Suzan Verberne is nominated by the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) to be granted the C.J. Kok Public Award, also known as the award for the ‘Discoverer of the Year’.

Three lecturers have beennominated for the LUS Teaching prize: Florian Schneider, Thijs Porck and Christine Espin. The prize, an initiative of the Leiden University Student Platform (LUS), will be presented at the opening of the academic year.

Julia Cramer is the winner of NWO's Minerva Prize for 2017. Cramer will receive the prize for her research in the field of quantum science and technology.

Leiden University’s Political Science and International Studies programmes have consolidated their firm academic reputation. In the 2017 QS World University Rankings, Leiden ranks 26th among the most valued institutes worldwide. Within the Netherlands, Leiden has retained the first position.

On Friday 10 November 2017 the annual Janneke Fruin-Helb Scholarship was awarded to alumna Matilda Sebire. She graduated in the master's specialisation in Material Culture Studies.

How did Dutch refugee policies develop during a period in which consecutive coalition cabinets were responsible for these policies during refugee crises between 1913 en 2017 and what were the considerations that can explain this development?

This PhD-thesis analyses the relationship between the parties’ choices in the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis’ assessments of the election manifestos and coalition agreements over the period 1986-2017, and tries to explain this relationship.

Prof. Dr. Ir. Marin van Heel, Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Biology Leiden (NeCEN), is one of the winners of the “Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences 2017”. This annual award is presented to recognize contributions that have opened new fields of research or have advanced concepts in a particular…

The Jaap Doek Children’s rights thesis award is an annual award for the best thesis in the field of Children’s Rights granted by Defence for Children and the Department of Child Law of the Leiden Law School. This year the thesis award will be presented for the fifth time.

The Europa Instituut of the University of Leiden and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law annually organize a conference to discuss current developments in European Union Law.

SBB alumni Dennis van der Wiel and Max Wijsman are nominated for the ''Best tech-idea of 2017'' of the scientific magazine 'kijkmagazine'.

Dr. Moritz Jesse, Associate Professor at the Europa Institute, presented two papers at the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) which took place in Oslo, Norway, in September 2017.

No matter how hard Chinese communists tried to control the economy, they could not stop the free market from flourishing. This was the message given by historian Frank Dikötter on 7 February during a lecture on the Cultural Revolution. He will be awarded an Honorary Doctorate on 8 February.

On the university’s birthday, professors teach a class of 10 and 11-year-olds during Meet the Professor. The professors were bombarded with questions.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Robert D. McChesney will be the Central Asia Visiting Professor in February-March 2017. Professor McChesney will deliver a guest lecture on 28 February and a master class on 6 March within the Central Asia Initiative at Leiden University.

In July and August 2017, Magdalena Jozwiak, researcher at the eLaw department, is going to teach the course on ‘Privacy and surveillance in an information age: comparative law perspectives’ at the Kuala Lumpur campus of the Australian Monash University, within the framework of the Monash Law Malaysia…

Leiden University has a long tradition of Asian language education. Chinese, Japanese and Korean partners are essential in providing a practical side of learning education.

Vincent Bakker has won the 2017 Thesis Prize of the research master’s programme Political Science and Public Administration. His study of labour market effects of social investment policies is the crowning achievement of Bakker’s work as a MSc student. It also marks the start of his academic career.…

Charles Melville, Professor of Persian History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Pembroke College, will be the Central Asia Visiting Professor from 20 November until 28 November 2017. Charles Melville will deliver a guest lecture on Thursday, 23 November, co-organized with LUCIS, and a masterclass…

History and Religious Studies in Leiden rank # 17 and #32 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. With this, History in Leiden ranks as the best in The Netherlands and Religious Studies ranks as second best.

Four students founded the Leiden Student Working Group on Homosexuality on the day of the Dies Natalis in 1968. This was to be the start of the LBGT+ movement in Leiden, which celebrated its 50-year anniversary this year. What has been achieved and what is the status of emancipation today?

Public Administration researcher Adrienne Héritier will receive an honorary degree from Leiden University. The award is for her groundbreaking work in the field of multilevel governance, decisionmaking and institutional theory at the European level. She will be awarded the degree on the dies natalis…

During the 57th Leiden-London meeting, held on 30 June 2018 in Leiden, the Editorial Board of the Common Market Law Review awarded the 2017 Common Market Law Review Young Academics Prize to Dr Ermioni Xanthopoulou, for her article entitled “Mutual Trust and Rights in EU Criminal and Asylum Law: Three…

Security and safety challenges are at the top of the list of the most pressing issues of contemporary society.

