The pews of the Walloon Church were filled on Friday 23 May, as more than 120 former students of the French Language and Culture programme gathered to attend mini-lectures, a short theatre performance, and a discussion about the state of the discipline.

Dutch influencers like Romy Boomsma and Nina Pierson have a huge following on Instagram and are increasingly sharing book tips there. Researcher Aafje de Roest wants to find out more about the reading culture they are promoting and its effect on the reading habits of their mostly young female follow…

Russian literature is awash with disputes, riots and intense political debates. In the new Dutch podcast Schandaal en Controverse in de Russische literatuur, senior lecturer Otto Boele and film maker and journalist Kay Mastenbroek discuss the most talked-about Russian books published in the past two…

Professor Nira Wickramasinghe has won the American Historical Association John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History for her book Slave in a Palanquin. Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka' (Columbia University Press: New York 2020).

The Lucia de Berk case or the suicide of Slobodan Praljak at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia: certain trials keep popping up in media. In her dissertation, Tessa de Zeeuw examines the cultural appeal of such cases and analyses artistic responses. ‘Artworks sometimes have…

Histories, Philosophies, and Communities

Leiden University has a new professor. On 1 June Nadine Akkerman became Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture, a position she feels is designed to help her help others.

Black Theatre, activist theatre by and for black South Africans, flourished under apartheid. However, according to Francis Rangoajane, the democratisation of South Africa has in no way diminished the importance of this art form. PhD defence 16 November.

Four of Leiden's young, talented ethnic minority graduates are to receive an award as part of the Mosiac programme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The award will allow these budding researchers to fund a four-year research period leading to a doctorate.

Anthonya (Thony) Visser, Leiden Professor of German Language and Literature, is spending six months as a senior fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies. 'Possibly the most important thing of all is that I have time.'

Michael Ignatieff, Canadian author, university professor and former politician, has been appointed Cleveringa Professor for the 2013-2014 academic year at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Professor Ignatieff will deliver the Cleveringa lecture on 26 November 2013.

Artist Marlene Dumas gave the 48th Huizinga Lecture to a packed Pieterskerk on 6 December. She spoke about her own background, and why you can’t assume this will help you understand her work.

This summer, everyone from Leiden locals to day trippers and tourists can take a guided tour of the prettiest University buildings in the centre of Leiden. Our exclusive Summer Tours offer a glimpse behind the scenes at the Academy Building, the P.J. Veth building and Bibliotheca Thysiana: buildings…

Voor deze use case zoeken wij een gebruiker die voor onderzoeksdoeleinden interesse heeft in de auteursrechtelijk beschermde collectie van de KB en ons kan helpen met het opstellen door wensen, noden en ervaringen te delen.

This year on June 8-12, the Annual Convention of the Austrian and Central European Centres was organised in Leiden. At this convention, directors and (PhD) students from all over the world come together to meet, have presentations by the students on their topics of expertise, and to get the know the…

A film and quiz at the Old Observatory, a film whose ending you decide or a political satire in The Hague. These are some of the options at Science & Cinema, the 444 edition, a special programme during LIFF, the Leiden International Film Festival.

Young Leiden researchers Alisa van de Haar and Marleen Kunneman have received a KNAW Early Career Award. The prize, awarded annually for outstanding achievements, consists of 15,000 euros and a unique work of art.

During the next three years, 6 promising researchers from the Faculty of Humanities who have just been awarded their PhDs will be able to further develop their research ideas funded by a Veni grant from the NWO. A total of 147 Veni grants were awarded of which 14 went to researchers at Leiden Univer…

Two years ago, university lecturer Kirsty Rolfe was nominated for the Faculty Teaching Prize. Now she is in the running for the university equivalent. ‘It’s lovely to see students blossom.’

Professor Ann Laura Stoler from The New School for Social Research in New York will be the Spring 2016 Global Asia Scholar. She will visit Leiden University from May 17-19, 2016.

It is good for a judge to have some empathy with victims and offenders. But too much empathy can be harmful to the practice of the law, as PhD candidate Claudia Bouteligier has found. Literature may offer a solution. PhD defence 18 September.

On the brand-new Leiden Teachers Blog, Leiden teachers share their experiences with educational innovation. They show colleagues, students, and everyone else who is interested the different facets of creating university education.

The studies of two researchers previously working within the VICI-project ‘Art, Agency and Living Presence’ are now published by Leiden University Press in conjunction with Akademie Verlag.

