In 2010, the remnants of a 16th century indigenous village were discovered in St. Vincent, on the construction terrain of the new International Argyle Airport.

An external visitation committee gave the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) an outstanding assessment. In terms of research quality and relevance to society, the IBL gets the highest score: excellent. The increase with five new female professors also receives praise from the committee.

Bernet Elzinga (Clinical Psychology) is one of the seven scientists from the Leiden University who has received a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros from NWO. Vici is one of the largest grants for individual scientists in the Netherlands. The funding will enable her to do research for the next five years…

‘Ordinary citizens’ are featuring more prominently in foreign policies which has already resulted in some unexpected outcomes such as Brexit. Jan Melissen, Senior Fellow at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) conducts research into the societisation of diplomacy. He is interested in…

What actually goes into the development of a massive open online course, a MOOC? University lecturer Tijmen Pronk developed the course 'Introduction to Comparative Linguistics of Indo-European Languages' independently. He talks about his motivation and experiences.

Medewerkers van de Universiteit Leiden trappen maandag 10 maart de estafettestaking af van de Nederlandse universiteiten tegen de kabinetsbezuinigingen.

The pews of the Walloon Church were filled on Friday 23 May, as more than 120 former students of the French Language and Culture programme gathered to attend mini-lectures, a short theatre performance, and a discussion about the state of the discipline.

Leiden University's Kiem grants aim to help develop new interdisciplinary and interfaculty collaborations and encounters. In the first round, a Kiem grant was awarded to a group of researchers from the Faculty of Archaeology, the Faculty of Social Sciences, and the LUMC for the organisation of a symposium…

Students from Leiden University will be able to study in the Stadsgehoorzaal on Breestraat in Leiden from Saturday 5 to Tuesday 15 December. The main auditorium of this city centre concert hall has been transformed into a unique pop-up study area that will provide temporary study spaces for over 200…

In a new article, four PhD candidates call for methodology to be explicitly stated in tax studies and practice. ‘Our hope is that explicit methodology will become more prevalent and even standard in the future.’

If you could design your own education, how would you do it? That is what the students of the Bachelor Honours Class 'Rebuilding Education' asked themselves. The students were divided into five groups in which they designed workshops to improve education. They presented their workshops in December in…

The alignment of the James Webb Space Telescope is complete. The space observatory is able to capture sharp, well-directed images with each of its four powerful scientific instruments on board. The MIRI instrument, on which Professor of Molecular Astrophysics Ewine van Dishoeck also worked, was the…

Most young alumni who graduated during the COVID-19 pandemic did not get a graduation ceremony, nor did they have the chance to sign their name in the Sweat Room. Thanks to the Alumni Office, they now have the chance to do so after all.

On Wednesday the 23rd of March 2016, Prof. Richard Leakey, the world renowned palaeoanthropologist and conservationist from Kenya and Honorary Member of the LEAD Programme, visited the LEAD Office to contribute to a PhD Workshop.

American physicist and quantum computing pioneer Seth Lloyd is the 65th Lorentz professor. He will deliver the Ehrenfest lecture on 5 June, and several more lectures on quantum computing on 11, 18 and 25 June.

How do practice and theory reinforce one another in neuroscience? Professor Birte Forstmann’s inaugural lecture on 2 October will be about building interdisciplinary bridges between cognitive neuroscience and cognitive models. Her approach may lead to brain research with fewer side-effects for patie…

As a bachelor student of Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences, Femke Vlaswinkel wrote a research proposal she was allowed to carry out in her master’s BPS. Femke subsequently graduated with honors. Her research was published in the journal Scientific Reports, she won an award from the Dutch Pharmacy Society…

Merijn de Bakker and colleagues of the IBL-research group of Prof. Mike Richardson provide a unique view on digit evolution in crocodiles and birds in their recent study published in Nature.

In the new Annual Report 2020 we report on not only the research and teaching, but also the knowledge transfer, operational management and general policy at Leiden University in 2020. The report is divided into a general section and a section with the figures, i.e. the university’s financial stateme…

It's never too early for students to be smart about preparing for the job market. This year Leiden University is launching new initiatives to improve the transition from university to work. The new awareness campaign - CareerTime - is starting on 29 September with career stands at the faculties.

On January 5, Rosa Winter will obtain her doctorate in arithmetic geometry. She researched solutions of equations that define so-called ‘del Pezzo surfaces’. ‘I like geometry because I can imagine and draw the shapes and objects,’ says Winter. ‘That makes abstract mathematics feel more tangible.’

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.

Hundreds of beautiful and timeless photos by Emmy Andriesse, one of the most important Dutch photographers of the twentieth century, are now freely accessible for everyone and can be used for research, education or other purposes. Large parts of Andriesse's oeuvre are already available online via Digital…

Rianne Vink, one of the student counsellors, explains what a student counsellor does.

