At the time of writing, the UK has just acquired an extension for their departure from the European Union. However, this had not been the case when LUC’s ‘Regional Trends: The EU and its Neighbourhood’ class visited the Irish Embassy on Wednesday 20th March; at this point, everyone was preparing for…

More than eighty students of the Honours College track Science & Society completed their thematic courses. Instead of filling out an exam, they presented a documentary or blog series. These new forms of assessments offered a new perspective on topics like homelessness and the use of mobile phones.

PhD candidates in medicine, Wouter Jan Geelhoed and Nan van Geloven, are the winners of the Leiden preliminary round of FameLab. They are through to the final on 22 April.

Did you know that Arabic was for centuries the lingua franca in an area stretching from the south of Spain to the Chinese border? And that the Middle East under Muslim rule was the world’s beating heart of trade, but also of science and scholarship? Want to learn more? Then sign up for the new MOOC…

Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences of Leiden University started crowdfunding to raise 15.000 euro to build a laboratory in nature: The Living Lab. This is necessary to test the effects of chemical compounds in a natural situation.

A consortium called 'uNLock' has started developing an open source, non-profit application that will facilitate the verification of corona tests while ensuring maximum security of users.

Like spoken languages, sign languages evolve organically and do not always have the same origin. This produces different ways of communication and annotation. Manolis Fragkiadakis wrote his PhD thesis on this.

An overview of the media appearances of scientists working with the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs about terrorist attacks in Europe, their consequences, and more.

Cancer treatments often have an impact on people’s sexual health, but doctors and nurses do not discuss topics such as sexuality and intimacy with patients as a matter of course. This is what Esmée Krouwel, a physician-researcher at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), has discovered. With her research…

On Friday 5 February 2021 the online conference of the Dutch Platform of Empirical Legal Studies (ELS) took place. This conference served as a platform to bring young, enthusiastic and driven ELS scholars together in a research community and enable them to learn more and discuss about empirical research…

The Hague Journal of Diplomacy marks its 15th anniversary in 2020 with an award for the best article in the journal. The HJD Article Award is a biennial prize, like the Book Award that the ISGA-based journal will launch in 2021.

On Tuesday, September 17th, the Dutch king, Willem-Alexander, will present the plans of the new government of the Netherlands. This government’s aspirations, led by the party (PVV) of right-wing nationalist Geert Wilders, are mostly defined by budget cuts. One of the sectors receiving such budget cuts…

From pipetting in the lab to shining in front of the camera at a global student event. With 8.000 viewers watching the livestream, Marjolein Crooijmans presented the iGEM Giant Jamboree in Paris.

How did Google's computer programme AlphaGo become so powerful? On June 29, developer Aja Huang elaborated on this during a lecture in the Gorlaeus building.

The LUCAS Audience Award 2021 has been awarded to Nadine Akkerman. This is a prize for researchers who appeal to an audience wider than the academic community. The prize consists of 1000 euros, a trophy and eternal fame.

The Effective Protection of Fundamental Rights Research Programme at Leiden Law School had the honor to organise the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research Annual Conference.

Master’s student of Linguistics Marten van der Meulen helped organise the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Miracles of Human Language, which ran from 30 March until 11 May 2015. What was it like for a student to organise an MOOC? And what did he learn from it?

With RoMeincraft, you get to play the popular computer game Minecraft while learning about the ancient Romans. RoMeincraft, the project of the VALUE Foundation founded by (at the time) archaeologists from Leiden University, is at the interface between knowledge about the past and computer games.

For Leiden students and alumni, it might just be the week they feel most nostalgic about: EL CID week. This year sees its 50th edition. A small exhibition in Plexus Student Centre shows that although much about EL CID has changed – student fashion sense, for one – the formula has remained the same.

A European project should help reinvigorate Latin teaching in secondary schools. 'By focusing on citizenship, we want to show that Latin is relevant to discussions about citizenship and migration.'

Leiden health psychologist Liesbeth Van Vliet receives recognition for her research on doctor-patient communication and its influence on quality of healthcare. Van Vliet has been awarded one of four Heineken Young Scientists Award 2022 for promising young researchers working in the Netherlands.

A friendly chat is more complicated than you might think. As soon as the other person finishes talking, you already have an answer ready. But how do we know when it's time to change turns? University lecturer Johanneke Caspers has been awarded an NWO Open Competition grant to investigate the role of…

Free playtime and physical play are of great importance to children's social development. That is the main conclusion of innovative research by developmental psychologists and computer scientists from Leiden University.

LUF grants for research projects have been awarded to Liesbeth van Vliet, Michiel Claessen, Anna van Duijvenvoorde, Laura Steenbergen, Kim de Jong and Franziska Richter. Each of these Leiden University scientists receive an amount between € 17.500 and € 25.000 to realise their scientific plans.

Op 8 oktober organiseerde het Leiden Healthy Society Center een inspirirend kenniscafé over de rol van vaders in de opvoeding van hun kinderen.

Researchers at FOM-institute AMOLF and the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION) have developed a rubber rod with strange bending behaviours. Beyond a certain point, it bends more under decreasing pressure. This behaviour doesn’t fit our expectations and does not conform to secular laws that predict the…

From a Tuscany escape room to scientific illustrations of flowers, and from Chinese movie subtitles to innovative education methods for children, every subject imaginable was covered at the first ever Honours College Conference. ‘You get the chance to break away from the standard study path.’

