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.

The jade vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys) is flowering at the Hortus botanicus in Leiden. The plant started producing multiple flower clusters three weeks ago and the first ones are now in full bloom.

Although the official start of the academic year has to wait for another fortnight, Leiden University College The Hague (LUC) welcomed the Class of 2024 to the Anna van Bueren campus this week. The new cohort of 204 incoming students will spend the next three years studying different majors and minors…

On Saturday 9 March 2019, Dr. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga got his first publication for his Marie Skłodowska Curie project on the Legal and Ethical Aspects of Healthcare Robot Technology.

A new discussion paper published in Policy Sciences by two Leiden researchers claims that governments are working with one hand tied when it comes to data on vulnerable groups. At the core of this paper is the idea that even though the volume of data has increased in recent years, the quality of the…

An international team of astronomers has witnessed a cosmic weather event that has never been seen before.

Leiden theoretical physicists have proven that not only the genetic information in DNA determines who we are, but also DNA’s mechanics. Helmut Schiessel and his group simulated many DNA sequences and found a correlation between mechanical cues and the way DNA is folded. Publication in PLoS One.

On Thursday 19 and Friday 20 September the PROSEPS conference took place in The Hague under the auspices of the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs of Leiden University. During the two-day meet up, working group meetings and workshops took place in the New Babylon Conference Centre in the heart…

Lifelike gods, provisional professors and the city militia with weapons a clanking. Leiden put on a colourful procession and drummed up hundreds of citizens to celebrate the foundation of the first university of the Republic of the Netherlands on 8 February 1575. 'It wasn't a party just for the sake…

Joop van Holsteyn, Professor in Political Behaviour and Research Methods (Leiden University Institute of Political Science), joins the Dutch Electoral Council.

Conference

The League of European Research Universities (LERU) was launched in Leiden 20 years ago. LERU is a partnership of 23 leading research universities, including the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Leiden, Leuven and Heidelberg. It celebrated this anniversary last week with a multi-day conference in…

On 15 November 2019, Dr. Joris Larik, Assistant Professor at LUC and Convener of the International Justice major, convened a policy roundtable on “Brexit’s Next Chapter: The Revised Deal and Global Britain” .

Inaugural lecture

Radio telescope LOFAR maps the sky. It produces incredibly detailed images of the universe - and vast amounts of data. Huub Röttgering, director of the Leiden Observatory, talks about the challenges of working with those enormous datasets.

Telling sensationalised stories, exaggerating benefits and understating the risks: creating ‘hype’ about something doesn't sound like something a responsible scientist would indulge in. Or could we also use hype in a ‘good way'? What could we achieve by opening up quantum futures for wider discussions,…

The 18.8 million euro NWO Zwaartekracht grant for quantum software which Amsterdam, Delft and Leiden landed collectively, means for Leiden University among others the appointment of two new permanent scientific staff members, who will each form their own research group, divided among Computer Science,…

Together with students and local residents, historians Ariadne Schmidt and Alicia Schrikker researched the Leiden Transvaal neighbourhood. They will present their findings on Thursday 20 October, at a specially organised mini-festival in the neighbourhood.

Since 2000 the Leiden Student Council (LSR) yearly awards a prize for the best teacher of the university at the Dies Natalis.

2017 was the Leiden Asia Year. Leiden has had connections with Asia and built up extensive knowledge of the continent over many centuries. This Leiden-Asia link has been in the spotlight for the past year.

Festival

What began as a PhD project has grown into a website with 120,000 unique visitors each year. With the platform OpenML, researcher Jan van Rijn is contributing to open science, aiming to make machine learning more transparent, accessible, and fair.

Social Aspects of Space in the Configurational Architecture of Frankish Castles in the Holy Land, 1099-1291

Dutch speedskaters have been winning the most medals in speed skating at the Winter Olympics for years. How? Based on their intuition. Scientist Jeroen van der Eb of the Data Mining & Sports group of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) wants speedskaters to adjust their irons based…

A research project by Developmental Psychology professor Carolien Rieffe and researchers of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science has been voted Smartest Project of the Netherlands 2016.

The online summer programme Space in Your Living Room by Leiden Observatory has won the first prize ‘Most Innovative Event’ of the Astronomy@Home Awards from the International Astronomical Union. In July and August 2020, participants could for example talk to real astronauts and imagine life forms in…

Lecture

Seminar

Leiden University College is buzzing with life again. On 13 August, this year’s new crop of students moved into their rooms. For more than two hundred first-year students, LUC will be their home for the next three years. On the occasion of ‘moving day’, we spoke with three of them.

On Tuesday the 29th of November, the SBB Studentboard organized the third SBB Colloquium Night. Max, Guido, Niek, Yiyu and Dennis presented their internships, five topics covering many facets of the Science Based Business courses.

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.

On the Day of Privacy, 28 January, the European Commission is calling on citizens to make sure they protect their personal data. But how do you do that, and against what, exactly? Privacy researcher Bart Custers explains.

On 31 January 2024, Alex Schilin defended his dissertation ‘United in Distinctiveness: The Institutionalisation of Differentiated Integration in Economic and Monetary Union during the Sovereign Debt Crisis.’ What motivated him to research this specific topic, and how did he tackle this project? And…

Artist Daan Roosegaarde, together with UNESCO and Leiden University, wants to make the stars come out during Seeing Stars Leiden. The University will therefore switch off the lights in most of its buildings on Sunday 25 September from 22:00 to 23:30 and is asking the people of Leiden to follow suit.

Study information

The Aernout van Lynden Global Citizenship Award award is a recognition given by the LUC community. Each year a student who has demonstrated the qualities of active engagement, responsive and responsible participation in civic and/or community building, within and/or beyond LUC is presented with the…

The Aernout van Lynden Global Citizenship Award award is a recognition given by the LUC community. Each year a student who has demonstrated the qualities of active engagement, responsive and responsible participation in civic and/or community building, within and/or beyond LUC is presented with the…