What does the retail crisis mean for the future of Europe's urban centres? Assistant professor Alistair Kefford answers this very question in the French television programme 27.

82 years ago Queen Wilhelmina fled to England. Henk te Velde tells about her on the Australian radio show 'Nightlife'.

Professor of Contemporary History Wim van den Doel has won the 2024 Boerhaave Biography Prize. Van den Doel receives the prize for his book 'Snouck: Het volkomen geleerdenleven van Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje'.

The Pilgrims to America exhibition at Museum De Lakenhal inspires reflection. How far do you go in the quest for freedom? It focuses on the Pilgrims’ relationship with the University and which knowledge they took with them from Leiden.

The particle accelerator of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, produces large amounts of complex data with high accuracy, as a result of which theoretical predictions also need to be more accurate and faster. With his research team, PhD candidate Ben Ruijl developed very innovative…

Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, who died on 5 december 2013, received an honorary doctorate from Leiden University in 1999. Mandela’s response was modest: ‘It is not a personal achievement. It is a tribute to all those who emerged from underground, from prison, from exile...’

Lecture

Cátia Antunes received the prestigious ERC Grant for her Research Project

This research cluster aims to analyse and interpret the formation and transmission of Graeco-Roman culture by exploring the relationships between cultural products (texts, objects, practices) and their societal and historical contexts.

Conference, Annual Conference of the Flemish-Dutch Society for Early Modern History

Lecture, Seminar

Since the decentralizations in the social domain in 2015, nearly all Dutch municipalities use district teams to organize care. However, the management, organization and composition of these district teams vary considerably between municipalities: each municipality tries to reinvent the wheel by itself.…

On 28 and 29 August, Dr. Ben Van Rompuy and Dr. Armin Cuyvers gave a two-day training to the Competition Commissioners of the newly established East-African Competition authority.

Ben Wielstra and his team have received a ENW-M-1 grant. This grant of 354.000 euros is awarded by NWO, and will enable the researchers of the Institute of Biology Leiden and Naturalis to continue their evolutionary newt research.

Sophia Hendrikx started her PhD project at LUCAS in March 2015...

History student Lydia Boer has won the Uitgeverij Verloren/Johan de Witt incentive prize. She receives the prize for her bachelor’s thesis The marriage between Johan de Witt and Wendela Bicker: a political affair?

New research has confirmed that the Dutch military used systematic, extreme violence against Indonesians. In his book Soldaat in Indonesië (Soldier in Indonesia), to be released at the end of October, historian Gert Oostindie draws the same conclusions using different sources. He presents new findings…

In this dissertation, a comprehensive portrait of the American-born Quaker Lindley Murray (1745–1826) is painted and the influence of Murray’s Quakerism on his language use is investigated by analyzing a corpus of 262 of his unpublished private letters.

This project investigates the professionalisation of university libraries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, through the lens of the medieval manuscript holdings. Taking Leiden University Library as a starting point, it sheds light on the changing practices surrounding the conservation,…

Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

Alumna Lauren Antonides has won the Roggeveen Prize for her thesis on the regional identity of Zeelandic Flanders. She will receive a sum of 1,000 euros.

University lecturer Lauren Lauret has been awarded the D.J. Veegens Prize 2022 for her dissertation on the meeting practices of the States General during the time of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces compared to those of the Lower House during the first half of the 19th century.

Dutch-Caribbean research will get a boost. Gert Oostindie, working at the Institute of History and KITLV, has received a grant from NWO, consisting of 750,000 euros, for his research project 'Confronting Caribbean challenges: hybrid identities and governance in small-scale island jurisdictions'.

President John Quincy Adams studied in Leiden. His father, John, who was also president, also stayed here and received a lot of support from professor and publisher Johan Luzac. And how are presidents Bush and Obama linked to Leiden?

Lecture

Back to university to attend lectures with master's students: that's what professionals did at the Leiden Leadership Programme. Conclusion of the experiment? Learning about leadership leaves one wanting more. 'Great that this is possible.'

