The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) aims to demonstrate its relevance to society by means of high-quality research, excellent education and various outreach activities. A few highlights:

The Just Peace Dialogues were a set of meetings for public deliberation of key aspects of building peace in today’s world. The dialogues were held across seven days at the heart of the Just Peace Festival (16 - 22 June 2025).

LCD screens use liquid crystals which have a high degree of order, even though they form a fluid. A new theory maps out the interplay between order, temperature and symmetry. Publication in Physical Review X.

We don’t understand how some materials become superconducting at relatively high temperatures. Leiden physicists have now found a surprising connection with auxiliary black holes. It enables us to use our knowledge of black holes on the mystery of high-temperature superconductivity. Publication in Nature…

Since 2015 the United Nations have declared 11 February the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Leiden University organized a public event for over a hundred visitors. In between a lecture on the building blocks of life and a talkshow on the impact of science on society, high school students…

A semi-empirical version of the specific reaction parameter approach to density functional theory (SRP-DFT) has been remarkably successful at predicting dissociative chemisorption probability vs. incidence energy curves for reactions on metal surfaces. New quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations on the…

Leiden theoretical physicists have proven that not only the genetic information in DNA determines who we are, but also DNA’s mechanics. Helmut Schiessel and his group simulated many DNA sequences and found a correlation between mechanical cues and the way DNA is folded. Publication in PLoS One.

Light can be used to apply forces on single cells. Focused lasers have been used by physicists to tweeze particles and to manipulate them. These so called “optical tweezers” can be used as mechanical phenotyping tools for characterising the mechanics of materials and living objects.

PhD defence

Wiskundemeisjes Jeanine Daems and Ionica Smeets will be on television. From Thursday, November 15th on, on Nederland 2, from 9.30-9.45 AM, they will be part of a school-television series entitled `Math for Second Phase'.

Cameron Mackie has been awarded both the Dissertation prize of the Laboratory Astrophysics division of the American Astronomical Society and the Dissertation prize of the Astrochemistry subdivision of the American Chemical Society for his thesis entitled

Milan Allan has received the Bryan R. Coles Prize at the International Conference on Strongly Correlated Electron Systems (SCES) in Prague.

The Graduate School of Science starts 2024 with a new Dean. The Faculty Council appointed Erik Danen for the coming four years. He succeeds Eric Eliel, who has held the position since May 2020.

There is an enormous disparity between children from low and high socio-economic backgrounds. In the Leiden Tutor Programme Leiden students and scientists are exploring what they can do to close that gap. And at the same time the children are learning a lot through the programme.

Ronald Cramer, in cooperation with Ivan Damgard and Jesper Nielsen (Aarhus University) have recently published the first book ever written on “quantum-secure multi-party computation”. The authors have spent six years to finish this comprising book.

On Tuesday September 11th, the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION) organizes the third edition of its annual Science Day. Scientists from disciplines all across the physics spectrum will elaborate on their research during seventeen interactive talks. LION organizes the event to showcase the full range…

Although both government and the public would like scientists to share their work with the widest possible audience, this does not always seem an easy route for scientists.

During illness, the stiffness or viscosity of cells can change. Tom Evers demonstrated this by measuring such properties of human immune cells for the first time. ‘The stiffness of certain cells could be a way to make a diagnosis,’ Evers said. He defended his thesis on March 26th.

Why studying the Advanced Master programme European and International Human Rights Law at Leiden University? We give you 10 reasons! Read more.

We prepare you for a succesful career as legal professional in an international environment. We offer a basis for conducting further academic research.

The Museums, Collections & Society (MCS) group consists of staff members, all of whom have a strong link to the Museums and Collections programme of the Faculty of Humanities and the Heritage and Museum programme of the Faculty of Archaeology.

AI4Europe is one of the projects, funded under the Horizon Europe programme, that is responsible for the management, development and facilitation of the AI-on-Demand Platform (AIoD).

Key publications of the Quantitative Clinical Pharmacology group

Is it possible to pharmacologically condition oxytocin responses in healthy individuals and identify the neural circuitry underlying such conditioning?

Knowledge and culture subproject 2:

Do selenium nanoparticles in fish food cause subtle alterations in behavior of fish: effect of particles size and concentration?

How can zebrafish research help to understand and fight human cancer?

What are the conditions under which coercive diplomacy can compel a State to abandon its controversial nuclear (weapons) program? Based on the experience of the US coercive diplomacy against the nuclear programs of three countries, namely Iran, Libya and South Africa, Jean Yves Ndzana’s PhD research…

Knowing how to resolve global problems is one thing, but how do you make sure that it actually happens? That’s the real challenge, because there are powerful movements everywhere that want to reconstruct the walls of nation states. In an attempt to resolve this issue, Leiden researchers are experimenting…

The STRINGS project is mapping development pathways for science, technology and innovation that best address the UN Sustainable Development Goals. A consortium of seven universities led by Tommaso Ciarli at SPRU at the University of Sussex and the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) have worked…

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…

SAILS is a Leiden university wide initiative aiming to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The Case of the Painted Plaster

Which brain cell does what, when Parkinson's disease arises? It won't be long before this jigsaw is solved piece by piece. Ahmed Mahfouz, computational biologist, combines bio-knowledge from Leiden with algorithms from Delft and is getting closer to finding the key.

Knowledge and culture subproject 3:

How did “free agents” (entrepreneurs operating outside of the myriad of interests of the centralized, state-sponsored monopolies) in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire react to the creation of colonial monopolies (royal monopolies and chartered companies) by the central states in the Early Modern…

The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences brings together high-quality research and outstanding mono- and multidisciplinary teaching.

In STAYAHEAD data-intensive approaches are being developed to ”decode the human immunome” with a focus on a global vaccine strategy. They have developed a rapid mass spectrometric test to analyse in real-time large numbers of variants of SARS-CoV-2 and the host immune response, and use these data to…

Just Published: EU Banking and Insurance Insolvency (second edition) Authored and Edited by Gabriel Moss QC, Bob Wessels and Matthias Haentjens Published by Oxford University Press

The main interest of this project concerns learners’ perceived learning outcomes in massive open online courses and the factors related to their perceived learning outcomes.

A comprehensive analysis of the state of play, the design of monitoring mechanisms, and creation of a toolbox of support measures.

The discovery of new medicines is a tedious and lengthy process. On average, over 10,000 molecules need to be studied for one to become a drug and reach the patient. Part of that process are the very costly clinical trials in humans, and candidate drugs often fail due to side effects or lack of efficacy.…

Accumulation of metals in economy and environment and its associated risks, within the Netherlands and the EU.

The Biological- and Soft-Matter Physics Master specialisation is one of the two programmes Leiden offers in experimental Physics. The programme can to a high degree be tailored to individual needs and interests.

Public International Law is a one-year Master’s specialisation at the internationally acclaimed Leiden Law School at Leiden University. The programme focuses on the legal framework that governs international relations in an increasingly complex global society.

A three-volume standard work on galls in Europe. Author Johannes C. (Hans) Roskam is associate professor emeritus in Evolutionary Biology and currently guest at Leiden University.

Objects and framings of heritage, archives, and academic knowledge production generate worldwide, fierce societal debates on the legacies of colonial violence, past injustice and present-day institutional racism. Whether bronzes from Benin, daggers from Bali, fossils from Java, photo-albums from…