Discovering effective new drugs is a long, expensive and uncertain process. Laura Heitman wants to improve this by finding out more about how drugs bind to proteins that play a role in disease. She calls it ‘drug discovery 3.0’. Inaugural lecture on 9 December.

One of the most crucial aspects of our behaviour is our motivation to explore novel environments and interact with new people. This became painfully clear during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when many people suffered from lack of new experiences and real-life social interactions. The relevance of novelty…

Online, hybrid, on campus... It was an unpredictable year, also for the Faculty of Humanities. Luckily, there were also non-corona related stories. Let's review 2021 with this list of the most-read news articles per month.

Art historian Elizabeth den Hartog has been studying medieval sculpture at Leiden University for 32 years. Like a detective, she searches buildings, books and archives in the hunt for the cultural meaning of unique sculptures.

The project aims to explore the history of the concept “barbarism” in Europe from the 18th century to the present. Responding to the contemporary popularity of the term “barbarism” in political rhetoric and the media, and the lack of reflection on the implications and legitimacy of its use, the project…

Manon van der Heijden and Leo Lucassen, and Maarten Mous will receive NWO Open Competition funding. This funding amounts to a maximum of 750,000 euros and is intended to carry out research into a subject of their your own choice, without thematic preconditions.

The Humanities Faculty bachelor’s degree programmes in History, and Greek and Latin language and culture were rated by students as the best. The master’s programmes in Classics and Ancient Civilisations, Dutch Studies and North American Studies also received the highest scores. These were the results…

This article presents a five-step framework for building behavioural cybersecurity strategy to reduce human-related risks affecting organisational security

Lecture, VVIK lecture

Almost a century passed since the much-celebrated judgement in the case concerning the Factory of Chorzów was delivered. This 1928 judgement of the Permanent Court of International Justice affirmed the essential principle of ‘reparation’ in international law, claiming that ‘restitution’ is the preferred…

After two years of corona restrictions, it was ‘back to normal’ in 2022. Migration, elections, the history of slavery, Russia, and Ukraine were much-discussed topics. We compiled an overview of the most-read news items and other events of the past year.

What makes South Korean films successful? In the first part of the video series 'The World of the Korean Wave', University Lecturer Peter Verstraten discusses the recent success of South Korean cinema.

Starting 2 July 2022, a new exhibition will be opened to the public at the Old Observatory: More-than-Planet. This exhibit asks the question: how do we imagine our planet?

No less than seven scholars of the Faculty of Humanities were awarded a Veni grant. Veni grants are aimed at excellent researcher who recently obtained their doctorate. With a maximum grant of 250.000 euros, the laureates can develop their research ideas in the coming three years.

Festschrift for Prof. Dr Raymond H.A. Corbey in celebration of his 70th birthday

Middle East Studies Lecture

The history of the LGTBI+ collective, deeply marked by episodes of violence, repression, and discrimination, is also the history of the struggle for social change and the conquest of civil rights, advances without which contemporary Western democracies could not be explained. More recently, the implementation…

During the next three years, 6 promising researchers from the Faculty of Humanities who have just been awarded their PhDs will be able to further develop their research ideas funded by a Veni grant from the NWO. A total of 147 Veni grants were awarded of which 14 went to researchers at Leiden Univer…

On Friday 15 March, more than 750 students from the Netherlands and abroad visited the Master’s Open Day at the Faculty of Humanities to explore their options.

On 28 February, Marieke Liem, Associate Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, appeared as a guest on the Dutch NPO Radio 1 Brainwash Podcast to discuss the 'big homicide questions' she is trying to find the answers to.

On the 13th of February, Matthew Sung successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Matthew on this achievement!

As the flagship journal of the National Academy of Sciences USA, PNAS publishes several special features each year highlighting topics that are expected to engage the interest of the journal’s broad readership. Archaeologist Wil Roebroeks was invited by the Editors of PNAS to contribute a paper on the…

Edward Elgar has recently published an edited volume entitled “Realising Protection from Age Discrimination: International, Regional, and National Perspectives”. The book has been edited by Helen Meenan (visiting professor at Kingston University, UK) and Christa Tobler (Europa Institutes of the Universities…

Five researchers from Leiden University have been awarded an Open Competition Domain Science ENW XS grant by the Dutch Research Council for their research projects.

Day-to-day activities are important in the development of social identities, the establishment of social standing, and the communal understanding of societal rules. This perspective is broadly referred to as practice theory and relates to the power of an overarching social structure and the individual…

Mayor Peter Heijkoop is busy getting to know his city better. On Monday 7 July, he visited the Faculty of Humanities. ‘A few hours and you can see how important this is.’

Even when a border has officially disappeared, it is still people who decide whether others may cross freely. This was also true for the Polish-German border, where PhD candidate Maryla Klajn spend six months conducting fieldwork.