The many thousands of small celestial bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit may have ended up there due to a star that passed close to the solar system billions of years ago. This is shown by Leiden simulation expert Simon Portegies Zwart, along with his German and Dutch colleagues. ‘We are answering several…

The International Institute of Air and Space Law (IIASL) at Leiden University has joined the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO) as its newest Research and Academia member.

Maikel Kuijpers was invited to join a session on material rights, resource use, and craftsmanship during the Carnegie Peacebuilding Conversations held in The Hague’s Peace Palace in September. Organised by Major Alliance the session brought together a diverse panel to discuss “The Universal Declaration…

The NWO has awarded four Leiden researchers with an Internationalisation in the Humanities grant.

Do the sounds that surround you as you cycle through the city sometimes annoy you? Don’t worry, because we can actively change the situation, says sound expert Edwin van der Heide. Students in his Honours Class are actively shaping the sound of the city.

Prof. dr. Pancras Hogendoorn is stepping down as dean of the Faculty of Medicine and vice-chair of the Executive Board of Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC). He is also resigning from all associated secondary posts. Hogendoorn has taken his decision in anticipation of the findings of an inquiry…

Daniela Kraft will be awarded the NWO Athena Prize 2019 in a ceremony at the CHAINS Chemistry Conference on 10 December. The prize recognizes excellent female chemists who carry out outstanding scientific research and act as role models for their fellow researchers. Kraft will receive the Athena Prize…

A new social media campaign launched by students from across Europe, including Frederik Behre from the Europa Institute, is aiming to motivate young Europeans to go to the polls.

Gender beliefs father make bigger difference

Bastiaan Rijpkema, legal scholar and philosopher at Leiden University has won the 2017 New Scientist Academic Talent Prize.

January is the final month of our temporary exhibition 'Above and Beyond: Making Sense of the Universe for 100 Years'. You can visit every weekend until Jauary 26th.

What if you get excluded? Are apps against fear and stress effective? How do you keep your brain in shape? The first season of the new podcastseries ‘BreinGeheim’ is about the social contexts of adolescent development and how teens become resilient individuals. Leiden-based behavioural scientist sit…

On 8 June, the Europa Institute’s annual Europa Lecture took place at the Telders Auditorium of the Academy Building. Honorary speaker was Tamara Ćapeta, Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union. Her lecture explored the role of Advocates General at the Court of Justice in its…

On Monday 8 April, a high-profile guest visited Leiden Law School. Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Geoffrey van Leeuwen gave a powerful speech to students about defending our interests in all current global developments.

Recent graduates of the Adv. LL.M. in Air and Space Law presented their paper titled

Dr. Jelena Belic and Dr. Tom Theuns have each been awarded XS grants from the NWO to develop innovative lines of research. Dr. Belic’s project examines distinctive ways in which the deployment of digital technologies interferes with freedom, while Dr. Theuns explores the ideological tensions between…

ACPA researchers Ned McGowan and Guy Livingston perform The Speed of Silence at the Maastricht University 's digital symposium Towards 2040: Creating Classical Music Futures.

The EU Product Safety Award encourages and honors innovative business initiatives and research that make a difference for consumers. This year, the Gold Medal was awarded to Eduard and Hadassah for their innovative research on diversity in robot design, testbed, and safety standardization

The lecture series

On 5 July 2021, GTGC Chair Jan Aart Scholte moderated a panel on digital data governance during the 2021 Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE).

Dimiter Toshkov, Associate Professor, Brendan Carroll, Assistant Professor, and Kutsal Yesilkagit, Professor International Governance, of Leiden University, wrote an article for the Washington Post about the European governmenets that acted quickly in times of a pandemic. And these governments are…

Dr. Sarah Giest presented her paper on Digital Access, Data-Driven Policymaking and Public Service Delivery during a research feedback seminar.

On 13 April, an expert meeting to discuss the doctoral thesis of Eduardo Arenas Catalán was held at Leiden Law School. The discussion, chaired by Aart Hendriks, Professor of Health Law at Leiden Law School, included the contributions from Javier Couso Salas, Professor at Universidad Diego Portales and…

Following the success of the Dutch version, the podcast 'Scandal and Controversy in Russian Literature' is now also available in English. Senior University Lecturer Otto Boele guides listeners through eight infamous texts in this version.

From 1 August, Hermen Jan Hupkes has been appointed Professor of Non-Linear Analysis at the Mathematical Institute. 'Initially I don't think that much will change,' Hupkes says. 'My research and supervising future researchers will continue as before.'

