NWO has awarded eleven Leiden researchers a Vidi grant of 800,000 euros. The research subjects range from Cicero and muscle dystrophy to the archaeology of bogs.

The LUCAS Dissertation Prize has been awarded to Dr. Renske Janssen for her PhD thesis Religio Illicita? Roman Legal Interactions with Early Christianity in Context.

How did the Arabs manage to maintain an empire based on Islamic principles for three hundred years? Arab expert Petra Sijpesteijn and her team will be examining this question over the coming five years, focusing on the correspondence of ordinary people. The research is being funded by an ERC Consolidator…

The Faculty of Humanities' Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Fund provides small grants to initiatives in support of diversity and inclusion, with specific emphasis on creating an inclusive learning environment.

A new collaborative monograph of democratic theory, The Sciences of the Democracies, was released by UCL Press on August 7. The book, in the style of a democratic manifesto, is written by a large number of co-authors in a bold attempt to expand and deepen how democracy is studied and understood. Among…

Author Gustaaf Peek, who has been nominated for the Libris Literature Award, studied English Language and Literature in Leiden. ‘I completely submersed myself in literature during my studies, and the effects are still with me today.'

Online, hybrid, on campus... It was an unpredictable year, also for the Faculty of Humanities. Luckily, there were also non-corona related stories. Let's review 2021 with this list of the most-read news articles per month.

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded Veni funding to seventeen researchers who recently obtained their PhD. This award offers promising young scientists the opportunity to develop their own ideas over a period of three years.

In line with tradition, at the opening of the academic year the LUS Teaching Prize will be presented to the University’s best teacher. Get to know the nominees. This week: Thijs Porck.

Festival

Lecture, Lectures in Historical Linguistics and Philology

Since its founding, LUC has been a college of educational development and experimentation. Its mission statement identifies the college as “a site of innovation in pedagogy, curriculum design, and student well-being,” and it applies a student-centred approach to learning throughout its BA and BSc degree…

Talking about suicide is important, but anything but comfortable. To make this difficult subject easier for students and staff to discuss, the university is organising a campaign week in line with the national campaign ‘1K Z1E J3’ (I see you) being run by Stichting 113 Zelfmoordpreventie (113 is the…

Lecture, Research Seminar Medieval and Early Modern History

Lecture, Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series

Lecture, LUCL Retired & Kicking series

Lecture, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars

PhD defence

Conference

Lecture, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars

Conference, Workshop

Over the past year, many of our staff and students have won prizes, been awarded a substantial grant or been appointed to an academic association or a position in public life. All of these are good reasons to include them in our 2019 Hall of Fame. We are proud of them all.

PhD defence

Lecture, Language and the Human Past

Lecture, This Time for Africa! series

Debate

Lecture, This Time for Africa! series

The Dutch Student Orchestra is performing at Stadsgehoorzaal, Leiden’s concert hall, on 11 February. Several Leiden students have sacrificed many a free hour to the rehearsals. Days before the big performance we present them with three dilemmas.

PhD candidates in medicine, Wouter Jan Geelhoed and Nan van Geloven, are the winners of the Leiden preliminary round of FameLab. They are through to the final on 22 April.

On Thursday 19 October, the Crisis and Security Management programme welcomed back six alumni for an alumni panel.

If you had something important to write down in ancient times, you would usually write in Greek in the eastern Mediterranean. University lecturer Joanne Stolk has been awarded an ERC grant to explore the kinds of spelling mistakes that were made in these scripts. And, more importantly, what improvements…

Knowledge of Islam and of Muslim societies is indispensable when trying to properly understand the globalising world, as well as changing Dutch society. Researchers from Leiden are therefore immersing themselves in the languages, culture and religion of Muslim societies. Their work and insights can…

It may well be that only male zebra finches can sing, but the females are faster at learning to discriminate sounds. Leiden researchers publish their findings in the scientific journal Animal Behaviour.

By looking at what is different, researchers often discover the special, the unusual. And that has already brought a wealth of highlights – also in Leiden.

It is almost two and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine, but the conflict between the two countries has been going on for much longer. Central to it is the question of what it means to be Ukrainian. Guest researcher Viktoriia Ryhovanova teaches a course on the subject. Last academic year, the…

Which two scientists will present their research best in three minutes? It could be the one with the most supporters.

Dr Alex Geurds was elected as a Fellow for the Society of Antiquaries, a prestigious and old educational charity based in London. Established in 1707, the society aims at the encouragement and advancement of the study and knowledge of the antiquities.

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.

One of our LUCIS members, Karène Sanchez, has been granted the Internationalisation in the Humanities grant for her project 'Engaging Europe in the Arab World: European missionaries and humanitarianism in the Middle East (1850-1970)'. Sanchez is cooperating with researchers from IEG Mainz and IISMM…

Four scientists from Leiden University have each been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant, worth up to two million euros, gives researchers the opportunity to head up a research team for five years.

Marcia Brandenburg, PhD candidate at Clinical Child and Adolescent Studies in Leiden, is the winner of the Dutch final of the science communication competition FameLab. She will represent the Netherlands in the final.

For 2022, The Iranian-German project 'The Iranian Highlands: Resilience and Integration of Premodern Societies' announces the second round of fellowship grants. The fellowship is open for both iranian and non-iranian researchers, especially in archaeology but also in other interdisciplinary fields focussing…

An NWO Veni application by Linda Geven, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, has been honoured. She will spend the next three years conducting research into false confessions in police interrogations.

No less than 33 project received a Leiden Kiem grant in 2023. How did they fare? Olga Bogolyubova shares experiences from her project ‘Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Safety and Danger in the Digital World’.

To give a better idea of the research at Leiden University, a new website has been launched that lists the University’s institutes together with the disciplines that they cover. But the institutes also work together intensively.

War and terrorism overshadow interest in the pre-Islamic heritage of the Arabic peninsula. The new Leiden Centre for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to make the general public more aware of the ancient history of this region.

Some thirty Leiden students balanced on SUP boards for the Supping for Sustainability Lustrum activity. Together with alumnus Merijn Tinga, better known as the Plastic Soup Surfer, they paddled their boards through the Leiden canals and waterways, fishing plastic waste out of the water.