The Leiden University Excellence Scholarships Programme (LExS) provides scholarships for excellent international students from outside the EU/EEA who come to Leiden to follow a master’s programme. The first eighty LExS scholarships have been awarded for this academic year.

Leiden has an international reputation as a stronghold of knowledge about cultures worldwide. Under the umbrella name of LeidenGlobal, Leiden University, the National Museum of Antiquities, the Natioial Museum of Ethnology and five research institutes are working together to disseminate this knowledge…

Pre-Islamic Arabia was barren, barbaric, and isolated. At least, that's what many Arabic writers and historics argued. Ahmad Al-Jallad debunks this myth. For this, he received the Gratama Science Prize during the opening of the academic year.

Leiden University will install over 30 tap water stations in the autumn of 2017 at the various University buildings. The first is already in use.

Symposium

Saskia Bruines, alderman for Education, Knowledge Economy and International Affairs in The Hague, and Erwin Muller, Chair of Campus The Hague, opened an exhibition about 20 years of Campus The Hague on 4 September. The exhibition in the Atrium of City Hall in The Hague focuses on the links between the…

Alumni event, Lustrum

Art and science: are they polar opposites? The theme of this year’s Sculptures in Leiden open air exhibition is ‘life sciences’. It has resulted in many intriguing sculptures, including one that is especially endearing.

On Thursday 11 November, Women in International Security Netherlands (WIIS-NL) held its inaugural webinar event on 11 November with four speakers in conjunction with the International Centre for Terrorism (ICCT) and the Chair UN Studies in Peace and Justice at Leiden University.

Lara Ummels came from Maastricht to study law in Leiden, and never left. She recently joined the board of the 3 October Association.

Leiden University turned 444 this year, and we are celebrating this milestone with the residents of the two cities in which we have a presence: Leiden and The Hague. Mayor Pauline Krikke explains what 20 years of Campus The Hague means to her city.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) was established in 1919 based on the premise that social justice is a condition for lasting peace. On 7 February 2019 the ILO celebrated its 100th anniversary with an international symposium to consider the future of the ILO.

On Friday, the 24th of November 1995, a joint celebration took place in the Great Auditorium of the Academy of Leiden University on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Independence of the Republic of Indonesia on invitation by H.E. Drs. J.B. Soedarmanto Kadarisman, Ambassador of the Republic…

Last week, aviation professionals and leaders from around the world gathered in Chicago to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Chicago Convention, the landmark treaty that laid the foundation for modern international civil aviation and established the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).…

On Wednesday 23 September 2020, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte gave an online lecture together with Professor Afshin Ellian as part of the course Introduction to Law. The lecture had the title ‘The European Union in times of coronavirus’, and the Prime Minister answered questions from students. Hundreds…

The Dutch town of Schiedam was shocked this week by a fatal stabbing involving a 13-year-old victim and suspect. Mariëlle Bruning, Professor of Children and the Law, spoke to Dutch ‘RTL Nieuws’ about procedures with underage suspects.

In 1974 Professor Modderman (founder of the Institute for Prehistory Leiden; predecessor of the present Faculty of Archaeology) executed a small excavation in the city of Oss. The Middle Iron Age cemetery, built over by Roman Period farmhouses, proved to be the start of a unique archaeological regional…

On Friday June 7, 2024, Sarah Cramsey delivered her inaugural lecture entitled

On Thursday, the 4th of November 2010, a joint celebration took place in the Great Hall of the Gorleaus Laboratoria of the Faculty of Science of Leiden University on the occasion of the 65th Anniversary of the Independence of the Republic of Indonesia on invitation by H.E. Dr. Umar Hadi, Vice-Ambassador…

Last Wednesday was the official deadline for students to apply for one of our master’s programmes. Some of our master’s programmes, such as History, organised a last call Q&A for students.

Spycraft, by professor Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman has been selected by History Today and The Economist as one of 2024’s best books

The end of October will be all about the United Nations (UN). The festivities for the 75th anniversary have been scaled down due to the corona virus. 'A shame', says Prof.dr. Alanna O'Malley, but at the same time she sees that corona crisis also offers opportunities for the UN.

On February 18th Dr Gerrit Dusseldorp gave a talk about the Umhlatuzana Rock shelter in Kloof (South Africa). This site has preserved some of the earliest traces of Modern Humans and helps us understand how people in deep prehistory lived, survived and adapted. The talk was streamed by Arise creative…

What makes Leiden the best student city in the Netherlands? This was the question students were invited to answer in films about their city. The winner will be announced on 29 June in the Schouwburg in Leiden.

Conference

What will it be like to study at Leiden University in 2075? Ten surprising, artistic uni-visions could be brought to life. It’s up to you to vote for your favourite.

