When alumnus Jonathan Katzman started his master's programme in Russian and Eurasian Studies, he didn't foresee how useful those skills would be in the near future. Now, he manages a refugee centre for Ukrainians who have fled their war-torn country.

Every year the international leadership course of the Leiden Honours Academy, the International Leiden Leadership Programme (ILLP), attracts master’s students from all over the world. In June, this year’s 25 students will get their certificates, but that is not the most important part, according to…

After 7.5 years, Jan Kolen is stepping down as Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology. For him, it does not feel like a dramatic moment. ‘It is part of the role: you pass the baton on to someone else.’ He adds with a smile: ‘And I will remain connected to the faculty, so it is not really a farewell.’

On Wednesday, September 17, 2025, Prof.dr. Sarah Cramsey convened a book manuscript event at the beach of Wassenaar near Leiden to discuss her new book 'Caring through Catastrophe: Jewish Children and their Caretakers during the Holocaust' which is under contract with Indiana University Press.

To understand how the brain works, it is essential to map it out in detail. This appears to be possible with a microscopy technique in which Leiden physicists excel. This breakthrough could significantly advance the human quest to understand brain functions.

‘Working in Leiden is a dream come true.’ Ákos Kovács studied in his birth country Hungary and worked in Germany, Denmark and Groningen. As professor of Microbiome Ecology at IBL, he immediately started working together with his new colleagues to make discoveries about the versatile bacterial species…

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Inaugural lecture

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Democracy is under pressure all over the world. With the #DemocracyinAction project, university lecturers Sara Brandellero and Kamila Krakowska Rodrigues want to investigate how grassroots art projects manage to keep democracy alive.

Assistant professor and dual PhD candidate, Pieter Slaman writes in Binnenlands Bestuur about the fact that the German occupier lengthened the period of mandatory education in The Netherlands.

The prosecution of violent fathers is regularly abandoned, supposedly ‘in the best interests of the child’. Assistant professor Mojan Samadi responds in an interview with RTL and Investico: ‘It’s problematic if you accept this argument as a matter of course.’

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Symposium

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In brain diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, proteins clump together to form fibres. ‘Chaperone proteins’ unravel those fibres, but in the test tube biochemist Anne Wentink saw that this can also cause new problems. She is going to find out what happens inside cells to determine what a drug…

Below are some of the scholarly works published within the context of the Institutions for Conflict Resolution programme.

How did the medieval manuscript develop as a physical object during the Twelfth Century Renaissance and what do these changes tell us about the intellectual culture of the period?

On this page you can find information about previous CCLS events.

The role of mayors is changing from one where they are typically ‘security bosses’ within their own municipalities, to ‘super networkers’ who are increasingly engaged at regional and national levels. This is the opinion of Ruth Prins, programme director of the bachelor’s progamme in Security Studies…

Like many others, Ruurd Halbertsma has had a rollercoaster of a year. His museum, the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO), was closed for a long while because of the lockdown. Visitor numbers picked up again from September, but it the next few weeks will be tense now the hospitals are full again. Halbertsma:…

It is more myth than reality that people with migration backgrounds commit more crime. Leiden has successfully tackled anti-social behaviour by Moroccan youths, says former mayor Henri Lenferink. Good education forms the basis of a healthy and safe society, says ‘crimmigration’ researcher' Maartje van…

There are many tributaries to Rosalin Kuiper’s story and they all lead to the sea. The 28-year-old sailor was one of the five-person Team Malizia in the world’s most prestigious sailing competition: the Ocean Race.

Space telescope Euclid is capable of unravelling the secrets of the universe. That is what the images published by ESA today show, according to astronomers working with the telescope's data. The images exceed all expectations. Scientists within the Euclid consortium, including astronomers Henk Hoekstra…

A Leiden and Mainz (Germany) based team studies the activities of early humans in a 125,000 years old Last Interglacial ecosystem, formerly exposed in a large open cast brown coal pit near Halle (Germany). The Last Interglacial is an important warm-temperate period, showing the full flora and fauna…

Dr. Katharine MacDonald (Faculty of Archaeology) sketches the background to a recent paper in Science Advances, co-authored by her and other members of the Liveable Planet team.

In a sailboat, a canoe or stowed away on a ship: during the Second World War, many Leiden students tried to cross the sea to join the Allies in Britain. ‘Soldier of Orange’ is the most famous, but who were the other ‘England voyagers’ or Engelandvaarders as they are known?

Tech giants such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft are increasingly shaping the digital world we live in. Reijer Passchier cautions: 'Urgent measures are needed to curb this influence.'