On May 4, 2024, from 10.00 to 16.00 hours, a festive day took place in Oss, celebrating the fact that staff and students of the Leiden Faculty of Archeology have been doing fieldwork in and around Oss for 50 years in good collaboration with the municipality of Oss, the local heritage and archaeological…

President Akio Yuki and his delegation were welcomed to Leiden by Vice-Rector Prof. Rietje van Dam-Mieras, Prof. Ivo Smits, Prof. Kasia Cwiertka and Dr Rogier Busser on Friday 13 May 2011.

Exotic marsh frogs from distant lands are colonising the south-east of the Netherlands. This has been demonstrated by biology students from our faculty. Although the amphibians thrive in our little country, they are harmful to native biodiversity.

Thinking Planet is a big public philosophy event which aims to bring ideas from all over the world to the Netherlands.

Corinne Hofman’s term as Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology has finished. After 11 years she leaves the Faculty Board to fully focus on her research once again. On Thursday September 20th, during the final Dean's Lecture, a series she initiated, she was lauded by her successor, Dean Jan Kolen, Study…

A recent ruling by the Dutch Council of State indicates that asylum seekers may no longer be sent back to Italy. The Council of State increasingly concludes that the countries at Europe's southern and eastern external borders expose migrants to degrading treatment. This in particular is a reason for…

During his visit to the Caribbean part of the Kingdom, Minister Ronald Plasterk (Home Affairs) on Thursday, January 24, 2013 performed the official opening of a small exhibition. The exhibition portrays the work Prof. Dr. Corinne Hofman and Dr. Menno Hoogland have conducted on Saba over the past 26…

Work officially started on Schilperoortpark at the Leiden Bio Science Park on Wednesday 6 March. Town councillor Paul Dirkse and Vice-Chancellor of the Executive Board of the University Martijn Ridderbos planted the first tree together with Cas Schilperoort, grandson of Professor Rob Schilperoort, the…

Linguist Marian Klamer, associated with Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, is one of the 31 scientists to receive a NWO Vici-grant for her researchproject 'Language as a time machine'.

From student exchanges and a joint laboratory to heritage research and a knowledge consortium, the Indonesian Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) is in various respects an important partner for Leiden University.

Frederique Visser, winner of the Foundation’s 2020 Mr. Hugo Weiland Thesis, has been awarded a NWO grant to support her PhD-project “Rhythms and Rupture: Everyday Life in Three Towns in Habsburg Central Europe, 1890-1930”. She will be a PhD-candidate at the University of Leiden, under supervision of…

Dimiter Toshkov, Associate Professor, Brendan Carroll, Assistant Professor, and Kutsal Yesilkagit, Professor International Governance, of Leiden University, wrote an article for the Washington Post about the European governmenets that acted quickly in times of a pandemic. And these governments are…

Psychologist Lorenza Colzato is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, a new interdisciplinary psychology publication. The journal will contribute to a higher understanding of research aimed at enhancing human performance and creative potential.

The unique collection of more than 250 ancient tales revolving around the mythical Javanese Prince Panji, which is curated by Leiden University Libraries (UBL), has been acknowledged as world heritage by UNESCO. The UBL is grateful to UNESCO for this exceptionally prestigious award.

Jan Melissen discusses the political side of the repatriation operation for Dutch citizens stranded abroad in Dutch newspaper 'de Volkskrant'.

Hungary belongs to the EU, but democracy is being seriously and systematically threatened there. Does the rest of the EU have the means and the political will to deal with member states that are out of step? Antoaneta Dimitrova, professor of 'Comparative Governance' at the Institute of Security and…

In Nature researchers at Leiden University and Utrecht University show how 47 teeth from Southern China indicate that anatomically modern humans where present at least 80,000 years ago in the region. This is 40,000 years earlier than in Europe.

The World Data Visualization Prize for 2019 was awarded to Dimiter Toshkov, Associate Professor at the Institute of Public Administration, for his work on the theme of small states and good governance. The prize is a good way to raise awareness about the value of good data visualization.

South African professor Lungisile Ntsebeza will receive an honorary doctorate on the Foundation Day of Leiden University on Friday 7 February. Ntsebeza is an authority in the democratisation of rural South Africa and poverty reduction.

Researchers at Leiden University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) have launched an initiative to learn more about the experiences of migrants travelling through the Darién Gap, with a focus on forced migration.

On May 15, Prof. dr. Saskia Jaszoltowski, the Visiting Professor for Central European Studies this semester at Leiden University, led a seminar on the 'Lullabies' for the ERC Starting Grant 'CareCentury' project led by Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey.

NWO-ALW has funded the project Climate impact on human evolution: age calibration of the ICDP Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP), led by PIs Cor Langereis and Guillaume Dupont-Nivet (Utrecht University).