The Night of Discoveries will take place on 20 September in the area around Hortus botanicus Leiden, the Old Observatory, Pieterkserk, the Academy Building, Old School, the Faculty Club and the PJ Veth Building.

Quick resuscitation can save lives, but under 1% of the population of Leiden is a community first responder. Student associations and various partners in Leiden want to give a resuscitation course to 500 residents and students of Leiden. This special project has won the LUF’s Snouck Hurgronje Prize.

Over a thousand researchers and students protested in Leiden on 2 September against the plans to transfer money to science and technology at the expense of other disciplines. Just metres away, Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Ingrid van Engelshoven, was giving a speech at the opening of the…

Most people think of waste as something dirty that needs to be disposed of as soon as possible, but Olivia Yun-An Dung's dissertation aims to show that this does not always have to be the case. For this purpose, she focuses on Tzu Chi recycling in Taiwan. There, an army of elderly volunteers has been…

Five Leiden researchers have been nominated as members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).They will be inaugurated on 16 September.

In the very first Korean class that teacher Eun-ju Kim taught, there were already students with dyslexia. With a background in special education and clinical developmental psychology, she developed a new method to help them, partly based on teaching methods from Dutch first language education.

Archaeologist Frans Theuws, Buddhism specialist Jonathan Silk and mathematician Ronald Cramer have each been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million euros.

Sacrificing yourself for the greater good: in China, martyrdom and hero worship have been strongly encouraged by the Communist Party for the past decade or so. University lecturer Vincent Chang tells us more about this far-reaching development.

Stories of resistance in the Second World War are widely covered in Dutch historiography: Hannie Schaft, Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, and Professor Cleveringa are some of the best known. But these accounts largely focus on the Dutch domestic perspective. On the other side of the world, a complex colonial…

The Linked In profile of alumnus Arne Driessen describes him as a ‘serial entrepreneur’. After studying Japanese he ended up working for a translation agency, after which he founded his own online marketing company, which he later sold to enable him to do something different again: making offices more…

Anyone who wanted to get an impression of the Dutch East Indies between 1800 and 1945 quickly turned to travel literature. Large groups of readers devoured non-fiction accounts of the island empire on the other side of the world – and were given a one-sided picture. Most of the sources that reached…

As a woman, working in Japan and Korea can be pretty tough, Yorum Beekman discovered. It prompted her to pursue a PhD on the subject: ‘I thought: hey, that’s interesting!’

Even as a teenager Asa Splinter was determined to study Japanese in Leiden. A HAVO diploma and a change in legislation threatened to throw a spanner in the works, but Asa persevered. After ten years of studying, Asa obtained a master’s degree in Japanese and was nominated for the IHLIA thesis award…

Pui Chi Lai (35) has a lot on her plate, being a study adviser and coordinator of studies for two bachelor's programmes and two master's programmes. Alongside her job, however, she does not sit still and follows a PhD trajectory at the University of Macau.

Princess Beatrix was a guest at the opening of the conference on ‘Chinese Buddhism and the Scholarship of Erik Zürcher’ in Leiden on 12 February. Buddhism researchers from all parts of the world came together to reflect on the work of Leiden sinologist Erik Zürcher.

Professor of Modern China Florian Schneider researches what people do with technology and what technology does with people. Social media, for example. And then mainly in China.

Yung Lin’s research explores how citizens in Taiwan and Southeast Asia actively shape public diplomacy, build trust across cultures, and address identity-based conflicts, highlighting the shift from government-led to citizen-centred diplomacy.

Since the disaster in Japan, professors, staff and students of the department of Japanese Language and Culture at Leiden University have regularly been contacted by the media asking for their opinion about the events taking place there. Ivo Smits and Kasia Cwiertka, Professors of Japanese, give their…

Dr. Mikihiro Moriyama was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1960. He first came to Leiden for a year in 1988, and then stayed from 1992 to 1995 and was back again in June 2003 for his PhD. 'I’d never heard of the Sweat Room until I heard about it at a Leiden alumni meeting in Jakarta. When I visited Leiden in…

Chinees-Nederlandse kinderen krijgen via hun moeders en kinderboeken mee dat witte mensen de norm zijn, zo ontdekte promovendus Yiran Yang.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded an Advanced Grant to six Leiden researchers. It awards these significant grants to established principal investigators for ground-breaking, high-risk research.

Light, open and green: a description that fits the new, renovated location of the Faculty of Humanities. The official opening of the Herta Mohr Building took place on 8 October, and it has many remarkable features: for example, recycled ‘mushroom columns’, a pedestrian bridge to the University Library…

The Middle Ages are becoming increasingly more popular: just look at the popularity of such ‘medievalist’ TV series as Game of Thrones and Vikings, and let’s not forget popular re-enactments of medieval battles. Leiden University is home to many specialists of this fascinating period and this new blog…