For a brief period Leiden University was the hub of the world of linguistics. The 48th annual conference of the Societas Linguistica Europaea was held here at the start of September. Almost 600 linguists came from all corners of the world to the city of discoveries to attend this prestigious event.

Military veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder often have symptoms that are both chronic and complex. Professor by Special Appointment Eric Vermetten is looking for new ways to help them deal with these. One possible medicine: party drug MDMA.

Carmen Gonsalves has been the Dutch ambassador to Chile since this autumn. She studied history in Leiden. How useful has her degree been and what’s it like to be an ambassador? ‘Diplomacy is fascinating.’ We spoke to her just before the presidential elections.

The number of lions in Kenya is decreasing alarmingly, due partly to the encroaching cities and the development of the countryside. Together with local scientists and inhabitants, Leiden biologists are studying how this decline can be halted. ‘Lions are cleverer than we thought.’

Lecture

Interdisciplinary education and research projects

The Garden Club is a ProParte sub-group.

Knowing how to resolve global problems is one thing, but how do you make sure that it actually happens? That’s the real challenge, because there are powerful movements everywhere that want to reconstruct the walls of nation states. In an attempt to resolve this issue, Leiden researchers are experimenting…

An international team of astronomers, including Leiden PhD student Elia Pizzati, has observed several ancient quasars that, surprisingly, appear to be floating alone in the early universe (less than a billion years after the Big Bang). Until now, astronomers, based on models, assumed that quasars are…

Laughter and nostalgia filled the Erasmus Huis square on Saturday 11 October 2025. More than 80 alumni gathered at Leiden Calling Alumni Homecoming Reception to reconnect with their old classmates and expand their professional networks.

It appears that interest groups are increasingly finding their way to court or other ways of making use of the legal system as a means for societal change. Over the summer, Rowie Stolk, PhD candidate at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law was one of the speakers at the workshop ‘Legal…

How can a society protect itself from cyber threats? Sixty talented young researchers and professionals are learning more about this at the International Cyber Security Summer School in The Hague.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia. This makes fundamental research on the precise cause of the illness of vital importance. One of the possible suspects is a certain protein filled with iron. Leiden physicist Lucia Bossoni (LION/LUMC) has now developed a new way of investigating…

February 8 saw the launch of the Medical Delta ‘Sustainable Hospitals’ Interdisciplinary Thesis Lab. The research projects will touch on different aspects of healthcare. The students hope they will be able to offer practical solutions to make hospitals greener.

Leiden is easily accessible by public transport. The city is ideally situated just a stone's throw from major cities like The Hague and Amsterdam. For those travelling to Leiden by plane, we are pleased to announce that KLM offers discounts for Speech Prosody attendees.

Leiden University provides ambitious students with the most recent and innovative areas of knowledge, and offers them the freedom to develop their own area of expertise.

Research framework CIAS

‘Over the last few years we have focused much more on our environmental policy and have got better at telling the world what we do,’ says Jan van der Boon, Director of Administration at the Leiden University Administration and Central Services Department. This is how he explains Leiden’s impressive…

Bachelor's students from all different disciplines came to the Master's Open Day to explore the options for their next programme. Some of them visited several different programmes and still have all their options open, while others wanted answers to very specific questions before making their final…

After three (or four) years of hard study, there are every year a lot of Bachelor students that say goodbye to go and explore the wide world. Where are they going next? And what will they miss most about our beautiful city? For the coming weeks, we will tell the stories of 6 recent Bachelor graduates…

Below you will find the answers to some of the frequently asked questions about admission to the clinical specialisations of the Master in Psychology.

Below you will find the answers to some of the frequently asked questions about admission to the clinical specialisations of the Master in Psychology.

Below you will find the answers to some of the frequently asked questions about admission to the clinical specialisations of the Master in Psychology.

Here you will find the answers to some of the frequently asked questions about admission to the clinical specialisations of the Master in Psychology.

Below you will find the answers to some of the frequently asked questions about admission to the clinical specialisations of the Master in Psychology.