LUMC Campus The Hague will be contributing to the health of the inhabitants of The Hague with research, teaching and a training programme for GPs. The new campus is an initiative of the LUMC, Leiden University, the hospitals in The Hague, the Area Health Authority and the municipality of The Hague.…

On 8 and 9 June, the second edition of EU Cyber Direct’s Closing the Gap conference took place at the Egmont Palace in Brussels, Belgium. This year’s edition was organized by François Delerue and Dennis Broeders as part of their participation in the EU Cyber Direct project, of which the Institute of…

Positive expectations about treatment increase the likelihood of success. The new Center for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies Leiden is therefore promoting research on the placebo effect and offering expertise and training for care providers. At the opening, the founders demonstrated their VR communications…

‘Always focus on your students, and make sure that what you teach them will be relevant to them as alumni.’ In his speech of thanks, Harmen Jousma, lecturer in Science Based Business, shared what drives him: training students for the world outside the university.

The precolonial inhabitants of the Caribbean islands communicated, travelled, and exchanged objects and ideas along an expansive inter-island network. New methods of computer modeling shed light on these networks. Emma Slayton is set to discuss her work on this topic at her Defense on the 12th of Se…

The Executive Board has appointed Ineke Sluiter and Arnold Tukker as distinguished professors at Leiden University.

Academic research on terrorism is getting better all the time. This is the conclusion of university lecturer Bart Schuurman after studying 3,442 articles. He published his study in Terrorism and Political Violence.

A chair tipping over serves as a metaphor for a migraine attack in Thijs Perenboom’s PhD research at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). He wants to unravel whether and how we can predict migraine attacks. He will defend his thesis on Tuesday 21 June.

On Saturday, February 11, 2023, at the Dies for Alumni event, archaeology alumni Everest Gromoll was awarded the LUF Thesis Prize. His thesis, titled ‘Neolithizers by Nurture’, explores parallels between the only two comparable climatic shifts in the history of modern humans: that of the one 12,000…

Micah DenBraber studied at Leiden University College in The Hague while pursuing an internship at the World Resources Institute (WRI), a self-proclaimed ‘think-and-do-tank’, where he built partnerships with the philanthropic sector, among other things.

Oxford University Press has published the edited volume based on the European Law Institute's (ELI) project 'Rescue of Business in Insolvency Law'. The project ran from 2013 to 2017 under the auspices of the ELI and was conducted by Bob Wessels and Stephan Madaus, who were assisted by Gert-Jan Boon.

Hans-Martien ten Napel has been awarded a Research Fellowship in Legal Studies at the Center of Theological Inquiry (CTI) at Princeton University, USA, which enables him to be in full-time residence at CTI for the academic year, 1 September 2014 to 31 May 2015.

PhD student Robbin Bastiaansen applies mathematics to get insight in practical problems. By comparing mathematical models with developments in existing ecosystems, he hopes to demystify the process of desertification. His research has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…

Population growth, economic expansion and the associated land use caused an increase in the number of bird species facing extinction and a reduction in carbon storage worldwide. These are the findings of an international team of scientists, also from the Leiden University Institute of Environmental…

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.

Professor of Korean Studies Remco Breuker has been awarded a subsidy from the European Research Council to study the dispute between both Koreas and China on the history of Manchuria. Political scientist Daniela Stockmann will be examining the role of social media and how the Chinese authorities handle…

Leiden University has published its Annual Report for 2018. Although it too has faced complex themes in the last year such as staff workload, internationalisation, social security and funding, it has made significant progress in achieving its ambitions.

Nanoparticles that transport medicines to a specific part of the human body are usually broken down in the liver prematurely. Jeroen Bussmann from Leiden University has discovered a new method to prevent this from happening. Publication in ACS Nano.

That the new building of the Campus the Hague in the Wijnhaven is literally in the governmental heart of the Netherlands should not be a surprise. But who are our neighbors besides all the ministries and the municipality? Let’s take a little walk around the neighborhood.

In many student cities, the number of corona infections grows, and in Leiden we can also see rising figures. Especially in student housing, it is sometimes difficult to keep your distance, how do you do that? We asked students about mutual agreements in their student housing.

Leaf-eating caterpillars greatly enrich their intestinal flora by eating soil. Even effects of plants that previously grew in that soil can be found back in bacteria and fungi in caterpillars. Researchers from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) and Leiden University write about this discovery…

From the very beginning, the Islam has known an oral tradition. It was only two hundred years ago that Muslims starting writing about the history of Islam, on rocks or other hard materials. Arabic epigraphy (study of inscriptions) turns out to be an essential tool in historical genealogy research. Abdullah…

From 9 September onwards, Leiden scientists, citizens and farmers will jointly investigate how to sustainably manage peat meadowland. In ten years' time, they hope to have learned how to promote biodiversity and simultaneously reduce nitrogen and CO2 emissions, among other things. The research will…

How do you compare the living environment of Dutch dairy cows with that of Masai cattle in East Africa? And how can we reverse biodiversity loss? These questions are central to CurveBend, an international research consortium in which ecologist Michiel Veldhuis plays a key role.

On Monday 22 November 2021, the Municipality of Leiden, Leiden Law School and the Legal Advice Centre in Leiden signed a collaboration agreement. The parties agreed that at the request of the Municipality, the Law School will help train students to better equip them in their work on the Rental Team…

On Friday 4th February 2022 we welcomed in hybrid format (in person and online live streaming) 154 registered participants, of which 97 online, to present the first results of the Food Citizens? ERC Consolidator project.