On 7 May students from the Leiden Leadership Programme (LLP) and the International Leiden Leadership Programme (ILLP) gathered with an interdisciplinary panel to have a discussion about Intercultural Leadership.

The underwater world around present-day Indonesia has changed greatly in recent centuries as a result of human activity. University lecturer Johannes Müller has been awarded an NWO XS grant to map the history of the Indonesian ecosystems.

Bodies come in all different shapes and sizes. For his PhD, Andries Hiskes researched the disabled body and the reactions it can bring.

Until the 18th century, Latin annotations of well-known classical texts were an important source of scientific knowledge, but over the course of time the texts lost their authority. Classical scholar Maarten Jansen re-examines the annotations of Virgil's Aeneid. PhD defence 20 September.

Leiden alumnus and writer Tomas Lieske has published a novel which is set in the house of Paul Ehrenfest. Ehrenfest was a famous physicist who organized round table events every Wednesday evening at his home in Leiden in the early twentieth century. The big names from modern physics frequented these…

Emma de Vries, PhD researcher at LUCAS, has been awarded with a Fulbright Grant and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Scholarship. From September 2015 onwards, Emma will spend a full academic year in the Unites states, to work at UCLA and Harvard on her PhD research on Neo-Epistolarity.

Leiden University Lecturer Lettie Dorst wins a prestigious Comenius Senior Fellow grant for a project about machine translation and its use in higher education.

Sara Polak, American Studies expert and University Lecturer investigates how American presidents deal with the media and how new, social media influence our collective memory and the political game. ‘Social media algorithms influence us and our political choices in ways we do not foresee’, Polak say…

On May 13 2022, Frans W. Saris will present the third of a series of "Hello World!" lectures, organised by the Media Technology MSc program of Leiden University. In his lecture titled "Computer Modeling to Save the World", Frans Saris addresses three alarming crises: energy and climate, biodiversity…

The Second World War is a never ending experience for those who lived it. This is what Cleveringa professor Carol Gluck and her students concluded following a critical reading of ‘De Aanslag’ by Harry Mulisch. Mulisch’s novel took centre stage in Gluck’s Honours seminar.

World War II is never over for those who have lived through it. This is the conclusion of Cleveringa Professor Carol Gluck and her students after reading The Assault (De Aanslag) by Harry Mulisch. The book played a central role in Gluck’s honours course.

Translating poetry is notoriously difficult. Translating poetry in such a way that the humorous nature of a poem remains intact is even more difficult, even though it is precisely jokes that can encourage children to read more, notes PhD candidate Alice Morta.

Cornald Maas was able to ‘pioneer’ in Leiden. This Dutch Studies graduate, presenter, programme maker and publicist combined an active student life with studying hard.

As a doctor, coming to a decision together with a patient: how do you do that in the best possible way? Researchers Geert Warnar and Roosmaryn Pilgram, who jointly teach a course within the MA in Dutch Studies, are entering into a virtual collaboration with the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa to find the…

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.

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’.

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.

In the depots of the Faculty of Archaeology, many artifacts, accumulated after decades of fieldwork across the world, are stored. A new project, the Leiden Inventory Depot (LID), aims to unlock this wealth of information to the outside world. The 3D scanning of objects takes a central role in this endeavor.…

Having flirted with Egyptology and Italian, Dieuwertje Kuijpers found her true calling in the Master’s in European Union Studies. She is now a freelance journalist specialising in politics, security and defence. But she is also at home writing columns for ThePostOnline and hard-hitting articles for…

There is a real chance of war closer to home, political and military leaders in Europe have warned. What does Frans Osinga, Professor of War Studies, think about the threat and what we should do?

Here you can find an overview of the Erasmus+ projects of Leiden University since 2015.

Lecture, Book presentation and Q&A

Kersti Börjars studied English language and literature in Leiden. She became a professor and now she is Master of the largest college at the University of Oxford: St Catherine’s College. What impact is coronavirus having on St Catherine’s and how has she benefited from her studies in Leiden.

Lucia Langerak was awarded a Master’s degree in Egyptology with cum laude honours in 2018. Her bachelor’s degree was also with cum laude honours. ‘I’m an exceptional Egyptologist, if only because I’ve never been to Egypt.’ She is now the coordinator of the Access & Support Platform at the University…

A delegation from Leiden University visited the Netherlands Institute Morocco (NIMAR) in Rabat at the end of February.