Associate Professor Dr. Ulrike Tanzer from the German Department, University of Salzburg (Austria) is working for a few months at Leiden University. In this short interview she will introduce herself.

Every January, students of the Minor Sustainable Development have the opportunity to put what they’ve learned over the last few months into practice in a choice of exciting and practical courses called Area Studies. This year, for the first time, there was a choice of four locations: The Netherlands,…

Nineteen new Leiden University MOOCs have started this January. Anyone can take part in these online courses varying from combatting terrorism to kidney transplantation.

Five Leiden researchers have been awarded a Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant of up to two million euros will enable them to continue and expand their scientific research.

Shiʿi Islam

Help us spot and clean up the plastic in the canals of Leiden! Leiden University is calling on the good folk of Leiden to help our researchers study the plastic in the city’s canals. And if you’d like our canals to be plastic-free, why not donate towards a fleet of canoes to clean them up?

Part One: Casting off, Amsterdam

More than 10,000 school-leavers and their parents visited the Open Day at Leiden University on 25 February. The prospective students were given information about the different programmes in Leiden and The Hague. 'I'm curious to hear about their experiences.'

On 8 November 2017, The Law Societies Joint Brussels Office of the UK organised a seminar on the subject of ‘Brexit: Where & How to Enforce: Building Blocks for a New Dispute Settlement System’. The seminar was held in the building of the European Parliament in Brussels.

25 May 2020 On behalf of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO) is providing Comenius Teaching Fellow grants to 38 lecturers. One of those to be awarded a grant is Tarlach McGonagle, Professor of Media Law and Information Society at…

Many important discoveries have been made in Leiden, and the Leiden Discoveries route guides you through the city to find them. For example, it will take you to the lab of Nobel laureate Willem Einthoven, who was a professor of physiology. His most important invention, the electrocardiograph, is still…

Rie Schild-de Groen watched over ‘her’ Gentlemen, the residents of the ‘t Heerenhoeckje (Gentlemen’s Corner) Minerva house at Rapenburg 110, like a mother hen for 70 years. She was moved by the stories of residents who had lost loved ones to cancer. Jaap Koster and a few other former housemates helped…

Discover the NWA-funded project 'Crafting Resilience' and its long-term research into building a resilient societies through social interventions in eight Dutch cities.

Africa needs a narrative that is consistent with the developments that are taking place all around the continent. In these developments, talented youth, creative tech hubs, and leapfrogging play a big role. We need to invest accordingly.

Scientific Director of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) Hubertus Irth: ‘We test substances and look for new concepts for treating disease.’

When professor Frank Israel graduated at Leiden Observatory some forty years ago, little did he know that one of his theories would be making headlines in 2018 - in the form of a 3D animation on the Internet, no less.

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Wondering what anthropology students can contribute in daily practice? Both during their bachelor's and master's studies, anthropology students conduct research at the request of social organisations in Leiden via Leren met de Stad. Last week, they presented their experiences and results on the various…

Large numbers of Indonesians were active members of the resistance during the Second World War. One of them was Irawan Soejono, a student at Leiden University. He was shot dead on Boommarkt, during a raid on 13 January 1945. Seventy-five years later he was remembered in a small ceremony in the very…

Leiden University can build an alternative Humanities Campus on its own available land at the current location in the city. This is the conclusion of a feasibility study and is what the mayor and aldermen of Leiden write in a letter to the city council.

The nominees for the IRO thesis prize 2023 and the Prof. Dr. J.Th.J. van den Berg-prijs 2023. Who wrote the best bachelor theses in Political Science?

In the last weekend of April, the tenth edition of the Benelux Mathematics Olympiad took place. The Dutch delegation won a total of 8 medals. The 17-year-old Nils van de Berg even obtained a golden one!

The Van Bergen Fund aims to promote contacts between Dutch and international students in order to achieve a better understanding of each other's cultures. At the Symposium for Diversity and Inclusion the two winners of the Van Bergen Award 2015 were announced.

Clinical psychologist Bernet Elzinga has been appointed as Professor of a personal chair at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. This professorship will contribute both nationally and internationally to the broader promotion of Leiden University in the field of stress and psychopathology.