Organs and tissues grown in the lab may in the future be able to cure people with organ failures. Micha Drukker, professor of Stem Cells, Developmental Biology and Technology for Innovative Drug Research, is convinced that the use of stem cells will make this possible. He will deliver his inaugural…

Two organisers at heart. In the background, facilities managers Nick van Asperen and Kees Schoonwater ensure that staff and students have everything they need to work and study well. Recently, the familiar faces started doing so in a new role. Schoonwater is now project manager housing and Van Asperen…

Tweedejaars studenten van de Bachelor Bestuurskunde, track Bestuur Beleid en Organisatie (BBO), hebben tijdens het vak BBO II: Multi-level governance gewerkt aan een praktijkopdracht voor de gemeente Leiden. De bevindingen werden aan elkaar gepresenteerd tijdens een interactieve sessie.

From practicing ultrasound techniques in augmented reality to chatting with virtual ancient Greeks about what an archaeological site looked like back in the day: video & innovation specialist Nathan Saucier gives an insight into the many possibilities of the interactive media and simulations studio…

Ionica Smeets is planning to give the prize money that she won with the Iris Medal, a prize for excellent science communication, to student projects.

Jiska Ogier studied notarial law, which wasn’t always easy because she went to lectures in a wheelchair. As a student she pushed to make society accessible. And with her law degree and lived experience she has now made this her work. ‘You can achieve a lot with creative solutions.’

Last week we were informed that Prof. A. Hordijk, emeritus professor at the Mathematical Institute, has passed away. Arie Hordijk (1940) came to the Universiteit Leiden in 1976 and has been a professor of Mathematics of Operations Research at our institute until his retirement in 2005.

The question of land property titles is a common source of conflict between indigenous communities and federal authorities all over the Americas. A new Panamanian law have led indigenous communities to reach out to archaeologist Dr Natalia Donner. A grant from the Centre for Indigenous American Studies…

Much of the work of Serge Fehr, Professor of Quantum Information Theory, is abstract and theoretical and comprehensible to very few people. But his work helps make the digital world safer so that in future our internet banking will still be problem free, for instance. He will explain more in his inaugural…

On 1 September, Ad Maas, curator of Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, was appointed professor by special appointment. In this role, he will primarily focus on the representation of natural sciences in museums.

Leiden University’s Executive Board (CvB) visited Leiden University College in The Hague on Friday 11 November during a working visit tour past the Institutes of the Faculty Governance and Global Affairs. Hester Bijl and Martijn Ridderbos were provided with an overview of the programme, the research,…

Like spoken languages, sign languages evolve organically and do not always have the same origin. This produces different ways of communication and annotation. Manolis Fragkiadakis wrote his PhD thesis on this.

Cells in our bodies are often threatened by errors in our own proteins. The FLOW consortium, comprising scientists from various institutions including Leiden, is poised to meticulously map out for the first time how cells control proteins, correcting or removing faulty ones. This endeavour holds promise…

Taking part in TikTok challenges, online gambling, and forwarding nudes. ‘Why do adolescents take online risks?’, psychologist Neeltje Blankenstein wonders. Her research on online risk taking has been awarded a Veni grant by the Netherlands Research Council (NWO). Read her answers to five questions.

What did plays look like in the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth centuries? With the new OverActing theatre festival, university lecturer Jed Wentz is trying to get closer to an answer to that question.

With the aid of artificial intelligence (AI), care professionals at the LUMC (Leiden University Medical Center) are able to calculate quickly and accurately whether a coronavirus patient has suffered serious lung damage. They do this by putting a CT scan through the AI software of the CAD4COVID-CT p…

A successful series of lectures on interior design, a symposium on four-poster beds and a new series of study afternoons on the horizon. University lecturer Alexander Dencher knows how to hold the attention of a growing audience. How does he do it? And what makes the history of interior design so fa…

Leiden University College The Hague received the 'Top rated Programme' seal from the Keuzegids Universiteiten 2023 (Dutch University Guide). It is the tenth consecutive time the Liberal Arts & Sciences programme focusing on Global Challenges is awarded the honorary seal.

After receiving positive feedback from peers, socially anxious young people feel as confident about themselves as their non-anxious counterparts. 'These young people are then able to handle new social situations more confidently,’ says Leiden psychologist Anne Miers. Her research is published in the…

The daisy has been crowned the Netherlands’ national flower. Rogier van Vugt, Head of Horticulture at the Hortus botanicus, explains why the daisy merits its elevation to national symbol.

To what extent can global issues be solved by multistakeholder collaboration, a relatively new type of organisation? Jan Aart Scholte, the coordinator of the Global Transformations and Governance Challenges (GTGC) interdisciplinary research programme, has received a Dutch Research Council (NWO) grant…

'Psychologists think I’m a linguist but linguists think I’m a psychologist,' says cognitive neuroscientist Xiaochen Zheng. With the Veni grant she will be able to bring these two fields of research closer together. Read her answers to five questions.