25 selected LUC students were present at this year’s first World Class The Hague event with speeches from King Abdullah from Jordan, Pauline Krikke (Mayor of The Hague) and Mark Singleton (Director of the International Centre for Counter Terrorism and former diplomat). King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima…

John van den Dobbelsteen’s work is all about using medical technology to reduce the workload and increase the job satisfaction of healthcare staff.

The “Hello World!” series focuses on new encounters and new inspiration, inviting seven speakers with hugely varying backgrounds to give us their perspectives on what they see as currently important. The fourth speaker is Zane Kripe, antropologist, and Media Technology MSc programme alumna.

Leiden physicist Julia Cramer receives 50 thousand euros in funding for 'Let's talk about quantum', a research project on communication about quantum computing. A project for high school students by education expert Henk Buisman is also included in the NEWA ELSA funding.

On Thursday 6 May 2021, alumni of the Bachelor Security Studies (BaSS) and the Master Crisis and Security Management (CSM) were gathered in an online event arranged by the Institute of Security and Global Affairs and the study association L.S.A. Custodia.

Mazène Hochane and Xueying Fan have won the fourth annual LION Image Award. They created a detailed colour image of a human kidney in development.

A flood of news reports, push notifications and even extra news broadcasts: on Wednesday, the world was shocked by the storming of the Capitol in Washington. Americanist Sara Polak discusses the events.

On 21 January 2026, Juan Pablo Bascur successfully defended his PhD thesis at Leiden University, titled 'Science maps for information retrieval'.

The unique collection of more than 250 ancient tales revolving around the mythical Javanese Prince Panji, which is curated by Leiden University Libraries (UBL), has been acknowledged as world heritage by UNESCO. The UBL is grateful to UNESCO for this exceptionally prestigious award.

He presented his PhD research entitled “Kick-starting drug development; translational systems pharmacology using innovative zebrafish experiments and advanced computational modelling”. During his presentation, Rob highlighted the advancements he made in using zebrafish as model in system pharmacolog…

A Rubicon Grant is awarded to dr Quentin Bourgeois for his reserach project

Professor P.F. (Paul) Wouters has been appointed dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences with effect from 1 January 2019. Wouters has been appointed for a period of three years and succeeds Professor Hanna Swaab, whose second term of office as dean expires this year. Swaab will remain…

Physicist Christopher Berg Smiet, who recently obtained his PhD in Leiden, has been awarded an NWO Rubicon. The grant allows him to conduct postdoctoral research for two years at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in the United States.

Peter Kop, secondary school teacher, PhD, and teacher educator at ICLON, studied how sketching a graph of an algebraic formula could promote students’ symbol sense. Defence on 18 November.

External PhD candidate Annette Jenowein investigated how women have changed the meaning of gender by claiming their place in traditionally male-dominated domains. Her research focuses on the life of Charlotte Jacobs: the first woman to establish herself as an independent pharmacist in the Dutch East…

Eveline Crone, professor of neurocognitive developmental psychology at Leiden University, has been awarded the Dr Hendrik Muller Prize for Behavioural and Social Sciences by KNAW.

Chemical weapons in the Syrian war, violation of human rights in North Korea and genocide in Myanmar: recent years many United Nations commissions of inquiry published shocking reports. Catherine Harwood studied those commissions and their roles and functions. On November 7 she will defend her PhD d…

Starting April 13 a brand new exhibition is open for visit, titled 'Above and Beyond: Making Sense of the Universe for 100 Years

'Jammed' is released as a limited edition with music composed, recorded and mixed in the Institute of Sonology (Royal Conservatoire, The Hague) between January and June 2022.

How do you make effective use of AI and medical technology? And what role do you play in this as a doctor? This is what the LUMC/Leiden University is preparing medical students for, right from the first year of their studies.

On Wednesday 16 April, two inspiring career events took place at Leiden University: the Humanities Career Event in Leiden and the Job Fair in The Hague. Together, the events attracted nearly 1,000 students exploring their future career paths.

How do you microscopically image zebrafish larvae? The new free online course ‘Imaging the Vertebrate embryo’ teaches you all about it. Leiden PhD candidates Salomé Muñoz Sánchez and Radoslaw Gora contributed to the course.

Dr. Gianclaudio Malgieri, Associate Professor of Law & Technology at eLaw, is co-author of the article “Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) 2.0: A Manifesto of Open Challenges and Interdisciplinary Research Directions” which has been awarded the 2025 Best Paper Award by Information Fusion.

LUC The Hague is recognised as a national Top Programme, reflecting a vibrant learning community where curiosity, academic excellence and global engagement come together.

As of 1 September Miranda van Eck will be the new Scientific Director of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research. She succeeds Hubertus Irth, who led the institute since 2016. Van Eck has been appointed for a period of four years.