Minister Dijkgraaf (Education, Culture and Science) has appointed Ionica Smeets and Alex Verkade as coordinators of a new national centre for science communication. The centre will foster a dialogue between researches and society and will gather and share expertise to make science communication more…

Researchers from Leiden University have developed a method to predict which sellers will be successful in illegal online marketplaces. This could help the police track down big players on the dark web, the hidden part of the internet.

LegalTech: the use of technology and software to provide legal services and support the legal sector. On 1 November, the GovTech Summit 2022 took place in the World Forum in The Hague. During the summit, technological innovations in the public sector were addressed from a number of different perspectives.…

Writer and columnist Nicolien Mizee will be Leiden University’s new writer in residence from autumn 2023.

From 30 January 2020 to 1 February 2020, the Europa Institute of Leiden Law School hosted the first regional final of the 2019/2020 edition of the European Law Moot Court (ELMC) competition.

On Wednesday 23 May, a jointly organized Lunch Seminar between the research programs Interaction Between Legal Systems and Reform of Social Legislation takes place. In this very special seminar we have the honour of receiving Prof. Jason Beckfield from Harvard University.

Two researchers from the Institute of Political Science were recently awarded prizes. Claire Vergerio received the Francesco Guicciardini Prize for her book on the historical origins of the primacy of the state in international law ('best book in the historical international relations category'). In…

Leiden University computer scientists Yu Liu, Yanming Guo and Michael Lew are a step closer to their ultimate goal: search engines with visual recognition. Their publication of a new algorithm for fusing multi-scale deep learning representations has been received with great enthusiasm. No other algorithm…

A new government, conflicts around the world and obviously a lot of science: these are the five stories about Leiden University that you enjoyed reading in 2024.

The origins of Surinamese rice, a digital twin of the Earth and a large big-data project in the Chilean sky: three Leiden scientists receive an ENW-KLEIN grant for innovative, fundamental research.

Physicists Lucia Bossoni and Martina Huber have been awarded an NWA Ideeëngenerator-grant for research into iron nanoparticles in the brain. These nanoparticles may be linked to air pollution and Alzheimer's disease.

Jelle Wouters (RTC Bhutan), Erik de Maaker (CADS Leiden) and Radhika Gupta (CADS Leiden) have been awarded a €260.000 grant by the Gerda Henkel Foundation for the research project ‘Perpetuating Highland Heritages of Bhutan’. This 4-year research project focuses on vernacular and unacknowledged heritages…

A group of postdoc and PhDs at our Focus on Emotions lab organized an escape room for staff and students to increase their awareness of diversity and accessibility matters. It was designed particularly for this year’s EUniWell FestiWell, which ran under the headline “Towards global sustainable well-being”.…

On Saturday, May 4, Dr. Verena Meyer delivered opening remarks at the International Webinar 'Santri, Literacy, and Indonesia', organized by the Bali Santri Literacy Community (Sanubari) Nurul Ikhlas Islamic Boarding School in Jembrana, Bali, Indonesia.

On 28 December 2019, Dutch newspaper Trouw published an essay by Constant Hijzen, Assistant Professor Intelligence Studies at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs and the Institute for History. In the essay, he discusses two books on a new genre of espionage: the authors provide access into…

How do I conduct research? How do I structure, conduct and record what I’ve thought of and done? The Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences Programme didn’t just want students to perform a series of tests for the Cellular Biochemistry practical course. After a complete re-vamp - ‘From traditional cookbook lab…

Tessa Verhoef from the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science and Eduard Fosch-Villaronga from eLaw- Center for Law and Digital Technologies have written an article on how affective computing should be inclusive, diverse, and work for everyone.

Cryogenic memories, antibiotic treatment for urinary tract infections and recycling plastic sustainably. These are the subjects of the three NWO-XS grants awarded to Leiden Science researchers.

Marie Robin, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, discusses in Le 1 Hebdo, Radio France and RFI how revenge, often condemned as destructive, can also reveal what societies consider just and shape pathways toward peace.

After three (or four) years of hard study, there are every year a lot of Bachelor students that say goodbye to go and explore the wide world. Where are they going next? And what will they miss most about our beautiful city? For the coming weeks, we will tell the stories of 6 recent Bachelor graduates…

How do you integrate minorities into a society, and what kind of influence does this have on the collective identity? These questions may seem modern, but they have been relevant for a long time. The new Eurasian Empires research group studies how integration and formation of identity took place in…

Professor Kurt Deketelaere (KU Leuven and LERU) will receive the first Scaliger Medal, a new award offered by Leiden University to honour people or organisations that uphold the University’s values in a unique manner.

Last week, Ajay Gandhi, Assistant Professor at the Leiden University College, wrote an article about how spider's webs can explain the dynamics of social beings.

The more than 290 students who will shortly be starting their studies at Campus The Hague, met at some of the city's hotspots on 11 August to get to know one another and the city. 'The Hague is perfect, it's ideally located and it's very international.'

PhD programme PhDArts is looking for new applicants!

