What do you do if you have a book from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, but you suspect that the binding contains a fragment of a medieval manuscript? University lecturer Thijs Porck has received an NWO grant to experiment with a camera attached to a tube. 'The project boils down to keyhole surgeries…

In addition to his Film and Literature Studies, Bob van Oosterhout is a bassoonist with several orchestras. He is going to Milan with the student choir and orchestra ‘Collegium Musicum’.

For hundreds of years, children in Ancient Egypt learned to read using The Satire of the Trades, a text in which a father gives advice to his son through descriptions of different professions. PhD candidate Judith Jurjens investigated how this worked in practice.

The Guggenheim Fellowship is a prestigious award for US nationals. There are more than 3,000 applications every year, and this year only 188 were honoured. Professor Jonathan Silk is one of these 188, the first ever at Leiden University, and he tells us more about the fellowship and what he will do…

Together with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and creative partner Big Orange, Laura Bertens, Sara Polak, Yra van Dijk, and Thony Visser will investigate possible uses of the voice in cultural memory.

So much has happened this year! 2023 was an eventful year in which several wars raged about which our experts could offer interpretation. It was also the year in which the government made apologies for the slavery past. Leiden humanities scholars were at the forefront of this with their research on…

In 2025, students, lecturers, researchers and alumni of the Faculty of Humanities were once again at the heart of society. They demonstrated the importance of the humanities through their groundbreaking research, meaningful education and strong collaborations.

Conference

Do you recall all those drugs that were hastily proposed as potential treatments for COVID-19? In the event of a future pandemic, the goal is to offer an effective treatment more quickly and efficiently. To achieve this, a team led by Coen van Hasselt is developing a platform that can speed up the process…

Hugo de Groot, one of history’s most famous legal scholars, was already studying arts and law in Leiden at the age of 11. How did his career take off from that point and who inspired him?

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…

The SpaceEU project, coordinated by Leiden University, has launched an online toolkit with a collection of space-centred activities that engage people with the wonders of space. The toolkit is targeted at girls and underrepresented communities and can be used by schools, youth centres, museums, NGOs…

Neither technology, nor Pan-Islamism, but only the codification of law could prevent Iran from falling even further behind the Western world. So wrote the 19th century intellectual Mustashar ad-Dowla in his tract Yak Kaleme. The translation of this work was presented in Amsterdam on 8 December.

Due to the unrest in the Middle East, many ancient Syrian manuscripts are no longer available or have even been destroyed. Professor of Old Testament Bas ter Haar Romeny received 77 microfilms of Syrian manuscripts, enabling him and his PhD students to research these ‘lost’ manuscripts.

In a paper, researchers suggest how the next European Commission can develop an alternative policy model that centres people’s well-being.

When you become very good at one thing, that sometimes comes at the expense of something else. Such trade-offs also apply to bacteria. When becoming more resistant to one antibiotic, bacteria can sometimes become more sensitive to another. Linda Aulin, PhD candidate in the pharmacology group of Coen…

Professors Simcha Jong (Leiden University) and Rifat Atun (Harvard University) convened an exploratory seminar to discuss challenges for health systems in realising the potential of precision medicine at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies in Cambridge, MA on 17 April 2017.

Over a seven year period an international team of scientists has mapped more than a quarter of the northern sky using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a pan-European radio telescope. From Leiden, Astronomer Timothy Shimwell and Huub Röttgering, among others, are involved. It reveals an astonishingly…

In the 1960s at MIT, cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky told a couple of graduate students to program a computer to perform the simple task of recognising objects in pictures, thinking it would be a nice summer project. Scientists from Leiden and the rest of the world are still working on it today.

For his PhD project, computer scientist Manolis Fragkiadakis is developing a tool that can compare videos of sign language corpora. This would make it possible to detect differences between sign languages and prevent translation errors. Ultimately, the tool could be used to compare sign languages from…

LUMC Curium and the Dutch National Youth Council (NJR) have been working on integrating young people’s lived experiences of mental health problems in medical research and training. The aim is to broaden doctors' and researchers’ perspectives and improve the care offered.

What motivates citizens to participate in a citizen science project on plastic pollution? And does that motivation change over time? Liselotte Rambonnet tried to answer these and other questions with her research on the Clean Rivers (‘Schone Rivieren’) project. Rambonnet is a PhD student at the Institute…

Two Leiden researchers have demonstrated how mathematics can improve our healthcare. Daniel Gomon has developed a model that contributes to the quality of care in hospitals. Marta Spreafico works on an app that helps physicians make well-informed decisions about the treatment of a certain type of cancer.…

Seger Kersbergen studied the Cabo Verdean nightlife in Rotterdam. He explains how their music describes their nightlife and daily lives.

