Over the centuries painters and photographers have depicted students at study in Leiden. An exhibition at the Hortus botanicus reveals the similarities and differences in 450 years of student life.

How can KLM remain the most sustainable airline? Master’s students from the Leiden Leadership Programme immerse themselves in practice and advise companies on major issues.

A series of workshops at Leiden University and the University of Hamburg will act as a forum in which international legal scholars whose research adopts a behavioural approach can present their works-in-progress and gain feedback from a broad range of peers, including scholars in economics and cognitive…

On 24 May, Iyiola Solanke, Jacques Delors Professor in EU Law at the University of Oxford's Faculty of Law and Fellow of Somerville College, gave the annual Europa Lecture organised by Europa Institute in Leiden Law School's historic Lorentz Lecture Hall. Her lecture was entitled ‘A decolonial approach…

For more than forty years Heinrich Witte was responsible for the flora in the Hortus botanicus in Leiden. The 19th-century garden manager made the Netherlands famous with plants from Japan. The Old University Library is showing an exhibition of his work (19 August to 4 November).

Stefaan Van den Bogaert, Professor of European Law and Academic Director of the Institute of Public Law, is to join the Faculty Board of Leiden Law School as Director of Research and Vice Dean.

During the corona pandemic, the Chinese government's digital communication with its citizens changed. Hard propaganda was increasingly replaced by ‘soft news’. PhD candidate Dechun Zhang mapped the developments in digital society.

Polarisation is pervasive: in the workplace, within teams, and even at the top of organisations. Discussions become entrenched, emotions rise, and collaboration falters. Connections are lost through ‘us versus them’ thinking. The question is how leaders can maintain space for dialogue when tensions…

The highly successful deep-sea telescope KM3NeT can now expand both its size and scope. Using a new type of microphone for underwater use, the telescope will attempt to detect the sound produced by neutrinos as they travel through the sea. The data collected will also be of great interest to other research…

You speak Japanese, know everything about medieval art or understand exactly what Hegel meant. And then you graduate. Many Humanities students find it hard to enter the labour market. A relevant part-time job can help. Therefore, the faculty has been working together with the employment agency Randstad…

Leiden physicists use a new method to measure so-called surface plasmons. Researching these particles could lead to new light-based technology, including faster internet.

Nico Staring, researcher in Egyptian art, culture and history, is taking part in the Leiden-Turin excavations in Saqqara, Egypt. The site of Saqqara is interesting because it was utilized as a cemetery but also the veneration of gods for a period of more than 3000 years, between ca. 3000 BCE to the…

Gijsbert Rutten has been appointed professor of Dutch Linguistics with effect from 1 July. In this position, he will focus on language change and language variation, with a particular emphasis on historical sociolinguistics.

Global problems such as diseases of affluence or microplastics in the sea are too complex to be dealt with from a single scientific discipline or by just one country. Leiden University has the expertise to bring solutions to these enormous problems a step closer. Read more in the research dossier on…

From the Republic of Moldova to Italy and from Indonesia to Greece, students from all over the world participated in the Bio-Pharmaceutical Science Summer School 2017. The students got a comprehensive overview of the education and research performed within the LACDR. ‘I am very happy to be here,’ says…

This speech from the throne was a little less woolly than last year's, you might think. Gerard Breeman and Arco Timmermans know that for sure. Breeman and Timmermans from the Institute of Public Administration have been analysing the speech from the throne for years. Just like Tuesday 15 September 2020.…

An online platform with instructive and social challenges to prepare students for the changing job market. This idea won the Piece of Skill team the Deans’ Challenge on 27 August. In this competition students invent solutions for global issues, selected by deans of Leiden University.

North Korean detention camps are no different from Nazi prison camps. But as long as the country remains economically isolated, international criticism will be ineffective, writes North Korea expert Remco Breuker in the opinion section of Dutch newspaper NRC on 21 February. Breuker advocates using the…

Career Services of the Faculties Governance and Global Affairs, Social Sciences, and Humanities joined forces to organise the ‘Meet the Employer’ Week held from 6 – 10 December 2021!

George Floyd's death still leads to fierce protests against police violence and racism on a daily basis in the United States and abroad. We asked Paul Wouters how he experiences these developments and what this will mean for our faculty.

Changing your diet can improve both your health and the environment. A new study shows that the national dietary recommendations on reducing animal products can reduce environmental impacts in most high-income nations. Publication in PNAS journal.

On Thursday 24 June HE Mr Mayerfas and Cultural Attache Mr Din Wahid visited Leiden University to meet with President Annetje Ottow.

Leiden University is happy to announce that it has won a prestigious Jean Monnet grant for a Centre of Excellence. The Centre, called CompaRe, focusses on comparative regional integration.

How important is art in the community? And which role can the University play in this? At the first open brainstorming session of Uni for City, artists, students and policymakers discussed the theme of art in the community.

The interdisciplinary Kiem project ‘Violence as a Population Health Problem’ has resulted in a plan to apply for a large, yet-to-be-decided research grant. The so-called pressure cooker session at the heart of the project proved very effective.

