Medewerkers van de Universiteit Leiden trappen maandag 10 maart de estafettestaking af van de Nederlandse universiteiten tegen de kabinetsbezuinigingen.

The author Manon Uphoff from Utrecht will be Leiden University’s new ‘writer in residence’ from autumn 2025. As the writer in residence, Uphoff will contribute to several courses on writing offered by the BA Dutch Language and Culture programme.

No fewer than three Leiden University Humanities scholars have been awarded funding from the NWO’s Free Competition in the Humanities programme: two grants of 750,000 euros and one of 705,000 euros. In total, twelve researchers have received a grant in the NWO Social Sciences and Humanities domain.

A new challenge for Felix Ameka. The senior lecturer at the Centre for Linguistics has been appointed professor by special appointment of Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Diversity in the World. ‘I am looking forward to promoting ethnolinguistic diversity and vitality.’

Postdoc and linguist Evelyn Bosma receives the Keetje Hodshon Prize for her dissertation. For her research on the multilingualism of Frisian children, Bosma previously won the Klokhuis Science Prize and the Campus Fryslân Science Prize.

From a bachelor's degree in English Language and Culture to a master's degree in International Relations: a minor made it possible for Evanthia Andreadaki. 'For me, this is the perfect combination.'

PhD defence

Students get free advice of Leiden alumni about their career, applying for a job, social networking and more. The Mentor Network is an online platform on which more than 650 alumni offer to help students.

Franc Weerwind studied Public Administration at Leiden University from 1986 to 1992. Right now, mr. Weerwind is the mayor of the municipality of Almere. The editors of Leidraad, the alumni magazine of the university, had a talk with him in context of the recurring ‘workplace’ section in the magazine…

Are you keen to immerse yourself in a new culture, broaden your horizons and make friends for life? If so, come to the Study Abroad Festival on Friday afternoon 14 October.

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…

Lecture, LUCL Colloquium | Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars

Many of our staff and students have won an award, received a grant, obtained an academic fellowship for their quality or have been socially engaged due to their specific expertise. See below for an overview per year.

Directors of museums in the Netherlands announced in March 2019 that they would be taking new steps in relation to the return of looted colonial artefacts. So what has happened since?

We would like to welcome Matthijs Westera, who will be joining LUCL as Assistant Professor of Humanities and AI for SAILS.

Professor Nadine Akkerman participated in the third episode of BBC 3’s documentary Metamorphoses, which focuses on the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe.

Lecture, Language and the Human Past

On 3 September 2025, more than 30 archaeological objects were returned to Peru, Panama and Costa Rica. The objects come from a private collection belonging to the descendants of physician and amateur archaeologist Dr Hans Feriz. In her will, his daughter stipulated that the objects collected by her…

On 1 June 2022, Maarten Kunst, Professor of Criminology at Leiden Law School, gave a lecture on his research into the effects of the right to be heard on both the defendant and the victim. Victims have certain rights in the Dutch criminal process, including the right to be heard in criminal proceedings.…

Cut marks on the bones of bears show that people in North-West Europe used bearskins to keep warm 300,000 years ago.

Come to the Night of Arts and Science in Leiden 's historic city centre on 17 September. You can enjoy music, interactive experiments, theatrical plays, lectures, modern dance, comedy and much, much more. Many of the activities are in English.

How does audio-visual material shape the identity of people when those people do not own their own land and are being oppressed? Bahar Simsek delved into the effect of film on the Kurdish identity. She will obtain her PhD on 4 May.

Who will win this year’s Teaching Prize in the Faculty of Humanities? Who will the students honour with this coveted token of their appreciation? Read on to get to know four passionate teachers – about minds working at top speed, experimental teaching styles and that satisfying moment when the penny…

LUCL is pleased to announce that Professor Johan Rooryck has been awarded both an NWO Horizon Grant for his project entitled 'Knowledge and culture', and an NWO Vrije Competitie Grant for his project entitled 'Lend me your ears: the grammar of (un)transferable possession' for a total of €2.75m.

Information provided by the Tax and Customs Administration is something that concerns every citizen. So it is not surprising that the Tax hotline receives around 10 million calls each year. The Benefits Affair emphasised the citizen’s perspective in communications with the Tax and Customs Administration.…

The current and future board of F.D.L. Gibalaux, the study association of the French language and culture programme, talk about the association, the change of board, their experiences and plans.

Do you gain enough practical experience in an academic language and culture study programme? Certainly, proved the bachelor students of Italian this summer. For the Transfer IT programme, they combined their own interests with the knowledge they gained during their studies. This resulted in vastly different…

During her student years, Claudia Robustella struggled with her mental health. Thanks in part to the help of her study coordinator Rosa van Straten, she still managed to obtain her bachelor's degree.

Gerard Soeteman (1936) created a furore as a screenwriter of films that became classics (Dutch films: Turks Fruit, Soldaat van Oranje, de Aanslag), but personally he is much more attached to his critical documentaries for television. He studied Dutch in Leiden. How did that help him?

For almost nine years, the Leiden Medievalists Blog has been one of the university’s most widely read blogs. Its 200th article was published recently. ‘We have so much excellent research; it needs a platform.’

Lecture

In a significant step toward restoring cultural heritage, PhD candidate Marie Kolbenstetter has played a pivotal role in repatriating a collection of 133 archaeological artefacts from the prestigious Musée du quai Branly in Paris back to their place of origin in southern Honduras. Her efforts underscore…

Many Asian countries are in a process of democratisation. The expectation was that citizens would gradually gain more control over the functioning of their elites. Experts from Leiden have concluded that this process often fails to improve the quality of the administration. They researched the nature…

How did British scholars and scientists in the period of discipline formation envision, experience and resist scholarly temptations?

This research hopes to contribute to social awareness of the consequences of colonialism for Indigenous Peoples, to the deconstruction of still existing colonial and discriminatory notions and to a better appreciation of Indigenous art and thought.

Research facilities within reach of LIBC members:

Academic staff and students blog about their research and teaching.

In our HANDS!Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies, we run projects pertaining to sign language linguistics with a focus on Africa. In addition, we are running projects on sign language teaching, tactile signing, deaf people’s experiences with the legal system, and deaf history.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of ICLON (Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching) with currently two universities in Kazakhstan.

Between 1798 and 1813 successive regimes attempted to enforce a fundamental geographical and administrative redivision of the Netherlands. The provinces that had been sovereign states within the Republic of the United Netherlands for over two centuries were dissolved and replaced by ‘departments’, subordinate…

This PhD subproject concentrates on 16th-century ichthyology and takes Gessner’s Historia piscium (1558) (further HP) as its point of departure and focus.

Students in EFL (English as a foreign language) classes may regard their non-native teachers as successful models of intercultural communication and mediators between the cultures of English-speaking countries (ES cultures) and their own cultures. Teachers who are aware of such roles may introduce and…

Every year, the World Cultural Council grants special acknowledgements to five to ten young researchers or scholars of the host country who have achieved outstanding performance in the fields of science, education or arts.

Data sets available for scientific/research purposes.

The BA in African Studies draws on Leiden University’s renowned expertise on Africa to bring students a wide range of subjects and themes covering the entire continent. During the programme, you will learn an African language and explore Africa from an internal perspective. By doing so, you will discover…

To be eligible for Assyriology at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

To be eligible for Egyptology at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.