The NIMAR library receives visiting students and affiliated researchers who are looking for a quiet place to study and work. Besides this, the library provides them with support in finding relevant literature for their research.

The Modern Migration Policy Act aims to ensure that the admission of regular migrants is effective and manageable.

In early January, the Master of Laws: Advanced Studies in International Children’s Rights released its January Newsletter to its friends and partner networks.

How can we make studying easier for students with a functional disability? This will be the key question during a public conference on 20 April. Romke Biagioni (Fenestra) explains why there is such a need for this conference. Are you going to be there?

The coal-power energy sector is using enormous amounts of fresh water which is projected to negatively affect lives and the ecological balance of the surrounding region. This is the conclusion of the new report The Unquenchable Thirst of Energy Production, published by Greenpeace Bulgaria and Leiden…

Using the Dutch-led Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope, astronomers have discovered unusual radio waves coming from the nearby red dwarf star GJ1151. The radio waves bear the tell-tale signature of aurorae caused by an interaction between a star and its planet. The radio emission from a star-planet…

A study carried out at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) on the wellbeing of PhD candidates at Leiden University has shown that a number of them experience so much stress that they can develop mental health problems. The supervision of PhD candidates is a continuing focus of attention…

For thousands of years, the prehistoric communities of the Low Countries followed their own path, compared with the rest of Europe. An international research team has now published these findings in Nature.

Why do some people with adverse childhood experiences develop mental health conditions whereas others do not? A Leiden research project is looking for volunteers aged between 18 and 24 to help us understand more about human resilience.

It sounds futuristic, but it is possible: the creation of miniature organs of patients in order to study them and see how diseases develop and can be treated. This is what researchers from the LUMC, Twente University (UT), UMCG, TU Delft and the Hubrecht Institute hope to achieve in the next ten years…

Did Francisco de Valdés indeed spare Leiden because his beloved Magdalena Moons had family living here? Historian Raymond Fagel gave a lecture on 24 September on the siege of Leiden, looking at the many myths that still exist.

For centuries, astronomers have studied the universe by collecting light signals. Since 2015, the confirmation of an important prediction of Einstein allows us to explore the universe in a new way: through gravitational wave radiation. Astronomy PhD candidate Valeriya Korol proposes to use these gravitational…

The P.J. Cosijn Research Fellowship is an initiative to give promising Research MA students of Leiden University with an interest in Anglo-Saxon Studies the opportunity to conduct research on Old English language and literature. The Cosijn Fellowships are part of the ERC-funded project ‘Early Medieval…

The European Commission has selected a consortium of major European launcher and satellite manufacturers, operators and service providers, as well as policy and legal research centres and institutes to study and provide guidelines and recommendations on Space Traffic Management (STM). The IIASL of Leiden…

How have British cities changed in the years since the Second World War? And what drove this transformation? This innovative new history traces the development of the post-war British city, from the 1940s era of reconstruction, through the rise and fall of modernist urban renewal, up to the present-day…

What is the effectiveness of two school-based skills-training programs in promoting mental health?

New research has confirmed that the Dutch military used systematic, extreme violence against Indonesians. In his book Soldaat in Indonesië (Soldier in Indonesia), to be released at the end of October, historian Gert Oostindie draws the same conclusions using different sources. He presents new findings…

Now available on YouTube!

In a letter initiated by Wil Roebroeks, among others, serious concerns were raised about three research papers claiming evidence for one of the earliest human occupations of Europe.

On early October, the Master of Laws: Advanced Studies in International Children’s Rights released its October Newsletter to its friends and partner networks.

Generations of Leiden students and academics have done archaeological research into the early medieval history of Oegstgeest. This makes this old settlement one of the best-documented sites from that era. In a new book, Leiden researchers take stock.