Construction work at Casal Lumbroso, on the outskirts of Rome, led to the discovery of a fossilised elephant tusk, and soon after, the remains of a 400,000-year-old elephant. A newly published study, led by Enza Spinapolice and Francesca Alhaique uncovered traces showing that early humans had scavenged…

In a recent article published on PLOS, Drs. Briana Pobiner and Ryan McRae of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History discuss the top 13 discoveries in human evolution in 2023.

The chief curator of the National Museum of Ethnology, Laura van Broekhoven, is participating in the Museum Leadership Institute at the Claremont Graduate University.

The volume, Heritage Destruction, Human Rights and International Law, co-edited by Grotius Centre, Associate Professor Joe Powderly, and Dr Amy Strecker (Associate Professor, UCD), has been published by Brill/Nijhoff.

On Friday 11 November, GTGC, L-PEG, and LUCIR organized a workshop on Emerging powers and Development Finance across the world.

On 5 December, Luuk van Middelaar appeared as a guest on Dutch current affairs programme Buitenhof to talk about various European issues, including how Europe had tackled the coronavirus pandemic.

Prof. Dr. Wil Roebroeks has been elected as recipient of a Humboldt Research Award after having been nominated for this award by the German scientist Prof. Dr. Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, Universität Mainz / Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Mainz.

When many people think of slavery, they think of the translatlantic trade that took place between Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean.

Corrie Bakels would have given this year's Kroon lecture on Friday March 20, but the event was canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak. Her colleagues had planned to present to her the 50th edition of the Analecta journal on this festive occassion, so these plans had to be changed as well.

Mirjam de Bruijn's VICI project Connecting in Times of Duress held its final conference in N'Djamena, Chad, from 23 to 29 October.

Femke Bakker, political scientist at Leiden University, has been awarded a grant from the IPRAF (International Peace Research Organization Foundation) for her PhD research into the influence of political culture of different political regimes on individuals of these societies.

Mid July 2017, the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA), together with the Confucius Institute, Institute for Philosophy and Digital Humanities, will move into the completely renovated P.J. Veth building next to the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden.

Dear friends of the NVIC,

I came to Cairo to delve into the manuscript collection of the Egyptian National Library and Archives (Dār al-Kutub wa-l-wathā’iq al-qawmiyya) for my PhD. I am a PhD researcher at the University of Ghent in Belgium, but the NVIC has become my home office for the next few months. Amidst the never-ending…

Sri Lanka is experiencing unprecedented economic and political crises. Months of protests came to a head earlier this month when protesters occupied President Rajapaksa's palace.

Dear friends of the NVIC,

In 1974 Professor Modderman (founder of the Institute for Prehistory Leiden; predecessor of the present Faculty of Archaeology) executed a small excavation in the city of Oss. The Middle Iron Age cemetery, built over by Roman Period farmhouses, proved to be the start of a unique archaeological regional…

Neanderthals were able to outwit straight-tusked elephants, the largest land mammals of the past few million years. Leiden professor Wil Roebroeks has published an article about this together with his German colleague Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser in the Science Advances journal. The breakthrough takes…

During the Dean’s lecture on April 21 a portrait of Corrie Bakels will be unveiled. This portrait is part of the initiative of Athena’s Angels project ‘Room for women!’

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…

In a new Social Europe article, Salvador Santino Regilme, Associate Professor of International Relations at Leiden University, warns that the EU must radically rethink how it funds its security—before it is too late.

Last Wednesday was the official deadline for students to apply for one of our master’s programmes. Some of our master’s programmes, such as History, organised a last call Q&A for students.

Concrete pillars without a roof, windows without glass, storeys without walls. It’s clearly evident that the South Cluster is being dismantled. Take a look at the photos!

On June 7 Restless Horizon, a composition by Richard Barrett and Milana Zarić, premiered online.

Buried beneath a Suffolk forest, archaeologists have uncovered the earliest known human-made fire. A fire that was sparked 400,000 years ago. This stunning UK discovery may rewrite our evolutionary story, potentially pushing fire-making back by more than 350,000 years.

The Board of Leiden University has authorized the Faculty of Archaeology to appoint Prof. dr. Jean-Jacques Hublin as professor of palaeoanthropology. From May 15th onward Professor Hublin's part-time position is funded by the Spinoza-budget of professor Wil Roebroeks.

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded Veni funding to four Humanities researchers at Leiden University. One of them is Anna Dlabačová. This award offers promising young scientists the opportunity to develop their own ideas over a period of three years.

Fishing a bike out of the frozen canal, stunningsunsets over Leiden and four plants that flowered for the first time in sixty years in the Hortus Botanicus: this was our year in nine Facebook posts!