The Pilgrims to America exhibition at Museum De Lakenhal inspires reflection. How far do you go in the quest for freedom? It focuses on the Pilgrims’ relationship with the University and which knowledge they took with them from Leiden.

Call for Papers: Imperial Artefacts. History, Law, and the Looting of Cultural Property

Leiden art historian Juliette Roding spent her sabbatical in Denmark, researching a 17th century court artist. She not only learned more about the artist, she also got to know present-day Denmark.

On Friday, the 24th of April 2015, the Junius Symposium voor Jonge Oudgermanisten, a symposium for junior researchers in the field of language, culture and history of the (early) medieval Germanic tribes, was organized by Peter Alexander Kerkhof (LUCL) and Thijs Porck (LUCAS).

Researchers from the Institute for Science in Society (Radboud University Nijmegen) and CWTS (Leiden University) organized a workshop on the use of IT Tools in academic publishing on 5-6 June 2018.

Submissions are sought for a special issue with Frontiers in Political Science that explores the conceptual and practical aspects of a ‘just’ energy transition both within and beyond Europe. In particular, contributions to the theoretical and interdisciplinary foundations of just transitions, as well…

Dear friends of the NVIC

Over the past year, twelve articles by Leiden humanities scholars have been published on The Conversation, an English-language platform that translates science-related news for a broad audience. Read their articles here!

Pharmacist-clinical pharmacologist Robert Rissmann has been appointed Professor of Translational Dermatology. This extraordinary professorship has been created jointly by the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) and the Centre for Human Drug Research (CHDR) to strengthen their partnership…

We are saddened by the news of the unexpected passing of prof.dr. Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld on 28 July 2021.

From 24-26 June 2020, the Leiden University Centre for Islam and Society (LUCIS) and Shiʿi Studies Unit of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London (IIS), will host a conference on the Shiʿi hadith corpora. The deadline for abstracts is 31 January 2020.

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.

In a world first, an international team of researchers has read an unopened letter from Renaissance Europe – without breaking its seal or damaging it in any way. Nadine Akkerman, Reader in early modern English literature at Leiden University, is co-author of the article that appeared on 2 March in Nature…

We are pleased to announce a call for papers for a workshop within the project 'Human Development and Its Outliers' on 26 and 27 March 2026 at Leiden University.

Mariana Françozo has been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council. With this 1.5 million euro grant Dr. Françozo and her research team will investigate the transformation of the knowledge of diverse Brazilian indigenous peoples into a body of knowledge that became part of the Western…

At the Faculty of Science, forty per cent of the employees are of a non-Dutch nationality. Amongst PhDs that is even sixty per cent. How are they doing in a time of working at home in a different culture, when travelling is not possible? Biologist Astri Kusumawardhani is the second in this series to…

The Capacity to Innovate is a recently published book by Sarah Giest, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration. In this article Sarah gives insight in the main findings of the book and the experience developing it.

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the father of microbiology, died 300 years ago. 2023 has therefore been designated the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek year. The new Unimaginable exhibition in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave is about the amazing world that Van Leeuwenhoek made visible. What was so special about the way he worked?…

How should we address our colonial heritage? And how digital and accessible are our collections? Outgoing State Secretary Fleur Gräper spoke with researchers and heritage specialists about this on 25 January.

No matter how hard Chinese communists tried to control the economy, they could not stop the free market from flourishing. This was the message given by historian Frank Dikötter on 7 February during a lecture on the Cultural Revolution. He will be awarded an Honorary Doctorate on 8 February.

On 1 July – Keti Koti, in the year ahead, our university community will be able to reflect extensively on the history of slavery by engaging in research, education and many other activities.

Indigenous philosophies have been ignored for too long. This prompted Osiris González Romero to study the wisdom of the Nahua in Mexico. Their philosophy has an important message for the consumption society: see the earth and nature as living beings and not just as resources. PhD defence 22 June.

Strengthening our contacts with Indonesia and exploring new opportunities for academic partnerships. These were the aims of a four-day visit to Jakarta and Yokyakarta at the end of February by a delegation from Leiden University.

What once began as an assignment for a master’s course and continued as a master’s thesis, has now culminated in a substantial book. Or has it finished? Actually, for Hendrikx, this is just the beginning: ‘I can finally reap the rewards of my research.’

Het College van Bestuur laat door een postdoc een eenjarig vooronderzoek doen naar het koloniale en slavernijverleden van de Universiteit Leiden.

Every month a member of the Institute for History tells about a book that inspired him or her. Afterwards, the pen is passed on to another colleague. This month dr. Robert Stein tells about the book 'La Vérité sur l'affaire Harry Quebert' by Swiss writer Joel Dicker. It is not so much the whodunit that…

Deep observations made with the MUSE spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have uncovered vast cosmic reservoirs of atomic hydrogen surrounding distant galaxies. The exquisite sensitivity of MUSE allowed for direct observations of dim clouds of hydrogen glowing with Lyman-alpha emission in the…

Besides being the author of such a classic work of literature as The Hobbit, Tolkien was also Professor of English Language and Literature in Oxford. How did he incorporate his research in his fiction? An international conference on the subject is being held in Leiden on 18 June.

The Leiden Leadership Centre (Leiden University), the Centre for Leadership Ethics and Organisation (Queen's University Belfast) and the Journal of Change Management will be organising a symposium and a special issue on multi-level leadership for the collective good. The complexity and dynamics of societal…

For decades, the trade in pocketbooks prescribing how to be a good Muslim flourished in East Africa, but in recent years the number of books in circulation has been declining. University lecturer Annachiara Raia is the recipient of an Impact Explorer grant to revive this tradition, in cooperation with…

A love of puzzles and the patience of a saint: these are two essential traits for linguists wishing to explore the Indo-European language family. Fortunately, Professor Michaël Peyrot possesses both. In his inaugural lecture he will take the audience on a voyage of discovery to the past.

The government, the people and the country were in desperate straits. This about sums up the state of affairs in the Disaster Year of 1672. It was 350 years ago, and to mark the occasion PhD candidate Roosje Peeters collaborated on a series of letters to and from a key political figure Johan de Witt,…

Conference

Conference

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Many dangerous diseases such as COVID-19, Ebola and Q fever have jumped from animals to humans. But it is not only because of these diseases that we should include animals in our health policy, but also because of their right to health, writes PhD candidate Joachim Nieuwland. PhD defence on 13 May.

No two pandemics are ever the same. The current coronavirus crisis, for instance, is clearly very different from the deadly plague outbreaks in the 14th and 15th centuries. Can historians learn anything from the coronavirus crisis? And what can we learn at the moment from historians? These are questions…

The Ministry of Health seems to be going full steam ahead in the search for a track-and-trace app to contain the coronavirus crisis. The apps are being developed with irresponsible haste, according to Valerie Frissen, Professor of Digital Technologies and Social Change.

Lecture

Lecture, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars

Lecture

Lecture

PhD defence

PhD defence

Lecture

Lecture, Global Histories of Knowledge Seminar

International Women's Day 2025 - Seminar