Two Leiden University science communication projects have been awarded a WECOM grant through the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA). One project is a study of the history of the deaf community in the Netherlands and the other is of a condition that causes people to lose their way.

Vincent van Heuven passed away unexpectedly on Friday 6 February 2026 at the age of 76 at his home in Kûbaard (Friesland), the Netherlands.

What role does the frontal lobe play in understanding sentences? Assistant professor Jurriaan Witteman has received a grant to replicate a leading study on this question. ‘As there is some doubt about the reliability of existing neuroimaging results, it’s important to replicate influential studies.’

Dit blijkt uit het onderzoek ‘The Class Divide in Urban Indian Youths’ Lives; Their Time-Use and Adaptive Functioning’ van Radhika Bapat.

Television presenter and journalist Twan Huys will be a lecturer in Journalism and New Media at Leiden University from 1 September 2024.

Professor Ingrid Tieken (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, LUCL) and Dr Herman Siemens (Institute for Philosophy) have each been awarded an NWO Free Competition award in the Humanities for their research projects.

Professor Chinese Frank Pieke becomes research and general director of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Berlijn.

How did Dutch sound 1000 years ago? This is a question that linguist Peter-Alexander Kerkhof has been pondering for some time already. He recently managed to reconstruct this Old Dutch.

You can find an overview of events organized by the Platform for Post-Colonial Readings below.

Mums posting photos and videos of their child on Instagram and TikTok and also earning loads of money doing so. Kidfluencers, momvloggers and familyvlogs are very popular, in the Netherlands too. But the lack of legislation regulating these activities means that these children are barely protected.…

Communication is the transmission of information. All day long we are busy explaining and making things clear to each other, but exactly how we do that varies from language to language. Associate Professor Jenneke van der Wal delved into African Bantu languages for a Vidi project.

Professor Johan Rooryck will be examining cognition and core knowledge systems and how possession is expressed in different languages. Rooryck and fellow researchers have been awarded two NWO grants totalling 2.75 million euro to carry out two research programmes: 'Knowledge and Culture' and 'Lend me…

No less than seven scholars of the Faculty of Humanities were awarded a Veni grant. Veni grants are aimed at excellent researcher who recently obtained their doctorate. With a maximum grant of 250.000 euros, the laureates can develop their research ideas in the coming three years.

During the first year of life, babies adapt to the language they hear around them. In the event of hearing difficulties, this can lead to a language deficiency, which is not so easy to resolve, says Professor of English Linguistics Janet Grijzenhout. Inaugural lecture 19 March.

Fifteen hundred years ago, the north-west of what we now call China was a jumble of peoples. How did those Indians, Khotanese and Tocharians influence each other and each other's languages? Associate professor Michaël Peyrot has been awarded an ERC grant of almost two million euros to unravel this 'web…

Three lecturers from Leiden University have been awarded a 100,000-euro Comenius Teaching Fellowship within the scope of the Senior Fellows programme. The grant will enable them and their project teams to carry out their own teaching innovation project.

Previous research has shown that extreme shyness is hereditary, but because shyness is such a broad concept it is difficult to identify specific genes. Anita Harrewijn has discovered particular brain measurements that can help. PhD defence 18 January.

Effectively supporting young people in coping better with COVID-19 related stress requires detailed understanding of the factors that influence resilient functioning. But what are those factors and what concrete actions can be taken to support young people in building resilience? Take a look at this…

“Endophenotypes of Social Anxiety Disorder: Can we detect them and are they useful in clinical practice”

BrainTrain: an initiative from Leiden University in which a team of students visit high schools to make adolescents more resilient against disinformation on the news and on their socials. In an interactive two-hour guest lesson, high school pupils discover how easily their brains can be tricked into…

Athens is universally known as a symbol of democracy, philosophy, and ancient Greek aesthetics. Some of the most famous classical monuments, including the Parthenon and the temple of Hephaestus, can be found here.

Reviewed by Simon Polinder.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union (EU) and its Member States have adopted wide-ranging legal and political measures to support Ukraine in its struggle.

Many European citizens feel connected to the European Union and place trust in it, Eva Grosfeld found in her PhD research. Yet around a quarter do not identify with the EU at all. How can the EU regain their trust?

Author: Ilan Manor

Teaching during the corona crisis, the high workload and the challenges faced by the Faculty of humanities. In an online working visit to Leiden University on 12 October, Minister for Education, Culture and Science, Ingrid van Engelshoven, discussed the hot topics of the day with the Executive Board,…

El CID, the University introduction week, has begun! We spoke on Sunday evening to the first new arrivals who had come to Leiden to spend the night at the University Sports Centre. New students can sleep here all this week as well as at the ice rink or in a student house.

