Until September 2016, Hannah Plug was Research Assistant for the Consolidating Empire Research Project under the direction of Dr. Bleda Düring. Now, she has just begun her new appointment at Liverpool University, UK. Here she tells all about it.

The Leiden Asia Year is almost here. Asia will be the key theme for the University and the city throughout 2017. If staff and students have any ideas about how to make the programme even better, we'd like to hear from you!

From Monday August 22th until Friday August 26th, The Hague Orientation Programme (The HOP) will take place. The first-year students of Leiden University in The Hague will get to know the city, their study and the university, the student life and their fellow students.

This conference explored the various ways in which anthropologists at the Leiden Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology engage with global vulnerabilities and social resilience through their ethnographic research and representation. All staff and students were invited to participate…

From Afghanistan to South Africa: 1,144 international students, including refugees from Syria, are taking part in the Orientation Week Leiden.

Minister Jet Bussemaker (Ministry of Education, Culture and Science) will open the new headquarters of NIMAR (Netherlands Institute in Morocco) in Rabat on 1 March, in the presence of Mayor of Rotterdam Ahmed Aboutaleb and Rector of Leiden University Carel Stolker. The institute has been part of Leiden…

The Jordan Times interviewed professor Peter Akkermans about this research on ancient tombs in Jordan's Eastern Desert. “The evidence of this flourishing culture can be seen, among other things, in the diverse and complex burial record which we are currently investigating.”

At the conference Surrealism and Scotland on 23 and 24 March, Janice McNab will share the paper ‘Surrealism and the making of Mother’.

We investigate bacteria and fungi to understand their malicious or beneficial impact on food crops and their pathogenic or antibiotic role in human health.

Emily den Boer of LAPP visited the Canal Cups Expo, displaying the plastic cups cleaned up by students after Leidens Ontzet.

'Hey look! There's Rembrandt! And isn't that Einstein?' Over 200 children took part in the 444 Manhunt through the centre of Leiden on Saturday 29 June. They were looking for famous figures from the history of the University and the city: from Princess Beatrix to Von Siebold and from Roman goddess Minerva…

From now on, you can go for a walk through Leiden’s scientific history and at the same time across the historic city center itself. Master students Lotte Koemans and Mandy Meijer have developed an audio tour which takes you past all six wall formulas in the inner city of Leiden.

Mind of the Universe is a series of portaits of worldwide leading scientists broadcasted summer 2017 by the VPRO. This populair series gets a follow-up in an online learning programme: ‘Mind of the Universe Online Learning Experience‘, developed and executed by scientists and learning developers of…

During the coronavirus years 2020 and 2021, Dutch citizens became poorer, more anxious, less free and more rebellious. The State gained more power and entered the lives of citizens in all manner of ways to protect their health. Only recently did the State give citizens their freedom back – in part.

On Thursday, November 20, 2025, the Leiden Jewish Studies Network celebrated the launch of the book Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) co-authored by Ofer Ashkenazi (Jerusalem), Sarah Wobick-Segev (Hamburg), Shira Miron (Basel) and Rebekka Grossmann…

Have you ever seen your friend smiling, and suddenly you started grinning too? PhD student Chris Riddell is researching how and why we copy body language. As a new Face of Science, he will take us along on his research journey for the coming year.

Who wouldn’t want their own episode of Het Klokhuis? Researchers Milica Nikolic and Chris Riddell are in the running for the Klokhuis Wetenschapsprijs, which aims to introduce a broad and young audience to scientific research in the Netherlands.

The faculty has been investigating hundreds of ancient stone tombs in Jordan’s Black Desert.

Recently, a pro-Palestine demonstration was held outside the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam during its opening, which was being attended by President Herzog of Israel. Wilders’ response? ‘It smells like a political campaign by the far-left mayor of Amsterdam. Irresponsible.’

With his photo of a fish trapped in a rubber glove, external PhD candidate Auke-Florian Hiemstra has made it to the shortlist for the People’s Choice Award in the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. The photo shows the impact of Covid litter on wildlife.

An interdisciplinary photo exhibition about crafts and craftsmanship in different cultures will open at Oude UB on 6 October. At the opening Fridus Steijlen will give an introduction to the Tau Tau puppets that are made in Sulawesi, Indonesia.

The History Days are coming to Leiden for their anniversary edition! The History Days in Leiden on 27, 28 and 29 August 2026 bring together everyone who works with the past professionally: teachers, students, employees of archives, museums and other heritage institutions, independent entrepreneurs,…

Thomas Moerland studied medicine and mathematics in Leiden and has a lifelong fascination with the origins and workings of intelligence. He brought all that together in his popular science book Van IQ naar AI (From IQ to AI).

How do you behave towards patients with life-threatening conditions who do not want to know all the details of the state of their health? This question brought psychologist Liesbeth van Vliet and anthropologist Annemarie Samuels together. It’s an unusual partnership, but their interdisciplinary approach…

Comparing individual health data with group data allows doctors to give personalised advice and patients to learn from one another's experiences. Wessel Kraaij, Professor of Applied Data Analytics, shows how personal data can have a valuable predictive function. Inaugural lecture 24 February.

ASTRON en de Universiteit Leiden beginnen samen een nieuwe leerstoel over sterrenkunde en AI. Bijzonder hoogleraar Joeri van Leeuwen gaat deze positie vullen.

An international team of researchers, including scholars from Leiden University, has received a Seed Funding Grant within the Una Europa network. The project, Democracy and AI, focuses on the impact of artificial intelligence on the functioning of democratic systems.

Drones are proving to be a good means of mapping man-made changes in the landscape. Geophysicist Till Sonneman and his colleagues (archaeology) are experimenting with drones in inaccessible areas of the Caribbean.

By analysing the metabolism using big data techniques, we can identify health risks at an earlier stage. Thomas Hankemeier, professor of Analytical Biosciences at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research, explains how that works.