Medievalism is the area of academic study that investigates the reception and reconstruction of the medieval past since the Middle Ages came to an end.

Emeritus professor Willem Otterspeer received a royal honour from mayor Henri Lenferink on Tuesday 20 September. The university historian was appointed Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau.

Lecture, LIAS After-Lunch Talk Series

For decades, linguists have racked their brains over the question of precisely how the syntax of various languages is different. PhD candidate Martin Kroon has developed a computer system that brings us closer to finding an answer. His PhD defence is on 10 November.

The prestigious journal Science Translational Medicine has published a study by researchers from the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) on a potent new antibiotic that can overcome resistance. ‘The idea was to tweak the original antibiotic and create a next-generation drug’, says Nathaniel Martin, professor…

Information provided by the Tax and Customs Administration is something that concerns every citizen. So it is not surprising that the Tax hotline receives around 10 million calls each year. The Benefits Affair emphasised the citizen’s perspective in communications with the Tax and Customs Administration.…

As Professor of Translational Neuro-oncology, Marike Broekman researches how brain tumour treatment can be improved. She will discuss this in her inaugural lecture along with her work as a neurosurgeon and the importance of a positive workplace culture.

The field of artificial intelligence has developed rapidly in recent years. We spoke with Stephan Raaijmakers, professor by special appointment in Communicative AI, about the impact of artificial intelligence and why everyone should pay more attention to developments in this field.

The Caribbean as we know it today is fundamentally a product of colonial activity and globalisation. Practically everyone that inhabits the Caribbean has ancestors from different continents due to colonial activity, which profoundly affects the area to this day. Caribbean writers, both in the Caribbean…

Graphic Novels and Comics have developed from pulp status to an entirely self-contained medium. This form of storytelling is not limited to stories of superheroes but has been used, molded and reshaped to display historical events, classic stories and autobiographical memoirs. But where should you begin…

Axite, a start-up rooted in research at Leiden University’s Faculty of Social Sciences (FSW), receives €350,000 from UNIIQ for the further development of NeuroJournal: a platform that uses an EEG headband and smartphone app to provide long-term insight into brain activity outside the laboratory.

Frank van der Horst is per 1 februari 2026 benoemd tot bijzonder hoogleraar Pedagogische Wetenschappen.

When a bacterium becomes more resistant to one antibiotic, it sometimes becomes more sensitive to another. To better understand this interaction, researchers from the Leiden Institute of Biology (IBL) and the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (LACDR) under supervision of Daniel Rozen and Coen…

This fall, LUCIS will have the pleasure of welcoming Professor Hugh Kennedy from SOAS University of London to Leiden. He is the fourth Abdulaziz Saud Al-Babtain Cultural Foundation Visiting Professor in Arabic Culture at Leiden University.

There are two vacant seats available in the upcoming interim elections for the Faculty Council. What can prospective council members expect? Professor Jos Schaeken, a member of the Faculty Council, explains in more detail.

Here we highlight the achievements of our latest PhD graduates, each of whom has made significant contributions to the advancement of the field of (bio)pharmaceutical sciences.

Translating texts, rehearsing scenes or practising music. Over the last few weeks, students of the BA Classics programme have been focused on just one thing: their production of the Greek tragedy Hecuba. Almost a third of them are involved in it. Iris de Smalen, who plays Hecuba, and Christoph Pieper,…

On August 18, 2022, Henk Bodewitz, distinguished Indologist and emeritus professor of Sanskrit at Leiden University, passed away in his hometown of Utrecht.

Humans perceive the world through different senses: we see, feel, hear, taste and smell. The different senses with which we perceive are multiple channels of information, also known as multimodal. Does this mean that what we perceive can be seen as multimedia?

Astronomers and surgeons from Leiden are collaborating with industry to develop an optical instrument that delivers faster, more accurate imaging of tumour tissue and abnormal blood flow during surgery.

On Friday 20 May, from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m., approximately sixty lecturers met at the Faculty Club for the 2022 Education Showcase.

