Help us develop and expand the recently established Leiden Chinese Queer Collection (LCQC, 莱顿华语酷儿文献收藏) at Leiden University Libraries (UBL).

Many people work less after turning 60 which is not helping the economy. Egbert Jongen, Professor of Economics, will explore with his team how employers and policymakers can help older employees stay healthy and keep working, even after the statutory retirement age.

Do we break the silences in our research participants’ stories? When is it ethical to write and not write about what remains unspoken in the social worlds we study? And when we encounter silences, how do we document them? These were just some of the many questions discussed during the vivid and inspiring…

In the University elections in April, the eight student seats on the University Council have gone to six parties, and newcomers the Liberal Student Party and the Party for Biomedical Students have each won one seat.

As of 1 September, Jeroen van Zon started as professor by special appointment in Quantitative Developmental Biology at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL). Van Zon is also group leader of Quantitative Developmental Biology at the physics research institute AMOLF. Three questions about his new role…

A grant from the JEDI Fund allowed university lecturer Jessie Morgan-Owens to design a lecture series on indigenous studies. ‘We filled a gap in the knowledge.’

On 15 February 2024, Leiden Law School's Faculty Board will enter a new phase.

Jelle van Buuren, university lecturer at ISGA, discusses the role that social media played in the storming of the Capitol last Wednesday

Prof. J. (Jos) Schaeken, Professor of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Cultural History, will be the interim Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 1 March 2025. He will succeed the present Vice-Dean, Mirjam de Baar, who will complete her second term on that date.

The Schoof cabinet has presented its budget. As expected, higher education is facing severe cuts. In the coming period, the Executive Board will regularly look at the consequences of what it deems an irresponsible policy.

Extremist users of Telegram are moving en masse to other chat apps, such as the anonymous SimpleX. In this way, they hope to avoid detection, now that Telegram founder Pavel Durov is going to share personal data of criminal users with authorities.

RARE-NL, a new collaboration between university hospitals, hopes to find treatments for rare diseases. Professor Teun van Gelder is representing the LUMC in the initiative.

Pablo Merayo Montes recently joined the Institute for History as a PhD candidate within the NWO-funded project 'Dutch guest workers in 18th century Spain’ under the supervision of Raymond Fagel. Below, he introduces himself.

From March 1, Alenka Prinčič will be the new Head of the Centre for Digital Scholarship (CDS) at Leiden University Libraries. Her expertise in the areas of Research Support, Research Infrastructures and Open Publishing as well as her longstanding experience as a manager are excellent starting points…

Four university medical centres, including the LUMC, are joining forces to increase pandemic preparedness in the Netherlands.

Herman Paul (professor of History of the Humanities) has been elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He will be officially installed on 30 September.

On January 28 and 29, 2021 the conference ‘Imperial Artefacts: History, Law and the Looting of Cultural Property’ took place online. This first of its kind event at Leiden University was an interdisciplinary online conference and brought together (post-)colonial historians, legal historians, curators,…

LUMC research has shown that women who previously had a miscarriage due to COVID-19 are not at increased risk of having another miscarriage or a stillbirth. Nor are preventive drugs needed during the pregnancy.

The Council of Ministers has appointed Jan Willem Erisman, Professor of Environment and Sustainability at Leiden University, as chair of the new Scientific Climate Council (WKR) from 1 March. This council will advise the government on climate policy.

Der Spiegel reports about the planned reform of the EU Code of Conduct aimed at tackling harmful tax practices of EU Member States. A reform is urgently needed to tackle remaining forms of tax competition, which cost EU countries billons of euros every year.

The European Commission awarded the project proposal INSIGHT, a follow-up project on illegal firearms trafficking and gun violence from Professor Social Resilience and Security Marieke Liem and PhD-researcher Katharina Krüsselmann of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA).

We are pleased to announce that Lidwien will continue to fulfil the role of Student Assessor within the Faculty of Archaeology's Board next academic year. Since her start in September last year, building on her previous experience in the Education Committee, she has continued to develop into a connecting…

On 4 May, Leiden University remembered the victims of the Second World War from our university community. Alumni, students and present and former staff of the University came together for this Hour of Remembrance.

