A shepherd, but also a comparativist and historian with very broad interests. That is how Professor Philippe Buc describes himself. As of 1 August 2021, he will hold the chair of professor of Medieval History at the university. In an introductory interview, Buc introduces himself, his research and his…

In the research for her upcoming book, Elizabeth Stuart: Queen of Hearts, author and academic Nadine Akkerman stumbled upon a little-known portrait of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia and grandmother of King George I, which she believes would have been considered treasonous at the time it was pain…

The Municipality of The Hague, Leiden University and CBRE Investment Management (CBRE IM) will together try to realise a University building in the former Hudson’s Bay premises at Grote Marktstraat 48-50/Spui 3. This will facilitate the growth of Campus The Hague. A cooperation agreement was signed…

Egyptologist Marleen De Meyer has been appointed the new Director of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC). Dr De Meyer has worked for the institute, which promotes Egyptian, Dutch and Flemish collaboration in the field of education and research, since 2016.

Effectively treating a severe case of pneumonia is often challenging. Identifying the pathogen behind it can be difficult. PhD candidate Ilona den Hartog tried something new: ‘We searched for answers in substances our own body produces.’ PhD defence on 17 September.

Dennis Claessen has been appointed professor of Molecular Microbiology at the Institute of Biology Leiden. With his teaching and research on the cell wall, the professor wants to establish applications in the industry and the medical sector.

PhD defence

Lecture

PhD defence

PhD defence

Lecture, LIAS After-Lunch Talk Series

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

The crisis in Iran seems to have settled and both countries are claiming victory. The Americans say that they taught Iran a lesson, but Iran projects the contradictory. Now, who is right? On Thursday 9th January, Bert Koenders commented on this on BNR News Radio.

Conference, Histories Connected: Faculty Roundtable

The Public Prosecutor’s Office Oost-Nederland, the Police in Oost-Nederland and the municipality of Steenwijkerland failed in their handling of a case involving discrimination in Giethoorn. This is the opinion of experts, including Professor Peter Rodrigues, in Dutch investigative journalism programme…

The Dutch polder model has provided stability and administrative calm for many years, but is it still resilient enough to withstand the dynamics of today, or is it ‘too rigid’?

Martijn Bezemer has been appointed as professor in “Ecology of plant-microbe-insect interactions” within the Faculty of Science at the Institute of Biology from the 1st of September 2016. His main research focus is on aboveground-belowground interactions.

At this week’s EU summit in Brussels, Dutch Prime Minister Rutte will try to get support for his plans to combat migration. He proposes tighter border controls at Europe’s external borders and returning rejected seekers to their country of origin more often. But how feasible is the latter proposal?

On Friday evening 17 September, Leiden astronomer Joe Callingham can be seen in a new series on Discovery channel. Killers of the Cosmos is about different deadly dangers lurking in the depths of space. Asteroids, cosmic debris, electromagnetic weapons… The show takes a film-noir approach to these threats,…

Evolution is all around you every day. This is the message of the new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) of Leiden University and Naturalis that begins on September 19.

Subtle changes in eye appearance can influence how people perceive others and affect their generosity. Articles from PsyPost and The Washington Post highlighted two experimental studies in which psychology researchers from Leiden University, including Mariska Kret, explored this phenomenon.

The last names for the future European Commissioners were made public at the beginning of September 2019 and also which candidates have been put forward for the new European Commission by the different member states.

‘Islam and Muslims are not something that happened to Europe; they are part of Europe. In fact, Islam is one the biggest constants in European history,’ argues Professor Maurits Berger in the new eight-part History of Islam in Europe podcast series of the Leiden University Faculty of Humanities.

On 1 March, Lennart Schada von Borzyskowski will start on a tenure track position at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL). With a focus on the natural and synthetic biochemistry of environmental bacteria, he wants to apply their features to health and sustainability issues.

ARC is a new platform for the artistic-academic discourse in the Netherlands and is an initiative of the Leiden University Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA).

When parking in reverse, your car skids off just a little, hitting the wall of the parking garage. On the car dashboard, a warning light immediately starts blinking. This technique from new cars can also be used for another purpose, namely in the treatment of Parkinson's disease patients.

Shuai Guo, PhD candidate at Company Law and the Hazelhoff Centre for Financial Law, was invited to speak about his research on cross-border bank resolution, with a comparative analysis of the EU, the US and China, at the Global Bankruptcy Scholars’ Work-in-progress Workshop held on 20-21 September at…

Offering all information about available research support in one place is why the new Research Support Portal was built. Policy officer research Marcel Belderbos talks about the recently launched platform.

Suzan Verberne has been appointed professor of Natural Language Processing at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) from 1 October. Verberne has been at LIACS since 2017 as group leader of the Text Mining and Retrieval group.

As of 1 September, Ton van Kalmthout has been appointed professor by special appointment of International Exchange of Dutch Literature in a Historical Perspective. In addition to his research into the import and export of Dutch literature, Van Kalmthout will also teach at Leiden University.

A signal that is present both in the centre of our Milky Way and in distant places in the universe could reveal the origin of dark matter. This is what Leiden physicist Alexey Boyarsky concludes in an article in Physical Review Letters.

Alumni event

Conference

Ustadh Mau Digital Archive project (UMADA) is among the UCLA Library 29 international cultural preservation projects supported by the Modern Endagered Archive Program (Cohort 3). From the 3rd up to the 5th of October, a digitization training workshop took place on Lamu island, on the so-called northern…

Conference, Workshop

Jason Rudall, Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, has published a monograph entitled 'Responsibility for Environmental Damage'.

Financial support that wealthy countries provide to poorer countries in order to help them combat climate change and the associated emissions was the central topic of this year's UN Climate Change Conference in Baku. Annemarie Drahmann, Associate Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, discussed…

The recently opened ICPA (International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine) in The Hague will be responsible for coordinating the prosecution of Russia for the crime of aggression and possibly also the prosecution of Vladimir Putin. The ICPA aims to close the gaps…

Shell Nigeria is liable for damages from oil spills in Nigeria. The Hague Court of Appeals gave this ruling in a case that was brought by four Nigerian farmers.

PhD defence

Dr. Andrew Littlejohn has been awarded a Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. The fellowship provides funds for early-career scholars to write and publish significant monographs that will impact the development of anthropology.

Umberto Selva, a Leiden graduate of the Research MA program of Linguistics, has received for his thesis the international award for best MA thesis in the field of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics of the year 2015.

Book historian Erik Kwakkel found an intriguing snippet of text earlier this week, that bears unexpected evidence of some of the problems encoutered by early printers: censorship and the affiliated fuss of seeking and printing Church approval.

On the next meeting of the Committee of Education and Research three new student representatives will be appointed.

On a thursdaymorning our students were guided around a new exhibition in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. This exhibition displayed photographs and documents from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Western Arabian Peninsula.