Of je nu appt, online nieuws leest, of door Instagram scrolt, jouw gedrag wordt gemonitord. Sterker nog: wát jij ziet, wordt door anderen bepaald. Promovendus Aleksandre Zardiashvili onderzocht de impact van online advertenties en de macht van de bedrijven erachter.

Armed with sunglasses, a thick layer of sunscreen and several bottles of water, over 3,300 students have arrived in Leiden for their introduction week. The start of the 55th EL CID happened to be on the hottest day of the year.

Purple clothing and a pride flag flying from all University buildings: Leiden University is once again taking part in Purple Friday. How do people experience this day? We asked some employees and students of the Faculty of Humanities.

For associate professor Jenneke van der Wal, things have been good recently. After being awarded a Vici and Una Europa grant, she has now also received an Ammodo Science Award. ‘It is a nice confirmation that I am doing valuable work.’

Over hundreds of thousands of years, our region witnessed the comings and goings of various types of hominin. This depended on the temperature as ice ages alternated with warmer periods. In ‘De eerste mensen in de Lage Landen’ (‘The First Humans in the Low Countries’) Leiden archaeologists Yannick Raczynski-Henk…

With its FestivOWL theme, Orientation Week Leiden (OWL) promises to be one big festival for new international students in Leiden.

Exclusion elicits the same response in children as in adolescents and adults. That is what psychologist Mara van der Meulen found when she studied brain activity in primary schoolchildren. ‘What is new for us is that it is the same in childhood as later in life.’ Doctoral defence on 10 December.

Whether finding signals of dark matter or discovering hydrogen in the vicinity of exoplanets, Leiden astronomers are world players in their field, and they are part of a long tradition: Leiden was the first university in the world to have its own observatory.

At the end of 2018, the LUF announced a new annual grant: the Snouck Hurgronje Grant. This annual grant is awarded to innovative interfaculty research and teaching projects. Three project teams secured a place on the shortlist with their research proposals. They were invited to present their plan to…

The death of George Floyd at the hands of the police may have sparked the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States and here in the Netherlands, but they are about more than that alone. We asked Karwan Fatah-Black, a historian who specialises in the Dutch colonial history, for his analysis. ‘We…

Last week, third-year students of the Bachelor Security Studies concluded a seven-week intensive programme with a two-day conference. They presented their findings in front of a full lecture hall and in the presence of the client for whom they worked on a complex security issue. Tutor Saskia Postema:…

Lotje Zuur sometimes has to perform disfiguring operations. As a head and neck surgeon, she removes parts of the mouth, throat or face of people with cancer. Now a promising treatment may make such operations unnecessary. What would this mean for patients? This is what her inaugural speech on 19 September…

You may have noticed this happening more often: your municipality sends you an online questionnaire to find out your opinion on the renovation of a certain area or the design plans for a new district. But how inclusive are these online platforms where citizens can participate in decisions on government…

'Academics who share their knowledge with the outside world on social media are often insulted or even threatened. Especially female academics and academics of colour seem to regularly be the victim of sexist and racist comments.' This is what Ineke Sluiter, Professor of Greek Language and Literature…

It’s Circular Economy Week, from 1 to 6 February. But what is it that makes an economy circular? And just how circular is our university? René Kleijn, lecturer on the honours class Circular Economy: from challenge to opportunity, explains.

After a detour via the ANWB in Munich, alumna Manon Schouten works as a history teacher at two schools. ‘It's so rewarding to see the material resonate with students.’

In September 2023 the new minor Sustainability, Climate Change and Food starts. This minor critically examines the complexities of food sustainability through ecological, socio-economic, political, and cultural systems.

Hao Liu moved from China to Leiden to do her PhD trajectory at the Institute for Philosophy. What is it like to do a PhD so far from home?

Alumnus Nick Hortensius started volunteering at the Leiden International Film Festival (LIFF) in his student days. He has since grown with the festival to become head of programming. How does he look back on his student days? And what can we expect from the festival this year?

International prosecutors, for instance at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, investigate particularly serious crimes such as genocide. They decide, among other things, whether or not to prosecute. PhD candidate Cale Davis investigated how prosecutors come to such decisions and will defend…

When we think of unethical medical experiments, we tend to think first of Nazi Germany. What is less well known is that experiments were also carried out in colonised areas without the explicit consent of the test subject. University lecturer Fenneke Sysling has received a European grant to research…

The way the great masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries learned to draw is more similar to a present-day drawing class or book than you might think. Professor of ‘Art on Paper and Parchment’ Yvonne Bleyerveld tells us about the art of copying and model books.

The newly established Leiden Jewish Studies Association aims to bring together Leiden scholars working on Judaism. The first annual conference will take place in Leiden on 6 and 7 December. Leiden professors and co-organisers of the LJSA Sarah Cramsey and Jürgen Zangenberg talk about their plans.

Assistant professor Carmen Van den Bergh has been nominated for the Leiden University Teaching Prize. ‘I combine literature education with social relevance and personal experience.’

Is there a place for machine translation engines like Google Translate within the Faculty of Humanities? Associate professor Lettie Dorst’s new educational website aims to help students and teachers find an answer to this question. ‘The use of AI tools, such as Bing and ChatGPT, shouldn’t be seen as…

For a while, it was uncertain whether prominent American politician Nancy Pelosi would travel to Taiwan. But last Tuesday, she did visit – much to the displeasure of China. Asia expert Casper Wits explains why China reacted so strongly and what the consequences of the visit may be.