Leiden University is going to offer two new Economics degree programmes at its campus in The Hague: the bachelor’s in Economics and Society and the master’s in Public Sector Economics. The NVAO has decided to award accreditation to both programmes, which will be taught in Dutch. The bachelor’s programme…

The challenge is considerable, but so is the satisfaction when it succeeds: creating complex sugar molecules that play a role in biology.

After the lockdown, it was again possible to receive graduates and guests at the University. In recent weeks, BSc and MSc graduates from various study programmes were festively awarded their diplomas in a special corona-proof setting in the restaurant of the Gorlaeus Lecture Halls building. This resulted…

Expert in Classics Renske Janssen has been awarded a Rubicon grant. She will use the grant to conduct research at the University of Edinburgh into how Roman law was perceived by society at the time.

In early modern England, courts of law were working overtime. University lecturer Lotte Fikkers delved into the records of centuries-old court cases involving women. In Early Modern Women's Life-Writing and English Law, she reconstructs how the story they told in court differs from the one they wrote…

Economic law, environmental law and human rights are important fields of law for sustainable development. But they do not interact sufficiently, which makes it difficult to implement sustainable development.

Fiffy the chimpanzee had rapidly developed cataracts in both eyes that made her as good as blind. Eye doctors at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have now managed to replace the lenses in both her eyes. As far as we know, Fiffy, who is thought to be between 30 and 40 years old, is the first…

The first year students of Bachelor Security Studies finished their final block with the course Integrated Project 1. As part of the programme's teaching philosophy ‘Explore, Understand, Do’, students were required to combine the knowledge and understanding they’d gathered throughout their first year,…

Rogier Creemers is a lecturer in Modern Chinese Studies. While he looks for challenges in his lectures, in his free time he much prefers to go back to basics and work with his hands.

People who move most in the afternoon and evening are less insulin resistant than people who move mainly in the morning or spread throughout the day. This makes them at lower risk of type 2 diabetes. These are the results that researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have published…

How can we guarantee the safety of the crown witness scheme for both crown witnesses and lawyers? How can we ensure that online conversations between lawyers and their clients remain confidential? And what are the risks of extra secure communication tools?

Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) has spent the past five years coordinating an international study of genetic mutations and breast cancer risks. The results will make it easier to determine which genes increase the risk of breast cancer and to what extent. The researchers published their results…

In recent weeks, all PhD students and supervisors have received an invitation for a PhD survey. Why was this survey launched? And what happens to the results? Director of the Graduate School Marian Klamer explains why it is worth setting aside 15 minutes to take part in the survey.

It’s time once again to take the National Student Survey (NSE), the annual student satisfaction survey for all students at research universities and universities of applied sciences. Annie de Jong is a Policy Officer for Quality Assurance at Strategy and Academic Affairs and the central contact person…

Algorithms solve problems. But which algorithm is best suited to which problem? During his doctoral research, Diederick Vermetten developed methods to figure this out. And that is important for the entire field.

Suzan Tunca was the first dancer to receive her PhD from PhDArts at Leiden University. Her work focuses on the relationship between the physical and metaphysical. 'It took a while to find the right tone and language for this.'

Marion Pluskota is the new post-doc on Manon van der Heijden's 'Crime and Gender' project.

Professor of Privacy and Cybercrime Bart Schermer researches the relationship between new digital technologies, enforcement and human rights. What cybercrime trends can he see that are relevant to an organisation like Leiden University?

At FGGA, we believe it is important that programme directors continue to improve their knowledge and skills. Daan Weggemans, Programme Director for the BSc Security Studies recently completed the Educational Leadership Training Programme. We asked him about the importance of continuing to obtain new…

Professor of Computer Science Joost Batenburg has received half a million euros from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to improve the conservation of historical paintings with 3D X-ray imaging.

What actually goes into the development of a massive open online course, a MOOC? University lecturer Tijmen Pronk developed the course 'Introduction to Comparative Linguistics of Indo-European Languages' independently. He talks about his motivation and experiences.

Student of International Studies Susanne Reitsma has a remarkable passion: water. In April 2015, she was elected vice president of the World Youth Parliament for Water, in which capacity she works for worldwide access to clean drinking water and sanitation. What does Suzanne find so special about water?…

Nienke van der Marel has been awarded the New Horizons Prize in physics for her pioneering research on planet formation. This prize is given to young, promising researchers in physics or mathematics. The astronomer and her colleagues found the first observational evidence for 'dust traps' in disks around…

For years, the late professor Marten Durieux personally mentored and funded students from Sudan to study physics in the Netherlands. Colleague Sense Jan van der Molen calls his endeavour remarkable: ‘Marten Durieux has done a great job with these students, at a time when diversity was not yet a big…

She is the only student in the core group: Ava Bauer. In November, the assessor of the Faculty of Science was asked to help think about the new faculty strategy. An opportunity she seized with both hands, because having a student in the core group is essential, Bauer says. 'As an assessor, I have the…

Minister of Digitalisation Alexandra van Huffelen will give a guest lecture on the government’s ambitions in the field of digitalisation on Monday 12 September. Bram Klievink, professor Digitalisation and Public Policy and founder of The Hague Centre for Digital Governance will act as mediator. ‘Digitalisation…