PhD defence

Political scientists study topics that affect society, but their work often remains out of the spotlight. Not always: the research of Leiden political scientist Simon Otjes does have a visible impact.

As sea levels rise and climate change speeds up, knowledge about the ocean becomes increasingly important. But how is this knowledge being created and how can we use it best to prepare for the future? To answers these questions, Jackie Ashkin studies the day-to-day work of ocean scientists from up c…

Eleven talented Leiden researchers with several years of research experience have been awarded a Vidi subsidy to set up or expand their own line of research.

Language is omnipresent: when you talk, app or meet in Teams. Understanding how we communicate with one another and what communication does to us is essential. In her inaugural lecture, Nivja de Jong will call to redress the balance between the sciences and the humanities.

Victoria Nyst's love for sign language was sparked when she accidentally ended up at a deaf school while studying African linguistics. The university lecturer has since been awarded a Vici grant to research the history of these languages.

From research on stellar winds to sign language: an impressive seven researchers from Leiden University will receive a prestigious Vici grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker retired on 8 February. If there was one theme running through his career, it was the links between the University and society. Before he left, Stolker spoke one last time to people from within and without the university about the societal impact of research. On topics…

Cognitive psychologists Eliska Prochazkova and Mariska Kret from Leiden University have won an Ig Nobel Prize for their research into the romantic click between people. They discovered that attraction between people can be predicted by synchrony in heart rate and skin conductance.

From October 1-3, 2017, the 24th Annual International Law and Religion Symposium was held at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, USA. The Symposium was attended by 100 participants, from 50 different countries, while interpretation at the venue was available in 11 languages (Arabic, French, Italian,…

On 16 May the first International Day of Light was celebrated all around the globe. Initiated by UNESCO, organisations in 87 different countries set up a total of more than 600 events to embrace the vital role of light and related technologies in science. In the Old Observatory in Leiden visitors could…

Leiden University won three prizes at the International Criminal Court (ICC) Moot Court Competition – English edition. The final round was held on 27 June 2022 in Courtroom I of the ICC in The Hague (the Netherlands). Due to current COVID-19 related restrictions, it was a hybrid hearing with judges…

Dr. Moritz Jesse, associate professor of European Union Law at the Europa Institute Leiden, addressed the members and audience of the panel “Citizenship and the Refugee Crisis” at the World Conference of the Association for the Study of Nationalities in New York, which took place at Columbia University,…

Whilst resisting abhorrent Russian aggression, Ukraine has made a clear choice for a future in Europe. With an association agreement already in place, and Ukraine being a candidate for EU membership, Ukrainian lawyers need to be trained in EU law and Ukrainian Law Schools need to develop the capacity…

Last week, the Dutch Council of Ministers adopted the decision to modernise the process of prosecuting politicians. This action was taken following the Russian bribery scandal involving Dutch politicians. Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional Law, discusses this in Dutch daily newspaper ‘NRC’.

The American security services brought down American President Nixon, not the media as people generally believe. Andrew Gawthorpe, researcher on diplomacy and American foreign policy, hopes that the security services under Trump also make the right decision.

On 16 May the first International Day of Light was celebrated all around the globe. Initiated by UNESCO, organisations in 87 different countries set up a total of more than 600 events to embrace the vital role of light and related technologies in science. In the Old Observatory in Leiden visitors could…

A delegation from the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) arrived in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, on 23 February for five days. 'We need to discuss the immediate situation with all parties, but above all we need to address the root causes of the crisis,' explained Abdel-Fatau Musah, Ecowas…

Beryl ter Haar is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Warsaw, Poland. The Law School is the oldest part of the university (founded in 1808), followed by the School of Medicine (founded one year later). The two schools became the heart of Warsaw University which was founded in 1816 by…

Last week Russia and Ukraine met for the first time since the outbreak of the war. The talks took place in Belarus.

The Executive Board has appointed Olaf van Vliet as Professor of Economics at Leiden University, specialising in social security and labour market policy from an international perspective. The chair is affiliated to both the Department of Economics (Leiden Law School) and the Institute of Public Administration…

Het nieuwe kabinet onder leiding van D66 leider Jetten verschuift het sociaal beleid terug naar een focus op activering, ten koste van wat jarenlang ‘bestaanszekerheid’ werd genoemd. Critici – waaronder expert sociaal zekerheidsrecht, Barend Barentsen- waarschuwen in de Volkskrant voor grotere financiële…

‘Let’s get everyone home safely!’ This was the message of an estimated 750 demonstrators as they marched through the centre of Leiden on 18 November.