The English taught interdisciplinary minor Violence Studies looks into various facets of interpersonal violence. Is this minor for all Leiden students? These two 'colleagues' are certain of it.

An international team led by Leiden astronomers has, after years of searching and defying the boundaries of a telescope, for the first time directly captured polarised light from an exoplanet. From this light they can deduct that a disk of dust and gas orbits the exoplanet. In this disk moons are possibly…

Rembrandt van Rijn was enrolled as a student of the arts at Leiden University, but he was more interested in becoming a painter. What traces now remain of this famous phantom student?

Following 40 years of research into the legal equality principle, Emeritus Professor Titia Loenen gave her valedictory lecture in which she took stock of the progress that has been achieved. She focused on equal rights for women and is cautiously optimistic, despite the current rise in conservatism…

The first larger quantum computers will soon be available. These computers need new software. Researchers at Leiden University have been awarded a Gravitation grant to develop the necessary software. They will be collaborating with colleagues from other research institutions.

Astronomers have captured a new deep field of Pandora's Cluster (Abell 2744) with the James Webb Space Telescope. The images show never-before-seen details. The results are described in four scientific papers. Leiden astronomers Marijn Franx and Mariska Kriek collaborated on the study. 'This opens a…

Lots of employees celebrated special successes in 2023. Here’s a list of all those scholarships, awards and honours.

What is the current situation of human rights in relation to detention under criminal law and immigration law, now that more and more parties are becoming involved in the administration of detention and crimmigration is on the rise? PhD defence on 21 January 2020.

What is the effect of a certain regime on a country’s migration policy? Political scientist Katharina Natter compared the migration policy of autocratic Morocco with that of democratising Tunisia. Her findings challenge some of the core assumptions.

Around 1,300 Leideners found 2,265 species during the Expeditie Stadsnutuur urban biodiversity inventory. ‘It’s been a huge success’, says scientific coordinator Frederic Lens.

In January 2020, the team took a break from their respective field sites and travelled back to Leiden to take stock of their research progress and to host its third Advisory Board meeting at their home institution, the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden Universit…

Starting as an MP during the Covid-19 pandemic and after the recent ‘role elsewhere’ debacle during the coalition talks for a new Dutch government, alumna Mariëlle is looking forward to making a real contribution in society.

The Edinburgh Medal 2016 had been awarded to both Kevin Govender of the Office of Astronomy for Development (OAD) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The award is a recognition for furthering education and technological capacity worldwide through the inspirational science of astronomy. The…

With new algorithms and supercomputers, an incredibly detailed radio map of the universe was created. Now astronomers can look at radio data of galaxies with much more precision. This was published in Nature Astronomy by Leiden PhD student Frits Sweijen and colleagues.

Due to gaps in working conditions regulations, airline pilots and crew are suffering from fatigue and inadequate protection in general. Leiden PhD student Yuran Shi investigated how international law can help improve working conditions and safety in the aviation sector.

Every six years, the research conducted at all law schools in the Netherlands is evaluated during a research evaluation. On 6 and 7 October, it was Leiden University’s turn to be evaluated. The aim of this ‘site visit’ is to allow the committee to get an idea of the faculty research climate, the research…

Nationalism is commonly regarded as posing a challenge to international stability and regional and global order more generally. Arguably, nationalism encourages narrowly defined and zero-sum security policies; it works against compromises and consensus; it undermines international trust and cooperation.…

Mechanics play a larger role in blood vessel formation, and other developmental biology, than previously thought. Cells appear to respond to mechanical signals, such as pressure. Through the extracellular matrix, a network of fibrous proteins, cells can supposedly exchange those mechanical signals over…

An international team of astronomers including Leiden scientists publishes the image of a young star with a surrounding dust disk that is still being fed from its surroundings. The phenomenon around the star SU Aur may explain why so many exoplanets are not neatly aligned with their star. The European…

With the departure of Tesse Stek to the Royal Dutch Institute in Rome for three years, Andrzej Antczak will take over the role of Departmental Head for World Archaeology in September 2018. We spoke with him to learn more about his background, ideas, and plans for the future.

Friday 25 April 2025 | Leiden University Institute of Security and Global Affairs – The Hague

Researchers from the Institute of Psychology have secured NWO Open Competition XS grants, each worth up to €50,000. One of the projects explores how making music together can enhance cooperation. Discover more about all five research projects.

How is it that some covid-19 patients are affected much worse than others? Can we predict beforehand which of them will develop critical symptoms Professor Thomas Hankemeier, together with a diverse consortium of universities, academic hospitals and industrial partners, is looking for the answers to…

On 16 April 2021 the webinar ‘Children and young adults in contact with the law: Systemic vulnerabilities and institutional responses’ took place. In total 17 speakers and discussants engaged with the topic of vulnerability.

This project on the role of FoxPs in vocal perception and production learning is part of nine PhD-positions funded by the NWO Gravitation Programme which was granted to the Dutch Research Consortium 'Language in Interaction'

The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (RMO) was due to open its doors to the small photography exhibit Frank Scholten: Archaeology and Tourism in the ‘Holy Land’ in April. Since the organisers, Leiden University and the RMO, have had to temporarily close, researchers Karène Sanchez and Sary Zananiri would like…

Viktorija Kostadinova, from Macedonia and currently a second-year PhD student at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, has just returned after two and a half months at the University of Michigan: ‘It was a truly rewarding experience.’