How adaptable can and should a government organisation be – in a crisis situation, for instance? How can such organisations join forces to solve the problems faced by citizens? Leiden University will collaborate with six government organisations that are opening their doors for research and the joint…

Conference, Book presentation

In her book Rap 73, Dorrit van Dalen shares intimate anecdotes and what for many are previously unknown stories about the Academy Building and its users. Stories such as who held heated debates in the beautiful vaulted Gewelfkamer, and why the singer of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot was given pride…

Universiteit Leiden stond niet altijd bekend als een bolwerk van vrijheid, betoogt Egbert Koops in zijn diesoratie. Leidsch Dagblad sprak met de hoogleraar rechtsgeschiedenis over academische vrijheid: ‘Het bolwerk van vrijheid moest veroverd worden.’

More than 40 years ago, a wrecked merchant ship was found in the Wadden Sea. PhD student Geke Burger looked at this archaeological find from a historical perspective.

Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) is looking for two PhD's, for a research programme funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO): 'A New History of Fishes. A long-term approach to fishes in science and culture, 1550-1880', supervised by Professor Paul…

Since the horrific events of October 7, 2023, Leiden students have grappled with difficult questions about Israel, Gaza and Israel/Palestine conflict more generally. Drawing on her expertise in the history of the Jewish experience in the diaspora and beyond, Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey has held multiple…

It is one of the most personal and simultaneously most universal experiences of human life: caring for a young child. Professor Sarah Cramsey has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to investigate how factors such as nationality, political systems, and religion influence the first thousand days after…

Maurits Berger's new English-language podcast, Matters of Humanities: History of Islam in Europe covers no fewer than thirteen centuries of history. In eight episodes, professor of Islam and the West Maurits Berger argues that the Islam and Muslims are an important part of European history: ‘That was…

Many traces of the city's slavery history can be found in Leiden but the public isn't always aware of them. The initiators of 'Mapping Slavery in Leiden' want to change this with guided tours and street markers. Representatives of the University and other Leiden institutions will be giving the first…

The Leiden municipality wants to make the city centre climate-proof and combat heat stress by greening it. But they want to do this in a way that does justice to the city’s heritage. Researcher Fenna IJtsma delves into historical greenery to offer inspiration.

This year marks the 450th anniversary of the Capture of Brielle by the Watergeuzen (lit. ‘Sea Beggars’) and therefore the birth of the Netherlands. Student Johan Visser is contributing to no fewer than three books about the extraordinary year of 1572.

Thursday 12 July the first Leiden Leadership Lunch took place. In the boardroom in Wijnhaven there was an informal lunch with researchers, students and managers from the field. Science and practice found each other around the theme leadership and added public value.

The Europa Instituut is pleased to announce that this week a new handbook “EU State Aids” (31 Chapters, 1500 pages) was published.

On Wednesday 28 September 2022, the Opening Ceremony of the European Law LL.M. took place on campus at Leiden Law School. Following Dr Ben Van Rompuy and Professor Jorrit Rijpma’s warm words of welcome for the incoming students, Dr Vasiliki Kosta presented two student prizes from the preceding academic…

Is it true that crises reveal the true nature of leaders? Can 90% of the books written about leadership be regarded as useless? And do hybrid forms of working require us to rethink leadership development programs? These questions and more were the topic of discussion last Thursday March 31 during the…

Live Nation Entertainment, het moederbedrijf van Ticketmaster, is door een jury in New York schuldig bevonden aan het schenden van de Amerikaanse mededingingsregels. In Trouw geeft Ben Van Rompuy, universitair hoofddocent Europees Mededingingsrecht, duiding bij de zaak.

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

After a detour via the ANWB in Munich, alumna Manon Schouten works as a history teacher at two schools. ‘It's so rewarding to see the material resonate with students.’

‘All the groceries, but not a fig for young workers’, read a banner during the occupation of Ahold’s headquarters in 1981. ‘For a long time, young workers were not taken seriously, but they managed to put themselves on the map’, says historian Rosa Kösters.

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…