Just imagine new AI technology is able to read human emotions flawlessly. How would that affect us as humans? That is the question PhD candidate Alexandra Prégent is exploring.

In the past decades terrorists have regularly surprised us with unexpected and spectacular attacks, such as the one on the World Trade Centre in New York. How can intelligence services stay one step ahead of them? Consult Charles Darwin and Steven Spielberg is the advice of terrorism expert Yannick…

After a successful career as a singer, Esmee Schoones started studying French a few years ago. It resulted in a national award for her thesis on musical arrangements of Verlaine's poems and a job teaching French.

In this ‘Educatips’ column, Psychology lecturers share their most important lessons about teaching. This month: Sepideh Saadat guides a support group for students who struggle with the Israel-Hamas war. ‘Some of them feel guilty about enjoying life while their family is suffering.’

After nearly two years of retirement, Wil Roebroeks looks back on a career that began in a time of freedom and ended in a field that has undergone profound academic and social change. ‘I have been fortunate to always enjoy my work,’ he says. ‘That is also my advice to younger generations: above all,…

In 2025, our colleagues from the Institute of Psychology once again made a strong presence in the media. From (inter)national newspapers to podcasts, discover where they shared their expertise in the media this year.

‘If we all possessed just an ounce of Cleveringa, then all would be well in the world,’ said Professor Leo Lucassen. In the Cleveringa debate on the line between free speech and threatening speech he called for ‘more guts’. He is not the only one who thinks this is badly needed if the debate at the…

Different groups of hominins probably learned from one another much earlier than was previously thought, and that knowledge was also distributed much further. A study by archaeologists at Leiden University on the use of fire shows that 400,000 years ago knowledge and skills must already have been exchanged…

To support policies and decision-making on sustainability, it is important to involve citizens and stakeholders in the process. The term used for this in Public Administration is 'participation'. Professor Eefje Cuppen observes that things still often go wrong with participation. Inaugural lecture on…

Debates about the ‘end’ of the Roman era, how, when, and even if it ended, are still very much alive and raging. However, what happened after the (long) late antique period is a lesser-known and lesser-studied subject. The post-Roman past needs, however, as much energetic investigation and discussion.…

In October, LUCIS and NIMAR will host a two-day workshop in honor of the 50th anniversary of Islam Observed, Clifford Geertz' comparative study of Islam in Morocco and Indonesia. Send in your proposal and get a chance to share your work in Rabat this fall.

At the Faculty's opening of the 2019-2020 academic year, the focus lay not just on the vision for the future of the social sciences, and the opening of the refurbished library, but above all on the government's plans for university financing. The speeches included an interview between Annemarie Samuels…

Prison and student life are worlds apart. But in the Learning Behind Bars project, Leiden criminology students get the chance to study inside prison walls with people incarcerated there.

Multidrug-resistant pathogens and worldwide pandemics are increasing, making infectious diseases more prevalent. To develop new treatments, deeper knowledge of the interaction between bacteria and human cells is required. Ariane Briegel recently became a Medical Delta professor and studies such path…

‘A challenging rollercoaster, but also a very bonding and insightful experience,’ that’s how the team of iGEM Leiden 2022 wraps up their participation in the iGEM contest. The contest for synthetic biology climaxed during the Grand Jamboree in Paris. The team ended up in the top 10 of over 360 teams…

Bart Schuurman, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs in The Hague, has received a Veni grant which will allow him to continue his research into the radicalisation of terrorists for the next three years. ‘In order to better understand terrorists, I will focus on the large…

Karen Smith is a university lecturer in International Relations at the Institute for History and she occupies a unique position: she has one foot in the academic world and the other in the world of the United Nations. As a Special Adviser, she helps the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to remind…

Itandehui Jansen graduated from the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam and is currently making films as part of her PhD project at Leiden University. And with great success. Her films have been shown at the IDFA and the Short Film Corner of Cannes, and have won a number of prizes.…

Various ministries started building nuclear bunkers in the seventies to shield themselves from a possible nuclear attack from the East. One of these nuclear bunkers lies below our new Wijnhaven building. This specific bunker was designed for important figures of government, and was built to function…

Those pesky raindrops that get you wet on your way to work, are formed high up in the sky from clouds of water vapour. The process of nucleation describes the way this happens. Edgar Blokhuis of the Leiden Institute of Chemistry developed a theory to describe this transition more precisely. Chemists…

The enlargement of the EU to include ten East and Central European countries went smoothly. But further expansion is meeting resistance and Poland and Hungary are now abandoning a number of democratic principles. What are the reasons? Antoaneta Dimitrova, Professor of Comparative Governance, explains…

Are we on the right track towards a circular economy in 2050, with fully renewable energy technology and circular construction? The CML of Leiden University, together with the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), TNO, Utrecht University and RIVM, is investigating what is needed to achieve…

On 15 January, the winner of the famed LION Image Award will be announced. Submissions ranged from the famous 3d printed microboat to an eerily abstract graph depicting a Majorana fermion.

Elephants ranged over Schöningen in Lower Saxony 300,000 years ago. In recent years, remains of at least ten elephants have been found at the Palaeolithic sites situated on the edges of the former opencast lignite mine. Now, a collaboration of archaeologists from University of Tübingen and the Lower…