In the second semester of this academic year (February 2025), the Faculty of the Humanities will switch to Ans for digital exams. Several lecturers have already gained experience with the new platform through pilot exams. Two lecturers from Dutch Studies, Liesbet Winkelmolen and Myra Arends, share their…

The alignment of the James Webb Space Telescope is complete. The space observatory is able to capture sharp, well-directed images with each of its four powerful scientific instruments on board. The MIRI instrument, on which Professor of Molecular Astrophysics Ewine van Dishoeck also worked, was the…

Within 20 years, intelligent machines will play a major role in society. ‘Selfdriving cars will be 90% safer than human-driven cars and will change transportation globally,’ says artificial intelligence scientist Bart Selman of Cornell University. He gave the first Ada Lovelace lecture of the Leiden…

Four students of the Faculty of Archaeology investigated how the current and past inhabitants of the Dutch province of South Holland deal with water. Their findings now feature in an exhibition that can now be visited in the Van Steenis building’s Reuvenshal.

Advisory Board member Francesca Forno shares insights about the Food Citizens? project.

Explaining your PhD research to others can be quite difficult, especially without talking! PhD student Annebelle Kok of the Institute of Biology Leiden was one of the finalists of the 'Dance Your PhD' competition of scientific journal Science. ‘You have to understand your own research well if you are…

For the students of our Dutch institutions, the Netherlands Embassy supported an ‘academic retreat’ at hotel Stella de Mare in Ayn Sukhna. During this two-day retreat, our students discussed with students of al-Azhar University in Cairo on various topics. It was an open exchange of ideas and feedback…

People with intermittent arterial claudication often experience severe pain when walking. Psychologist Anne Cuperus used virtual reality to trick 20 patients, and discovered that they could suddenly walk much further. PhD defence on 10 December.

Martin Richardson, who graduated in 1997 from what was then the Leiden LLM Programme in European Community Law (now: Leiden Adv LLM European and International Business Law, EIBL), has recently been appointed as a Senator of the College of Justice in Scotland, meaning that he is now a judge of the highest…

If you look closely, you may recognise the metal beams from the skeleton of the Circular Pavilion near Leiden Central Station: they come from the demolished Gorlaeus Highrise. The same beams have also been used for the circular construction of BioPartner 5 at the Leiden Bio Science Park, which will…

Dr Nadine Akkerman, lecturer in Early Modern Literature and postdoctoral researcher in Leiden, has written a new book to accompany the exhibition on Elizabeth Stuart and Amalia von Solms at the Historical Museum of The Hague. ‘They were like goddesses, constantly trying to upstage one another,’ says…

A piece of corrugated rubber can function as a simple computer, displaying memory and displaying the ability to count to two. Leiden physicists describe the computing rubber in the journal PNAS. ‘Simple materials can process information, and we want to find the principles behind that.’

An online course offered by Leiden University on the European Union is among the top 50 MOOCs in the world. This was announced recently by MOOC platform Class Central.

The roof of the lecture halls at the Faculty of Science was fitted with solar panels in June, making it the biggest solar-panel-covered roof in Leiden.

‘In recent publications about the slave trade the same rhetorical weapons are used as two centuries ago in the battle for the abolition of the British slave trade. It is a topic fraught with emotions, but that should not prevent historians from being as careful and impartial as possible in their research,’…

Can humans sense where north is, using what is known as magnetoreception? This question had master’s student Björn Keyser (Media Technology) so intrigued that he started crowdfunding to be able to study this together with the California Institute of Technology.

The PhD students at the Academy for Creative and Performing Arts of Leiden University include a composer, an artist and a baroque flautist. Henk Borgdorff, who studied the phenomenon of PhDs in the Arts, says, ‘Artistic research in all disciplines of the Arts is a booming business worldwide.’

To celebrate the formal launch of the Leiden Chinese Queer Collection (LCQC, 莱顿华语酷儿文献收藏), promote Chinese queer studies scholarship, and raise the visibility of Chinese queer history and culture, the LCQC steering committee will hold a workshop on 24-25 July 2025, under the aegis of the Leiden University…

What do gender identity and digital technology have to do with each other? Together they are the subject of research at Leiden University. Researchers Tessa Verhoef and Eduard Fosch-Villaronga of the faculties of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and Law will investigate the interaction between artificial…

The RED team, a group of independent experts, has advised the Dutch government to close down all (secondary) schools. It is a difficult balance the government has to find between limiting the number of contagions and the social consequences of closing down the schools. As a result of the first lockdown…

The Hague Project Peace & Justice, in cooperation with Dr. Alanna O’Malley of the Leiden University Institute for History, organized a one-day conference on October 23rd, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the United Nations. Students of the ‘A History of the United Nations’ elective course of the…

Last year, the abuse of a girl by her foster parents shocked the Netherlands. Their trial begins today in a case that marks a turning point for youth care. Mariëlle Bruning, Professor of Child Law, has spoken to various news outlets.

A quarter of all Dutch students suffer burn-out symptoms, and an even greater percentage regularly experience emotional exhaustion and tiredness. At a symposium on 7 May students were given tips for handling stress.