Not all students spend the holiday season with family or friends. That is why the university is organising the fifth edition of the Winter Weeks this year. The goal remains unchanged: to offer both international and Dutch students who stay in Leiden or The Hague during the Christmas break a warm and…

Conference, D&I Event

On 21 January, the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) has released two reports on circular economy and urban mining in the Netherlands. In them, together with Statistics Netherlands, they take stock of part of the Dutch ‘urban mine’: how much raw material can we reuse from the electricity grid,…

Facility

The many thousands of small celestial bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit may have ended up there due to a star that passed close to the solar system billions of years ago. This is shown by Leiden simulation expert Simon Portegies Zwart, along with his German and Dutch colleagues. ‘We are answering several…

Facility

When asked about the mission of the Leiden Jewish Studies network, Jürgen Zangenberg, Professor of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity at Leiden University, and one of the organizers of the event says: “We try to keep the network as broad as possible, and to attract as many people from the outside…

Professor Herman Paul has been appointed Scientific Director of the Institute of History from 1 February 2025. ‘Especially in these times, transparency is essential.’

An extra-long procession with musical accompaniment will mark the beginning of the university’s 450th birthday celebrations on 7 February.

Social

Facility

Organisation, Social

All of society is having to deal with the effects of staff shortages. Hospitals are unable to fill their duty rosters, primary schools are having to close their doors for one day per week, and trains are being cancelled on a regular basis. But why is that exactly? Professor of Economics Olaf van Vliet…

Social

Facility, Security

Facility

The Moot Court trophy has been awarded for the sixteenth time! This time, it went to the best pleader in the spring of the 2024-2025 academic year.

The transcription factor MYC is a master regulator implicated in the majority of human cancers. Despite its central role, MYC has long been considered "undruggable" by small molecules, lacking binding pockets and featuring disordered regions. While larger biomolecules could potentially disrupt MYC function,…

Organisation

In the academic year 2018 - 2019, the Faculty of Humanities established the Educational Innovation Programme. In this way, the faculty wants to realise the ambitions from the educational vision of Leiden University in education. How is the programme currently doing? We talked to project manager Sanne…

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030, an effort to reduce the country’s reliance on oil, may open up new opportunities for Korea. Spearheading the way is Hallyu — the Korean wave, led by K-pop and dramas as a soft power to open new business opportunities in the Middle East, especially…

Dr Quentin Bourgeois and a group of students are currently exploring the Veluwe. In 2019 and 2020 volunteers looked at altitude maps of the Veluwe and indicated potential burial mound locations. Now the team from Leiden is 'ground-truthing', checking on the spot whether we are dealing with an actual…

As academics we devote our time mainly to education and research activities. Some of us are also active as an editor for a scientific journal. For example, I am an editor for Microchemical Journal (from Elsevier, established in 1957) since January 2019, a task I fulfill with pleasure every Saturday…

Rik Rozendaal has won one of the three annual dissertation awards of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE). The economist received the award for his dissertation on climate policy.

Doing a PhD can be challenging. Moving to a foreign country can be challenging too. PhD candidate Ilya Kokorin, who was born in a small town in Siberia, faced both, while at the same time having to overcome a number of additional challenges and build a future post-PhD.

Aram Segaar, Corporate Information Security Officer in the Information Management Department, works every day with his team to create and maintain a secure working environment at Leiden University. October is ‘Cybersecurity Month’. Aram explains how the university stays safe and the conscious (and unconscious)…

The Young Academy Leiden (YAL) acquired six new members on 1 September. We talked to the new and former chair of this platform for young academics about what they have achieved over the recent period and what is on the agenda for the coming year.

Historic and iconic yet expensive and cold. It’s with mixed feelings that the university is leaving the Gravensteen building, which dates back to the 12th century. How was it to work and study in this former Leiden prison?

The Faculty of Archaeology is running a funding scheme to assist small-scale projects that contribute to diversifying archaeological practice in all domains, including classrooms, laboratories, museums, and the field. We discuss the grant with two representatives from the Diversity Committee: Tuna Kalaycı…

With the help of a LUF grant, archaeology student Anne Wagemakers investigated an archaeological assemblage in Spain. Now her research report has won the annual LISF prize.

Leiden University is publishing a list giving an overview of its research collaborations with the fossil fuel industry.

Collaborating and learning from other fields – that is what bioinformatician Hannah Augustijn enjoys most about doing research. During her PhD at Leiden University, she developed new ways to search within bacteria for the antibiotics of the future.

The train to The Hague holds no secrets for Jeroen Touwen anymore. Since October, the Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Humanities has been part of the board of Campus The Hague. One day a week, together with Jan Crijns (Professor of Criminal Law and, as of February 15, Vice-Dean of the Law Faculty), he oversees…

As of 1 September, archaeologist Amanda Henry has been appointed Full Professor at the Faculty of Archaeology, where she will hold the chair in Evolution in Hominin Diets. The appointment marks a new chapter in her academic journey, building on her longstanding research into ancient human diets and…

You win the Leiden Teaching Prize and suddenly all eyes are on you. Three past recipients reflect on how this student-awarded prize has changed how they work and improved their teaching – and how they chose to spend the money.

From choosing the right tools to locking your screen when you go to get a coffee: it’s often the little things that help you work securely. With our campaign ‘Check it: work privacy and security smart’, in the coming month we are focusing on protecting our information and data, including personal data.…

Jasper Knoester started on 1 January as our new dean. How is he doing, what exactly does he do and what does his day look like? In each newsletter Jasper gives a glimpse into his life.

We take it for granted that water comes out of the tap and electricity out of the socket. But that isn’t always the case. Last Tuesday began like any other day, with our board meeting in the morning. But things were soon to change.

On Thursday 29 February, the European Data Protection Supervisor, Wojciech Wiewiórowski, visited the eLaw Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden Law School to give a lecture entitled 'Fundamental rights and/or market surveillance: The current and future role of Data Protection Authorities…

From sponsored runs to festivals and from open days to concerts: Leiden University hosts lots of events each year. We are highlighting six of them for 2023.

On Friday 20 May, from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m., approximately sixty lecturers met at the Faculty Club for the 2022 Education Showcase.

For decades, unmarried girls and women in the Netherlands were forced to give up their newborn children. The impact was profound and persists to this day for the mothers, fathers, relinquished children, and the adoptive families in which they were raised.

Two research projects focused on democracy and citizen collectives have been awarded grants through the 2024 round of the National Science Agenda’s (NWA) ‘Onderzoek op Routes door Consortia (ORC)’. Each project will receive around €6.8 million to get started immediately.

The fact that scientists are increasingly better able to access molecular cell and tissue data also brings with it a new challenge: how can scientists find the information they need for research among the vast amount of data available?

A world-famous light experiment from 1801 has now been carried out with sound for the first time. Research by physicists in Leiden has produced new insights that could be applied in 5G devices and the emerging field of quantum acoustics.

Claartje Levelt was appointed Scientific Director of LUCL on 1 September. We want to create new opportunities, especially now.’

Academics increasingly face threats, intimidation and abuse. The WetenschapVeilig platform has been launched to address this. Academics who are being threatened or intimidated can seek help from the platform 24 hours a day. It’s good that we now have this platform. But at the same time, it’s awful that…

That a parrot can copycat sounds is nothing new. But vocal learning is not common in animals. Researcher Carel ten Cate of the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) of Leiden University has now discovered a duck species that can imitate sounds. ‘It started with an obscure reference about an Australian musk…