Marlon Titre (1982) studied at Royal Conservatoire The Hague, did his PhD and studied at Leiden University, earned several other qualifications and is now, among others, Director of Filmhuis The Hague. Who is this multi-talent?

Astronomers and surgeons from Leiden are collaborating with industry to develop an optical instrument that delivers faster, more accurate imaging of tumour tissue and abnormal blood flow during surgery.

Writing a story from the perspective of a Rwandan girl set in Africa is not an easy task. Alumna Cultural Anthropology Ruth Erica did it. Her debut novel The tree with the bitter leaves, in which an important supporting role is played by a student of cultural anthropology, appeared in August 2020.

Timothy Metz studied Law and Tax Law in Leiden. Now he’s part of Andri AI, working on the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the legal sector.

Sarah Michiel is the Institute Manager of NIMAR and has been living in Morocco since 2012. Due to the coronavirus, she has been working in Belgium since 20 March, where she grew up. The NIMAR office in Rabat is currently empty and all visits and conferences have been cancelled. Sarah is trying to run…

Every month a member of the Institute for History tells about a book that inspired him or her. Afterwards, the pen is passed on to another colleague. This month dr. Robert Stein tells about the book 'La Vérité sur l'affaire Harry Quebert' by Swiss writer Joel Dicker. It is not so much the whodunit that…

How do games help shape our perception of the past? Associate Professor Angus Mol receives a Vidi grant to answer this question.

Sjoerd Keulen holds the new special chair in Public Audit, Policy Evaluation and Accountability.

How do you make niche subjects interesting and accessible? Benjamin Suchard, historical linguist and researcher, seems to have created the perfect recipe, which consists of his various projects alongside his regular research, including a Twitter account and a major international film.

On November 21, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena gives the Ehrenfest Colloquium. Maldacena is known worldwide as the inventor of AdS/CFT correspondence, which might be key to a theory of quantum gravity. Maldacena is winner of the prestigious Dirac Prize and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental…

Many students find their job search really stressful – what will they end up doing after they graduate? What are their career options, their employment opportunities?

Providing each cancer patient with the right treatment remains a challenge. Oncode Accelerator aims to change this by innovating the way we develop cancer treatments, thus ensuring the patient is at the heart of the process.

Lecture, Research Seminar Medieval and Early Modern History

Lecture, SMILE - Experimental Linguistics series

Course

Lecture

Connecting scientific fields, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. What did the university achieve in 2024? A small sample.

On 28 July 2020, the Netherlands Board on Research Integrity (LOWI) concluded that a former employee of Leiden University breached several rules of scientific integrity. This conclusion is in accordance with the findings of the Academic Integrity Committee (CWI) of the University in its advice to the…

An MRI scanner is much more than a machine alone. It is an extremely versatile technique that provides numerous opportunities for finding out more about the workings of the human brain, says Thijs van Osch, Professor of Radiology, with a particular emphasis on experimental cerebrovascular imaging. Inaugural…

Dear friends of the NVIC,

The Council of Ministers has appointed Jan Willem Erisman, Professor of Environment and Sustainability at Leiden University, as chair of the new Scientific Climate Council (WKR) from 1 March. This council will advise the government on climate policy.

Of the 900 new companies that have set up shop on the Netherlands’ largest campuses since 2018, 194 chose Leiden. This makes the Leiden Innovation District the fastest growing of the larger campuses. This is the conclusion a study by Buck Consultants International.

Two former Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences students win the KNMP Student Award this year. Esmée de Zwaan for her research into new therapeutic strategies, Sanne Bakker for a study of bleeding risk associated with the use of antidepressant SSRI. Pharmacy organization KNMP awarded the annual prize on 8 October…

Professor of Clinical Pharmacology Adam Cohen from Leiden University received the prestigious Dr. Saal van Zwanenberg Honorary Prize on 12 November. The prize honours a scientist who has distinguished themselves in the field of research that has directly or indirectly led to the development of new medicines…

Earlier this year, the Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Scaliger Institute announced a new fellowship: The Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship. The fellowship programme is part of the Lingling Wiyadharma Fund.

The Children’s Rights Observatory is pleased to launch the Spanish version of the website. This new feature of the website is a result of the partnership between Leiden Law School and the Center for Constitutional Studies of the Mexican Supreme Court (CEC-SCJN).