Leiden University won the International Criminal Court (ICC) Moot Court Competition – English edition. The final round was held at 7 June 2019, in the ICC in The Hague.

Coming semester Karen Vet will be joining our team as the new intern. She has a BA in Middle Eastern Studies from Leiden University, specializing in Arabic language and culture.

During a working visit to a company that cleans up space debris, the British Prince Charles suggested that a climate agreement specifically for space might be a good idea. Experts, including Leiden Law School’s Tanja Masson-Zwaan, say the idea is wishful thinking.

New research report and policy brief by Carolien Jacobs (VVI) and Bernardo Almeida (VVI)

Seven hundred and three independent student flats will be built in the entrance area of the Leiden Bio Science Park (LBSP), close to the University Sports Centre. Construction will begin this year and the accommodation is expected to be completed by the start of academic year 2023-2024.

More and more, software incorporates components of Machine Learning. Joost Visser, professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), is invited as keynote speaker at the seventh Dutch national symposium on software engineering (SEN) to talk about this topic.

On 1 October 2019, Dr. Darinka Piqani co-organized and moderated a panel discussion on the theme of “Rule of law challenges and prospects in Albania and North Macedonia”.

Laurens Hessels was appointed Professor by Special Appointment, lecturing in the Social Value of Science at Leiden University, effective 1 September 2021. His research will focus how best science and industry can work together. Alongside his new position he will continue his work at the Rathenau Institute…

Lisanne Rens has been awarded the 2017 H. D. Landahl Mathematical Biophysics Award. Rens is a PhD student at the CWI (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica) in Amsterdam and also affiliated with the Leiden University Mathematical Institute.

In March 2019 a new Computer Crime Act took effect in the Netherlands. As a result, Dutch police now have extensive powers to tackle cybercrime. Innocent citizens could be adversely affected if these new powers are not used with restraint, Bart Custers (Head of Research at eLaw - Center for Law and…

In February 2020 Jed Wentz will start the new course 'Practical Rhetoric: public speaking according to historical sources'. Registration is now open!

The winner of this year’s Iris Medal for Excellent Science Communication is Professor of Science Communication Ionica Smeets.

A number of calls for proposals have been launched to finance innovative educational projects. An overview is given below.

Stefano Pollas master thesis 'Quantum Digital Cooling' has been awarded the Lorentz Master thesis award. The award, 3000 euros and a certificate, has been awarded on 25 November at the Koninklijke Hollandse Maatschappij van Wetenschappen (KHMW) society in Haarlem.

Recently, the University of Amsterdam was the scene of pro-Palestinian demonstrations that got out of hand. The demonstrators included rioters who wished to remain anonymous by wearing face coverings. Several experts, including Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, spoke…

A Niels Stensen Fellowship has recently been awarded to Vestert Borger. Since the 1960s, the Fellowship is awarded each year to 6 or 7 scholars at Dutch universities across all disciplines who have recently defended their doctoral dissertation. The Fellowhip enables them to conduct research abroad at…

Learning with the City, a partnership between the Municipality of Leiden, Leiden University and University of Applied Sciences Leiden, has a new online platform. Learning with the City aims to use knowledge and expertise from higher education to solve social issues in Leiden. The platform will help…

In the interests of knowledge exchange and research, a delegation from the China Academy of Chinese Medicinal Sciences (CACMS) in Beijing paid a visit to the Hortus botanicus in Leiden. The visit was part of a joint research study on herbal medicine.

LUGO has some news: If you are using a public computer from Leiden University, you can now set your default search engine to Ecosia.

Several cases inspired by the Urgenda case have now been filed. For example, by the Portuguese, concerning widespread forest fires, Swiss women of a somewhat respectable age (known as the ‘KlimaSeniorrinnen’) who suffer from the heat, and the mayor of a French city situated by the sea who fears the…

Emily den Boer of LAPP visited the Canal Cups Expo, displaying the plastic cups cleaned up by students after Leidens Ontzet.

The Netherlands remains one of the most important locations when it comes to tax evasion. According to Tax Justice Network only the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda play a greater role.

With the What's Next? series we hope to inspire current Media Technology MSc students, show the variety of paths taken after the studies, and bring together alumni. Editions of the series are generally organized around a particular theme by Media Technology MSc students themselves, and followed by social…

Researchers of the department of Child Law have submitted an advice to the Committee on the Rights of the Child of the United Nations, which monitors the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, on 7 January 2019.

It's time for alcohol to be discouraged as strongly as smoking. This is the message given by Professor of Ear, Nose and Throat Medicine Jeroen Jansen during his inaugural lecture on 18 October 2019. He believes that alcohol consumption is an important cause of head and neck cancers, but it is also a…

Last year Helen Pluut co-authored the article “Social support at work and at home: Dual-buffering effects in the work-family conflict process” which was published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. This article has now been nominated for the annual Rosabeth Moss Kanter…

What is the role of academia in solving societal problems such as the corona crisis? Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker spoke about this at the opening of the academic year on 31 August.