MSc Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology alumna Annelin Verkade is one of the four 'runners-up' for the IIAS Master Thesis prize 2017. Supervisor: Dr. Erik de Maaker. Award ceremony on 22 February 2018.

Book Launch

Leiden University celebrated its 444th anniversary with a historical procession on 8 February. It celebrated this year’s Dies Natalis in time-honoured fashion with a ceremony in the Pieterskerk, but broke with tradition by sending professors out to primary schools.

At the LION/Sterrewacht new year’s reception, Scientific Director of Casimir Tjerk Oosterkamp handed out the 2017 Hendrik Casimir Prize to physics students Nashwan Sabti (Leiden) and Nikolas Kavadias (Delft). The Casimir Research School yearly awards the prize to the best MSc students in (Applied) Physics…

Writing a book on the recent history of Leiden University in corona times. For educational and policy historian Pieter Slaman (34), this has meant working in the attic of his parents’ house while they looked after his daughter, along with numerous online conversations and very few, if any, visits to…

The Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society (VVI) and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) organize a two-day workshop on Indonesian Family Law on 4 and 5 October.

Several prizes have been awarded to students and staff or the Institute of Psychology. Congratulations to all of them.

It is the second year in a row that the Faculty of Archaeology is ranked the highest in continental Europe. Aside from this the faculty features, as it did last year, in the top ten worldwide.

The ICC Moot Court Competition, organised by the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, in partnership with the International Bar Association and sponsored by the Planethood Foundation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and The Hague Municipality, welcomed top students of 64…

The LOFAR e-infrastructure group is responsible for deploying and maintaining LOFAR processing on distributed e-infrastructure. A co-operation between SURFsara, Leiden University and ASTRON, the group develops software to integrate the LOFAR stack with processing pipelines. Our software can schedule…

Ron Sela, Associate Professor of Central Asian History in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University – Bloomington, will be the Central Asia Visiting Professor from 19 until 25 May 2017. Ron Sela will deliver a guest lecture and a master class within the Central Asia Initiative…

Ron Sela, Associate Professor of Central Asian History in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University – Bloomington, will be the Central Asia Visiting Professor from 19 until 25 May 2017. Ron Sela will deliver a guest lecture and a master class within the Central Asia Initiative…

Prof. Dr Isabella Diederiks-Verschoor passed away on 17 October 2017 at the age of 102. She was a pioneer of air and space law, both in the Netherlands and all over the world.

No evidence found that increasing migration leads to an increase in politically and ideologically motivated criminality. Migration flows have, however resulted in increased polarisation in the Netherlands.

In romantic love, we often invoke an idiom of infinity—for instance, when we promise to love each other forever, or declare the other to be the one. But what does this metaphysical appeal signify? And how can such a promise of infinite love be made within the bounds of a finite life? In attempt to answer…

Civil service systems are often targets of criticism globally. This article seeks to fill an evidence void about government performance and meritocracy

In this article, Honorata Mazepus, assistant professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, and Dimiter Toshkov, associate professor at the Institute of Public Administration, discuss whether the winner–loser gap extends beyond the political domain to subjective health and well-being as…

The smallness of Suriname, according to political scientist Wouter Veenendaal (Leiden University), strongly affects and shapes the nature of democracy in the country. On the one hand, clientelism ensures that members of each ethnic group included in power-sharing arrangements have access to state resources…

A selection of news from Leiden University.

Alumni event

On the occasion of the conferral of an honorary doctorate to children’s rights activist Graça Machel, a fund has been established that will enable two female students from South Africa to come and study in Leiden.

From ransomware to Citrix traffic jams: over the past few months Dutch organisations were regularly brought to a standstill by serious cyber attacks. We can only face these threats by standing as one, and universities and government should take the lead. These are the words of Leiden professors Bibi…

The jury of the C.J. Kok Award selected Stéphanie van der Pas' dissertation as the Faculty of Science's best dissertation of 2017. This was announced by rector Carel Stolker during the faculty’s New Year's reception on 9 January.

Five research projects of the Institute for History have been selected for the Research Traineeship Programme 2016-2017. The programme was initiated by The Faculty of Humanities to offer motivated students the opportunity to develop themselves in academic research. In December the research trainees,…