona. In Austria cafés and restaurants will reopen on 15 May, while in Italy they are planning to reopen on 1 June. The French will have to wait until the end of May to get some clarity. The pace with…

Op dinsdag 11 februari 2020 verdedigde Clara van Dam haar proefschrift ‘Guidance documents of the European Commission in the Dutch legal order’.

What do the election results say about the Netherlands today? Students and experts discussed this at an Election Breakfast organised by study association Diqit. Analysts, including Hans-Martien ten Napel, Associate Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, notice a new dividing line in Dutch…

The C-SCAPE project has received funding of 1 million euros in the context of the NWO program ‘Living labs in the Dutch delta’. C-SCAPE, led by TU Delft, is a collaboration between the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), University Groningen, Deltares and HZ University of Applied Sciences. It…

On Friday 24 May, Marieke Liem, Associate Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs of Leiden University, appeared on the NPO 3 television programme ‘Vreemdgaan met Filemon’ (Cheating with Filemon). Liem discussed the link between jealousy and murder referencing scientific research into…

The Schoof cabinet has several plans that are just not legally feasible. Yet they are often still forced through, knowing, or even hoping, that the courts will intervene. This is dangerous policy that in the long run even undermines trust in politics, the judiciary, and the law itself, argues Armin…

Is your strategic vote actually strategic? How can the Netherlands form a stable government? And what should the next government do about migration, defence and the housing crisis? This is what our experts have to say.

Are AI models such as Midjourney violating artists' copyright? Dirk Visser, Professor of Intellectual Property Law, spoke about this topic on Dutch current affairs news programme 'NOS Radio 1 Journaal' .

On 6 March 2018, the Dutch Minister for Legal Protection, Mr. Dekker, responded to the Ph.D. dissertation ‘Voorlopige hechtenis in het Nederlandse jeugdstrafrecht’ (‘Pre-trial detention in the Dutch juvenile justice system’) in a Letter to Parliament.

In a one-hour interview on Dutch radio programme Sleutelstad, Anne-Laura van Harmelen talks about her research into the role friendships in adolescents' well-being, the resilience paradox and the role of social, hormonal and genetic factors in stress-levels and resilience.

Employers are calling on rules to be relaxed on labour migrants from outside the EU as a way of attracting more labour migrants to solve staff shortages. Professor of Economics Olaf van Vliet explains on Dutch radio new programme BNR Nieuwsradio that there are various options to reduce staff shortag…

Professor emeritus of Animal Behaviour Carel ten Cate is awarded honorary membership by the Dutch Society for Behavioural Biology (NVG). He received the honour for his activities for the Society and the discipline of behavioural biology.

After more than ten years, the time has come. The new Dutch Open Government Act (Wet Openbaar Overheid, Woo) will take effect on 1 May 2022. The Woo replaces the Government Information (Public Access) Act (Wob). The aim of the Act is to get administrative bodies of the government in the Netherlands…

At the winter conference of the Dutch Christian student union CSFR, Mark Dechesne, Associate Professor, spoke about the decline in terrorist violence in the Netherlands.

Vasiliki Kosta delivered a spoken column on “The ‘freedom of the sciences’ in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights” during the Annual Congress of the Dutch Lawyers Association (Nederlandse Juristen-Vereniging).

Moritz Jesse, Associate Professor at the Europa Institute in Leiden, provided the key-note lecture at this year’s annual conference of the German-Dutch Lawyers Association. The lecture was titled “The other’s amongst us – Third-Country Nationals and Brits in the EU”.

In Dutch magazine Elsevier, Marieke Liem explains the issues with using the term ‘troubled person‘ in reports on homocide.

Willemijn Aerdts, lecturer at ISGA discusses the warning issued by the MIVD (Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service) to put away your phone when discussing sensitive or private matters.

Dutch agents, military personnel, prosecution personnel and diplomats in Ukraine have been spied on by intelligence services from Ukraine and Russia after the MH17 disaster. Reliable sources reported this to RTL Nieuws. The espionage by Ukraine is very sensitive, because it is highly unusual that espionage…

On March 27th, 2015 the biannual Dutch Medicinal Chemistry Prize for the best Dutch Ph.D. thesis in the field was awarded to Dr. Dong Guo, a current postdoc researcher in our lab, by the Section of Medicinal Chemistry of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society.

The Van Bergen Prize was awarded to not one, but two initiatives at the Diversity Symposium on 22 January. ‘Leiden City Safari’ is a fun city tour that will help incoming Dutch and international students get to know the city of Leiden – and each other. The interactive ‘OpenUP!’ symposium will invite…

Seven researchers from Leiden University have made a successful application to the Open Competition SSH (Social Sciences and Humanities) XS, a Dutch Research Council pilot programme.