If it is up to university lecturer Evelien Walhout, in a year's time we will know exactly what people from Haarlem and Zwolle died of a century ago. Together with colleagues from other universities, she started the doodsoorzaken.nl platform, where causes of death are recorded. ‘Somewhere around the…

Professor David Fontijn is fascinated by the question why people destroy objects that are dear to them. It is a phenomenon that you find everywhere in the world, gaining particular strength in the European Bronze Age. Fontijn wrote a book on this ‘economy of destruction’, published by Routledge.

For the Dutch Safety Board (DSB), the investigation into the MH17 plane crash was unprecedented in scope. It wasn’t easy, but it provided valuable lessons for international disaster investigations, says Sanneke Kuipers, a crisis expert from the Institute of Security and Global Affairs.

The AI chatbot ChatGPT has a clear left-liberal bias when filling in the Stemwijzer voting advice application. This was discovered by master's student Merel van den Broek during an assignment for the Machine Learning for Natural Language Processing course.

The Leiden iGEM team has won the grand prize at the iGEM international biology competition. The students won a further five prizes, including those for best diagnostics tracks and best inclusion. ‘We still can’t believe it. It feels almost surreal,’ team member Amber Schonk said yesterday to University…

The first Leiden Science Family Day on Saturday 6 October was a great success. During the ‘Weekend of Science’ more than 700 visitors, including 350 children, visited the Faculty of Science. With a program full of experiments, lectures, guided tours and demonstrations, visitors were given a glimpse…

The logo of Leiden University, with letters as small as a bacterium. Researchers from LUMC and the Institute of Biology have created the smallest logo of our university ever produced. It is a piece of fun with a serious real-world application: the new microscope with which the logo was made allows scientists…

The NWIB Visiting Professors Programme offers assistant professors, associate professors and full professors at participating universities a unique opportunity to work undisturbed in an inspiring and stimulating environment. This programme enables you to stay at one of the five Netherlands Scientific…

How does language work and how do we learn a language? The more we know about language, the better we can understand how people interpret the world in words. Roberta D'Alessandro carries out research on the architecture of language. There is now a dossier about her work online.

Two new English-taught Bachelor’s programmes ‘Arts, Media & Society’ and ‘Philosophy’ were presented at the Open Day on 15 October. They start next year. Prospective students tell us why they came to the Open Day.

Book on Dutch mayors governing local order and public safety.

Despite being prohibited by law since 1971, race discrimination continues to exist in the Netherlands. Why is this?

Andrea Evers is the new Professor of the brand-new unit of Health, Medical and Neuropsychology. She's getting off to a flying start in Leiden with a consolidator grant of the European Research Council (ERC). Her ambition? 'To work together with other disciplines; that way we can arrive at new insigh…

On 23 and 24 October, eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies hosted the 2025 edition of Privacy Law Scholars Conference Europe at Leiden Law School. Over two days, participants discussed more than 40 work-in-progress papers, with materials available to participants ahead of time. The conference…

Leiden University and the Municipality of Leiden will develop new plans for an alternative Humanities Campus in the city centre. This means they will not proceed with the compulsory purchase of the De Doelen housing complex to facilitate the construction of the new Humanities Campus. The plans to demolish…

Can a robot help prepare cancer medication in a hospital pharmacy? That’s what hospital pharmacist Tjerk Geersing investigated in his PhD research. He compared manual and automated preparations in terms of quality, efficiency, and safety. He graduated on 19 March.

Daphne Wong-A-Foe received her Media Technology MSc diploma cum laude in August 2021. Her thesis research used EEG recordings to study aspects of traditional Javanese Jaran Kepang dancing, something she holds close to her heart.

For many new international students, moving to the Netherlands and getting used to Dutch culture and customs can be quite challenging. Luckily the Humanities Buddy Programme is here to help! The new coordinator of the programme, Bob van der Horst, will introduce himself and explain more about the buddy…

On November 1st, 2024, professor Johan Kuiper will retire and be appointed as emeritus professor at Leiden University. Since November 2008, Johan Kuiper was professor of Therapeutic Immunomodulation in the division of, at that time, Biopharmaceutics (which later on became the division of BioTherapeutics)…

Amorphophallus decus-silvae, or the ‘penis plant’ as it is known, has just flowered at the Hortus botanicus. It flowered for two days, and then the pollen, which the male flowers produced was collected. As far as the plant experts at the Hortus can tell, this was just the third time that this species…

Pharmacometrist Bas Goulooze has won the prestigious Lewis Sheiner Student Session award. He received the prize of 300 euros at the annual conference of the Population Approach Group Europe (PAGE) in Stockholm, where he presented his research for 800 people.

Connecting generations, reducing loneliness and slowing mental decline: these are goals of the Oud Geleerd Jong Gedaan foundation’s lectures, which are given by students. What is it like to be a student giving these lectures? And what do the seniors think of them?

On Friday 10 July the Towards Biosolar Cells research programme was granted a budget of 25 million euros by the Dutch Government. The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality recommended the programme because it will contribute to green energy, improve food supplies and a create a more sustainable…

In a lecture for the University of the Netherlands, Reijer Passchier, assistant professor in constitutional and administrative law, speaks about the state of our democracy. ‘Is it not time to upgrade our democracy?’

Welcome to the newly launched The Hague Diplomacy Blog! It is our aim to publish 10 blogs per year and we are very pleased that Ilan Manor has now joined our online team as HJD Blog Editor. We will solicit blogs and we also invite authors to make their own pitch, addressing new themes and perspectives,…