Toen in 2019 honderden afvalcontainers in de Waddenzee vielen, wilde de overheid geen informatie vrijgeven over wat er in de containers zat. Vijf jaar later weten we eindelijk meer, nadat hoogleraar Esther Kentin beroep deed op de Wet Open Overheid.

Since January 2019, The Leiden Institute for Advanced Computer Science is part of the RISE_SMA project. In this European project 6 universities, in collaboration with companies, government authorities and NGOs, will join forces to get more insight in social media data during crisis situations. The kick-off…

Ilektra Antonaki has published her book ‘Capital, Market and the State - Reconciling Free Movement of Capital with Public Interest Objectives’. The book is based on her doctoral dissertation, which she defended cum laude in September 2019, at Leiden University.

The Dutch universities, university medical centres and Research Council have reached an agreement with Elsevier Publishing on a national open science partnership. The partnership includes open access publishing and reading services for Elsevier journals and open science services for disseminating and…

As per 1st May 2019, Leiden University appointed Bram Klievink as professor of Public Administration with a focus on digitalization and public policy. The new chair has been established at the Institute of Public Administration of the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs of Leiden University. Bram…

Beryl ter Haar is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Warsaw, Poland. The Law School is the oldest part of the university (founded in 1808), followed by the School of Medicine (founded one year later). The two schools became the heart of Warsaw University which was founded in 1816 by…

How small steps can lead to big change: that was the theme of the Leiden Education Festival. Students and lecturers came to Scheltema on 9 May to share their experiences of educational innovation.

The research article ‘Anatomy of a notch. An in-depth experimental investigation and interpretation of combat traces on Bronze Age swords’ is one of the most downloaded articles on the Journal of Archaeological Science website. This journal is one of the best for impact factor in the field. The article,…

Due to a major telephone disruption, 112 was unavailable for hours on Monday 24 June. At Albert Heijn, Tuesday 25 June, cash registers refused service. Bibi van den Berg, professor in Cyber Security Governance at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, looks back on aspects of the disasters of…

The Executive Board has decided to appoint Marike Knoef as Professor of Empirical micro-economics, commencing January 2018.

The Executive Board of Leiden University has appointed Dr Tom Louwerse as Professor of Political Behaviour and Research Methods at the Institute of Political Science.

PhD Candidate Sabine K. Witting has published an article ‘Regulating bodies: child sexuality in the digital era’ in the Critical Quarterly for Legislation and Law, Vol. 1 2019.

Maria de Jong-de Kruijf was awarded a doctorate degree on 7 March for her research on children in secure residential youth care. The Dutch website for legal professionals, Mr. Online, interviewed her for their ‘lawyer of the week’ column.

Unlike Dutch and English, most languages employ melody not only to add nuance to sentences but also to differentiate between words. How languages do this remains largely unknown. This project will investigate the linguistic, psychological and neural processes underlying the parallel communication of…

On 29 January 2019, Robbert J. van Eijk will defend his Ph.D thesis, in which he investigates the online advertisements that seem to follow you.

From 15-19 July 2019, the department of Labour Law hosted the first Global & European Labour Law Summer School. Participants from 10 different nationalities and 3 different continents joined the Summer School.

Could water be present in planet-forming disks before the formation of rocky planets? The James Webb Space Telescope may have found evidence for that. Webb has for the first time observed water in the inner disc around young star where at greater distance, giant planets have already formed. The research…

Despite the covid-19 pandemic, the 2019-2022 Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project between Leiden Law School and the University of Tirana was successfully finalized.

On 27 November 2019, David de Boer defended his PhD dissertation 'Religious Persecution and Transnational Compassion in the Dutch Vernacular Press 1655-1745'. For his research, he analysed several hundred pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals published primarily in the seventeenth-century Netherlands,…

The Local Chamber of Associations (PKvV) has launched an online media platform that brings together all 24 Leiden student associations. It developed the platform over the past months in conjunction with Leiden University, University of Applied Sciences Leiden and Leiden Marketing.

On April 12th three students majoring in Earth, Energy, and Sustainability (EES) from Leiden University College participated in the annual conference of the Netherlands Center for River Studies.

Wilco van Dijk has been awarded a NIAS Individual Fellowship, which allow researchers to work on a project of their own choosing for a 5- or 10-month period. As a NIBUD professor of psychological determinants of economic decision-making, Van Dijk will work on the impact of financial scarcity on dec…

On 12 September 2019, Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji, President of the International Criminal Court (ICC), delivered a lecture on Customary International Criminal Law and Head of State Immunity to open the academic year for the Advanced LL.M. Programmes in Public International Law & International Dispute Settlement…