Settlement burials in the pagus Texandrië and the transformation of Merovingian society c. 700 AD (Southern Netherlands)

In this study I explore literary structures of identity-formation in the works of assimilated/acculturated Jewish writers: Kafka’s novella “The Metamorphosis” (“Die Verwandlung”, 1912) and David Vogel’s Hebrew novel Married Life. 1929).

The Historia Naturalis Brasiliae Reconsidered

For early modern Europeans, the past was a measure of most things, good and bad. For that reason it was also hotly contested, manipulated, and far too important to be left to historians alone.

This book focuses on transnationalism as a key concept to evaluate how Europe responds to cross-border security challenges.

Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker will head a delegation that is visiting Indonesia at the end of June. The visit is to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘Leiden’ institute KITLV-Jakarta. What does this institute do and why is Indonesia important to the University?

Senior lecturer Rick Honings has been appointed Scaliger professor with effect from 1 July 2020. In the coming years his focus will be on promoting teaching and research on the Special Collections of the Leiden University Library. Honings succeeds book historian Erik Kwakkel, who held this chair until…

Dr Peter Webb (LIAS) has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant for his project Geo-Poetic Analysis of Pre-Islamic Arabia (GeoPo).

How do opinions form and change in large groups of people? That's not just a sociological question, it's a mathematical one. PhD candidate Federico Capannoli studied opinion dynamics. He defended his thesis on November 19.

15 July 2016 was the hundredth anniversary of the birth of George Maduro, Leiden alumnus and namesake of Madurodam, a park in The Hague where visitors can see Holland in miniature. War-time and resistance hero Maduro died at the age of 28 in Dachau concentration camp. ‘A lot of the information we have…

Hekmat Dirbas defended his thesis on 14 February 2017

PhD candidate Johannes Boer conducted research on the eminent Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA). As part of his research he composed an opera featuring Monteverdi in the leading role.

This year it is 40 years ago that LOVA was established, which we want to celebrate with a seminar around the theme “Gender Moves”. We invite you to join us on May 10, 2019, at Leiden University, to explore how gender is enacted and reproduced in movement and how gendered movement contributes to dismantling…

This project investigates which metaphors are problematic in machine translation, when, why, and for whom.

Leiden University experiments with Virtual Reality as a learning experience.

On 20 November, Special Professor of United Nations Studies in Peace and Justice, Alanna O'Malley, presented her research agenda for the next 3 years. An ambitious agenda full of projects to gain more insight into the origin and functioning of the UN.

As Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS-KNAW) fellow, Tesse Stek will explore the intricate relationship between the history of ideas about Roman imperialism and contemporary archaeological interpretation.

Friday 25 September, 2015 marks the official launch of Leiden University's Central and East European Studies (CEES) Center.

Friday 30 January 2015 were the final presentations of the last course of the Minor Sustainable Development.

Anar Ahmadov, Assistant Professor of Political Economy at LUC, has been awarded NIAS Individual Fellowship by the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS-KNAW).

They existed and were important, but for too long they have remained invisible in historiography: women. Ariadne Schmidt, the Magdalena Moons endowed professor, researches the history of urban culture in Leiden. Women take pride of place in her research. Inaugural lecture on 28 February.

Curators devote a lot of attention to their collections. How is Martijn Storms, curator of maps and atlases at Leiden University Libraries, managing to do this now he is working from home? And how is Silvia Vermetten digitising Eastern manuscripts from home?

Our MA student Marie Costers from the University of Antwerp wrote about her experiences as a student at NVIC in Spring 2025!

This year Leiden will be celebrating the 450th Relief of Leiden. Leiden master’s students are researching this history as part of the ‘Traces of 3 October’ project.

CFP: Two-day PhD/ Research MA masterclass Feminist Theory with and around the work of Prof. dr. Lynne Huffer organised by the OZSW in cooperation with NOG

The world is becoming increasingly digitised, and the information one has easy access to is often rather overwhelming. In particular, the accumulative nature of the archaeological practice has resulted in huge quantities of data being produced. But how to prevent these from becoming dust-collectors…

Team History of Africa and the Americas