This year on June 8-12, the Annual Convention of the Austrian and Central European Centres was organised in Leiden. At this convention, directors and (PhD) students from all over the world come together to meet, have presentations by the students on their topics of expertise, and to get the know the…

A film and quiz at the Old Observatory, a film whose ending you decide or a political satire in The Hague. These are some of the options at Science & Cinema, the 444 edition, a special programme during LIFF, the Leiden International Film Festival.

Astronomer Jos de Boer has received the Chesneau Prize in Nice for his research into so-called protoplanetary disks. The prize is awarded to the best astronomical dissertation in the field of high angular resolution. 'I consider it a good opportunity to talk about my research.'

‘’These are such mind-boggling topics!’’, a student exclaims. It is May 21st, and over fifty Humanities Lab students are gathered in a Teams room. The work that they have done as honours students over the past three years culminates in this afternoon: the annual Capstone Conference, where two prizes…

The scientific world is under increasing pressure from all directions: the money that society invests has to show clear returns. ‘The best thing we can do is to go along with this development,' says Ivo de Nooijer, Director of Luris, Leiden University's valorisation institute.

Put two single people in one place and what do you get? Science! Psychologists at Leiden University will be conducting research on human attraction at the Lowlands festival on the 19th of August.

A fair distribution of goods and services is the most important factor in justifying political power. This is the conclusion of Honorata Mazepus in her PhD dissertation 'What makes authorities legitimate in the eyes of citizens?' PhD defence September.

eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies, has promoted Dr. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga to Assistant Professor to work on Law and Artificial Intelligence.

The Netherlands cannot stop European labour migrants coming here. Nor does The Hague have much influence on the influx of asylum seekers. But experts believe that we should be able to reduce the need for labour migrants by using intelligent economic policies.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the city of Batavia was supplied with produce by its hinterland, known as the Ommelanden. Bondan Kanumoyoso studied the history of the various ethnic groups that populated this area and in doing so has shed light on the structure of modern-day Indonesian society.…

With the final weeks of the year in full swing, many students are experiencing stress. This is where a chat with the student psychologist can bring some relief. Martine Efting Dijkstra explains what she and her colleagues can do.

Earlier this week, a working group of the United Nations, comprising all 193 of its member states, adopted a consensus report on norms for responsible state behaviour in cyberspace. Dennis Broeders, full professor of Global Security and Technology at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden…

The Herta Mohr Building is leading the way in sustainable innovations, for both Leiden University buildings and beyond. It is the university’s first fully gas-free building and the new Thermal Energy Storage system alone will cut carbon emissions by 150,000 kg per year. The building has an ‘Excellent’…

Medicines are becoming increasingly precise and innovative, but at the same time increasingly expensive. With their innovations, it is up to universities to increase competition, thus causing prices to drop. This is what newly appointed Professor of Biomolecular Analysis Hubertus Irth argues. His inaugural…

In the Netherlands, anyone who loses their passport or ID card too often can be added to the Passport Alerts Register. As a result, a passport application may be denied or the passport must be surrendered. Rowie Stolk, PhD candidate at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law, spoke on…

Have you always wondered what it means to practice open science? Are you curious to know how you can apply open research practices in your own research? Or would you like to share your open science experiences with others?

A bike tour is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about inequality. However, students of a Master Honours Challenge came up with this and other solutions to tackle local inequalities. Creativity and empathy turned out to be useful ingredients.

Cláudio de Sá predicted the preferences of people using rankings. He adjusted ‘classical’ machine learning approaches, making them suitable for predicting preferences. His work can be applied in the prediction of election results. PhD defence on 16 December.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers from 15 departments at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) realised they could do more for patients if they joined forces. This is how the BEAT-COVID group has been able to rapidly gain knowledge about COVID-19, the role of the immune system and…

Leiden University Centre for the Study of Religion (LUCSoR), Thursday 10 and Friday 11 November 2016

How can heritage institutions make their organisations, collections and exhibitions more inclusive and accessible? University lecturer Eliza Steinbock will investigate this using a NWO Smart Culture grant.

Leiden Observatory is going to use a new technique to carry out calculations on gravitational lensing measurements. They will do this is the context of research into the formation of elliptical galaxies. Alessandro Sonnenfeld (University of Tokyo) who developed this technique joined the research team…

Castles, monasteries and bridges, but also city profiles, history prints and water management works. Leiden University Libraries (UBL) manages one of the most important collections of topographical images in the Netherlands. The collection, bequested to UBL by Johannes Tiberius Bodel Nijenhuis (1797-1872)…

The book ‘The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science’ by Paul Behrens has been launched in the US, a year after its original release in Europe. In his book, Behrens describes both hopeful and pessimistic scenarios for our planet.

From November 4 to 10, the exposition CRITTERS will be exhibited in Naturalis Biodiversity Center during Beyond Human Festival. In CRITTERS artists and researchers are looking for a connection between technology and natural organisms. When does technology become a natural being? And when we examine…