Marlon Titre (1982) studied at Royal Conservatoire The Hague, did his PhD and studied at Leiden University, earned several other qualifications and is now, among others, Director of Filmhuis The Hague. Who is this multi-talent?

In his art, Rafael Martig shows how drastically human activity changes nature. Fieldwork during his studies reinforced this view. ‘On Ameland I found masses of meadow birds, but the greenery on the mainland was often a grass desert.

What does the University mean for The Hague? And what are researchers and students learning from the city and its residents? The Hague city councillors visited Campus The Hague on 27 September and spoke to administrators and researchers. ‘From Schilderswijk to Benoordenhout: we are a university for…

For the next five years, thanks to a highly competitive European grant, Nadine Akkerman will be able to focus on voices from the past that might otherwise never have been heard. This is because in the 16th and 17th centuries what we now call a ghostwriter already existed. As Akkerman explains, ‘a lot…

Several consortia in which Leiden University is involved have been awarded Dutch Research Agenda funding. Leiden is the coordinator of five of these consortia. These five consortia will receive grants worth a total of almost 24 million euros. They relate to interdisciplinary projects that will bring…

Astronomers and surgeons from Leiden are collaborating with industry to develop an optical instrument that delivers faster, more accurate imaging of tumour tissue and abnormal blood flow during surgery.

New ministers, new state secretaries and new members of parliament. Around the time of the elections, we often talk about the new faces, but there are also many politicians who leave during this period, sometimes out of necessity. How do you say goodbye to a political career? Henk te Velde, professor…

By a stroke of luck, a team led by Dutch PhD student Martijn Oei has discovered a radio galaxy of at least 16 million lightyears long. The pair of plasma plumes is the largest structure made by a galaxy known thus far. The finding disproves some long-kept hypotheses about the growth of radio galaxie…

The Olympic Games will start in Brazil on 5 August. You can find out more about this fascinating but complex country in a series of lectures organised by Studium Generale.

For only the second time ever, astronomers have linked a neutrino to an object outside our Milky Way. These observations were made using telescopes both on Earth and in space. The researchers, including Leiden astronomer Sjoert van Velzen, were able to trace the neutrino to a black hole that is devouring…

Engaged, active students who can see the links within their discipline. These are key aims of the University vision on teaching and learning, but how do you achieve them? An interdisciplinary research team led by ICLON has developed an inventive method that helps lecturers do just that.

Two statues of gorillas abducting women: they were what led PhD candidate Dick van Broekhuizen to write a new type of history of nineteenth-century sculpture. ‘If you view nineteenth-century art history from a less narrow perspective, the narrative changes completely.’ PhD ceremony on 21 June.

‘The whole of society benefits if it is accessible for people with a disability.' This is what Pauline Gransier, student of Film and Literary Studies at Leiden University, has to say. She has been nominated for the Top 100 Enabled.

Thijs Bosker, Associate Professor of Environmental Sciences at Leiden University College (LUC) and the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), has received funding as part of a large consortium to study the impacts of microplastics on agricultural soils. The project will receive 7 million euro of…

Scientists often need to make sense of complex systems without knowing the important parameters or even without access to all the information. A collaboration of network theorists, including Diego Garlaschelli (IMT Lucca/Leiden), has now published a review article in the inaugural issue of Nature Reviews…

Neanderthals were able to make fire on a large scale with the aid of pyrite and hand-axes. This means they could decide when and where they wanted fire and were not dependent on natural fire, as was thought earlier. Archaeologist Andrew Sorensen has discovered the first material evidence for this. Publication…

Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart is refining an artificial intelligence system that can detect and classify archaeological objects on digital images. Such a system is desperately needed because human archaeologists around the world are being flooded with data.

Dr. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga from eLaw collaborates with researchers from the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIIT-Delhi) and University of Delhi (DU) in an effort to explore and reflect upon the potential legal, ethical and pedagogical challenges of deploying a social robot in…

A team of researchers at Leiden University’s Europa Institute authored an extensive study on the potential for a Climate and Energy Union within the EU constitutional framework. The study was published by the European Parliament in December 2024.

Europe is going to invest billions in those areas where COVID-19 has hit hardest, Ms Rafaela said. ‘And only if we truly show the people that this is because of European solidarity and strong cooperation, will that enable us to create a more perfect Union.’

Students of the Advanced MSc in International Relations and Diplomacy visited the OPCW and ICJ in The Hague, gaining insights into key international organisations.

A special find has been made in the Alkmaar Regional Archive: a number of 17th-century book bindings contained pieces of parchment from a manuscript from the 11th century. The original manuscript may have belonged to a princess who fled England after the Norman Conquest.

Does medicine make patients feel better or worse? We are getting better at predicting this from people’s DNA profiles, says Professor Jesse Swen. ‘It never fails to fascinate me how one DNA base pair can have such a huge effect on treatment with medication and the outcome.’