Anne-Laura van Harmelen has received a Vidi grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This talent programme will enable Van Harmelen to research the social and neurobiological mechanisms of resilience in young people with childhood trauma.

Edmund Flett, alumnus of the International Relations master's programme, has won the 2023 J.C. Baak Prize for his thesis ‘Settlements now, settlement later. Land swaps, settler relocation, and the viability of the two-state solution in Israel-Palestine’.

An international collaboration of astronomers is organising a special online lecture series for physicists and astronomers in Cuba. The reason for this is the tightening of measures against this country, as a result of which researchers can hardly get any information from outside the island. ‘Everyone…

JSixty researchers have received a grant of approximately 50,000 Euros during round 3 of the NWO Open Competition SSH-XS pilot programme. Two of them are working at FGGA: Jolien van Breen and Honorata Mazepus. The sixty researchers received the grant to start working on a promising concept or an innovative…

The moment has finally arrived: after months of hard work, the strategic plan is finished. It was an interesting period, thinks core group member Sylvestre Bonnet. 'How we finally arrived at this strategic plan was very different from what I had thought beforehand.'

Organisation, Social

ICT, Security

In een spraakmakende rechtszaak over de Wet open overheid (Woo) besloot een rechter zelf documenten over de toeslagenaffaire te beoordelen. Wim Voermans en Annemarie Drahmann deelden hun opvattingen over de zaak met de Volkskrant.

Amsterdam’s attitude to sex work, politeness in historical Arabic letters and malaria in the Middle Ages: again this year, there was a wide variety of topics in the Research Traineeship programme. On Friday 30 August, the trainees finished the last of these projects for now.

When are you (sexually) mature? A KNAW grant will enable associate professor Rafal Matuszewski to organise an interdisciplinary workshop on this question.

Leiden University has taken eighth place in this year’s SustainaBul, the sustainability ranking for universities and universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands. It was in 18th place last year.

In the Netherlands it is now possible to visit non-essential shops if you make an appointment beforehand. But when you book an appointment you have to provide a lot of personal data. Are shops allowed to ask you for all this data and what happens to it?

On Thursday 19 June, the sun-drenched garden of the Huizinga Building was the setting for the Education Market. Over snacks and drinks, colleagues inspired each other with educational innovations.

Rahul Gandhi, former president of the Indian National Congress, was on the Hague Campus on 10 September.

What hidden nature is there in our cities and how can we use such organisms? This is what the HiddenBiodiversity project will be exploring over the next four years. The project’s kick-off meeting was held at the Hortus botanicus on Monday 26 September.

You can hardly avoid it if you want to quickly implement satellite internet. Elon Musk's company Starlink is "all-powerful in space" (Volkskrant). Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant wrote an extensive article on the situation and the possible dangers and alternatives. For this, they interviewed several experts,…

On 30 October 2025, Eleonora Dagienė successfully defended her PhD thesis at Leiden University, titled ‘Quantitative Research Assessment and its Unintended Consequences’.

Craft your own empirical research in workshops of the ELS lab @Leiden!

On Thursday 2 June, the research conference for academic staff members of the Institute of Public Administration took place at the Beeld en Geluid venue in The Hague. The aim of the conference was to showcase the ongoing research conducted at the Public Administration and explore the potential for more…

Professor Claartje Levelt, together with Paula Fikkert (Radboud University), has received an NWO Open Competition grant for research into the development of word production in toddlers.

With support of several publishers and private foundations, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Scaliger Institute welcome around 15 to 20 Fellows and guests per year to consult and research materials from our Special Collections. The Scaliger Institute received many applications this year from…

November marks exactly 100 years since the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. To celebrate this special discovery, the Faculty of Humanities, together with various parties, is organising the 'Month of Tutankhamun': a month full of activities around Egypt's most legendary pharaoh.

As a result of the current corona measures, attendance at the Opening of the Academic Year on 6 September will be restricted to a maximum of 75 persons. The ceremony can, however, be viewed online by taking part in a video wall.

Van Es is the successor to Professor Huijgen whose retirement is approaching after nearly 27 years’ professorship. This new appointment is from October 2022, but Van Es has been working at the faculty for some time.

We regret to share the news that our colleague, friend, and former professor of Assyriology at Leiden University, passed away on 15 May 2021.