Manuscripts that look like a comic book, that's how you could describe the manuscripts of the Dongba people from China. The manuscripts are one of the last examples of a so-called pictographic script that can only be interpreted by Dongba priests, shamans, who have knowledge of the ancient Dongba cu…

Do you recall all those drugs that were hastily proposed as potential treatments for COVID-19? In the event of a future pandemic, the goal is to offer an effective treatment more quickly and efficiently. To achieve this, a team led by Coen van Hasselt is developing a platform that can speed up the process…

How can we best tell the current generations about some of the darkest parts of our past? To answer this question, researchers from Leiden are working with the Gedeeld Verleden, Gezamenlijke Toekomst foundation on public programmes about the Dutch history of slavery.

Providing each cancer patient with the right treatment remains a challenge. Oncode Accelerator aims to change this by innovating the way we develop cancer treatments, thus ensuring the patient is at the heart of the process.

Charisma K. Lepcha (PI, Sikkim University), Pradyut Guha (co-PI, Sikkim University), Rajib Sutradhar (co-PI, Christ University Bangalore) and Erik de Maaker (Leiden University) have been awarded a two-year grant of USD 18.000 to conduct research on the impact of ‘green farming’ on the sensitive mountain…

Tirza Cramwinckel, Assistant Professor in tax law, has won one of the 2023 Research Prizes awarded by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation.

From Monday 19 July onwards, eighteen children between the ages of 10 and 12 are learning the programming language Hedy. In the Snellius building of Leiden University they will be taught the first principles of programming this week.

Social

Rob van Wijk (LACDR, Leiden University) and Robin van den Biggelaar (LUCID, LUMC) have been awarded a €10,000 euro KIEM grant from Leiden University to start an interdisciplinary collaboration to investigate the potential of AMPK activation as an adjunctive therapy to enhance tuberculosis treatment.

In a one-hour interview on Dutch radio programme Sleutelstad, Anne-Laura van Harmelen talks about her research into the role friendships in adolescents' well-being, the resilience paradox and the role of social, hormonal and genetic factors in stress-levels and resilience.

In a podcast of the Netherlands Internet Governance Forum (NL GF) and the Safer Internet Centre Nederland, Simone van der Hof, Professor of Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University and Thijs Hannema, a lawyer at Kennedy van der Laan, discuss online privacy of children.

Organisation

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has awarded a €1.6M contract to an LACDR-led consortium to assess how sensitivity to toxicity caused by chemicals varies among individual people. Currently these toxicodynamic differences are an unknown source of uncertainty when carrying out risk assessment…

In a world where law and morality strive for clarity, order, and control, this book challenges us to confront what has long been forgotten: the tragic dimension of existence. Drawing on the ancient wisdom of Greek tragedy and the passionate urgency of both atheist and religious existentialism, Timo…

Camille Lefebvre has been selected as one of the 30 finalists vying for a spot in the 2022–2025 scholarship of The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

Whether you’re giving a course for the first time or aiming to update your learning objectives or teaching formats, effective education starts with good course design. This step-by-step plan will help you create or innovate your course: from learning objectives to teaching formats.

Alumna Louwien Eising is headteacher of Carmel College in Emmen. How have things been during the pandemic? And how has her degree in Education and Child Studies helped her? ‘In the evening I was attending lectures and the next day I was applying what I’d learnt in the classroom.’

It’s Saturday and electric minibuses ride back and forth bringing prospective students to Leiden University’s various faculties. They want to see for themselves whether that interesting-looking programme will suit them.

Parents from all corners of the university bring their children to De Kattekop, the university’s day nursery. How does manager Ellen Buschman use her psychology degree in her work?

Bachelor, Master

Researchers in Leiden have, for the first time, observed how a specialised enzyme helps bacteria stay alinve when oxygen levels are low, and how that process can be blocked. The discovery opens up new possibilities for targeted antibiotics.

Festival

Lecture, Sociolinguistics & Discourse Studies Series

Caribbean literature holds a unique position in the world. Literature produced in the Caribbean region is extremely diverse, not only because of the wide variety of languages spoken, but also due to distinct colonial legacies that exist in the archipelago. Despite cultural specificities, the region…

Lecture, Seminar