As a student, Ratna Lachmansingh wrote her thesis on horror films. Now she is the director of Leiden International Film Festival.

Associate Professor Lettie Dorst has received a Vidi grant to research how machine translation programmes such as Google Translate and ChatGPT translate words and expressions used metaphorically. This still regularly goes wrong, resulting in far too literal, incorrect and sometimes incomprehensible…

For two years, Ineke Sluiter was president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Now, she is returning to the university full time. ‘I always carry themes like accessibility, diversity and inclusion with me.’

The Schoof cabinet has presented its budget. As expected, higher education is facing severe cuts. In the coming period, the Executive Board will regularly look at the consequences of what it deems an irresponsible policy.

Alumnus Rennie Roos lives and works in Indonesia. What took him there, what does he do there and what inspires him?

The secular West is struggling with the rise of AI, but so too is Muslim Southeast Asia. What can we learn from each other?

Four female computer scientists share a common goal: to showcase the significant contributions of women in computer science and inspire their students. Together, they are organising this year’s Alice & Eve event, a one-day symposium dedicated to celebrating women in computer science. The event, scheduled…

Rain or shine: in the course ‘The Ecology Project’ students of Leiden University College visit the nature of The Hague each week.

The LUCAS Institute has both a new Scientific Director and a new Education Director. Stijn Bussels and Esther Op de Beek both commenced their new roles at the start of the academic year.

Alumni and researchers met at two well-attended alumni dinners in Yogyakarta and Jakarta. The alumni reminisced about their time in Leiden and got to see their lecturers once again.

How can chimpanzees, so closely related to humans, have almost no sense of rhythm? ‘The best students ever’ and behavioural biologist Michelle Spierings demonstrated that chimps can actually drum and move rhythmically—each following their own unique beat.

The Young Academy has gained a new Leiden humanities scholar as a member. University lecturer Greek language and literature Tazuko van Berkel will be appointed as a member as of March.

How do you make lobbying and rhetoric both challenging and understandable for high school students? Professor Jaap de Jong found the answer in climate activist Greta Thunberg. Together with his colleague Arco Timmermans, he developed a digital guest lecture on how to present a convincing story.

The POPcorner, Career Service and Community Engagement Service are happy to support you during your study career. Every month you will find an overview of our activities here. This time: the summer edition!

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Lecture | Leiden Lectures on Arabic Language & Culture

Workshop

Lecture, CHiLL series

Arts and culture

Lecture

Lecture, Book presentation and Q&A

Lecture, LAC Asia Academy

Lecture, CHiLL series

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Lecture, CHiLL series

Lecture, Herta Mohr Lecture

Almost 3,500 visitors came to Master’s Open Day in Leiden and The Hague.

The appointment of Alex Geurds as Professor in Central American Archaeology reinvigorates an existing focus within the faculty. 'The research chair offers opportunities to make cross-connections, across departments and disciplines.'

Technology holds so much promise – from self-driving cars to enhanced physical performance from smart implants under the skin. But we should not let ourselves be caught off guard. That is the message of Bart Custers, Professor of Law and Data Science in his inaugural lecture on 21 May. ‘We don’t talk…

International bachelor’s and master’s students started the OWL on Monday morning. During this introduction week they get to know their new university, city and each other.

With its FestivOWL theme, Orientation Week Leiden (OWL) promises to be one big festival for new international students in Leiden.

More than a course. That was the aim of the Leiden Tutoring programme. Through weekly tutoring lessons, students did not just earn five EC. They helped Dutch primary-school children from neighbourhoods with a low socioeconomic status.

Three lecturers from Leiden University have been awarded a 100,000-euro Comenius Teaching Fellowship within the scope of the Senior Fellows programme. The grant will enable them and their project teams to carry out their own teaching innovation project.

Music lovers are welcome at this free open-air concert celebrating 450 years of Leiden University, on Sunday 6 July. This special jubilee edition of the Rapenburg Canal Concert will feature a unique orchestra made up of our students, staff and alumni, performing on a floating stage.

Learning how to work with people from different disciplines, that’s what Master Honours Challenges are all about. In teams, students address a challenge for an organisation or society as a whole. Two participants tell us what made their course stand out. ‘It was at times uncomfortable, but exhilarat…

Bob de Brabandere discovered his deep passion for cinema through a minor in Film and Theatre Studies. He currently serves as Assistant Manager at Bioscopen Leiden and as a programmer for the Leiden International Film Festival, which commences on 9 October.

Matheus Mendes was awarded the 12th Jaap Doek Thesis Prize at a ceremony on 13 December 2024 for his thesis on the right to read. The prize honours outstanding master’s theses in children’s rights.

It does not happen very often that a research project for a second-year bachelor's course gets turned into a proper academic paper. But International Studies students Pia Kurz, Coleen Gonner and Monika Bartnicka did just that. How did they manage it?

Lecture, CHiLL series

For more than 35 years they helped put American Studies on the map: Joke Kardux and Eduard van de Bilt. This spring, the couple retired. A farewell interview.

Historians recently started preliminary research on Leiden University’s role in colonialism and historical slavery. Our knowledge about this is too limited and fragmented. They are looking with fresh eyes at Leiden’s archives and collections. An interview with historians Alicia Schrikker and Ligia G…

Maria Vasile's ethnographic fieldwork in Turin reveals that volunteering and citizen engagement may not empower residents or allow them to shape their cities. Her analysis of urban gardens, food markets, and food aid initiatives calls for a broader perspective on urban peripheral areas and a shift away…

In the spring of 2024 the Faculty of Archaeology welcomed a new postdoc. Dr Adam Benfer, originally from the United States, occupies a double position as a researcher in the project of Alex Geurds and as the Faculty’s Data Steward. ‘It is pretty much what the title says: I steward data. Essentially,…

It was his thesis supervisor during his master's in Film and Photographic Studies who encouraged Shivan Shazad to pursue a second master's in diversity policy at Ghent. He is now Manager of Diversity and Inclusion at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Workshop Series