Astronomers led by Simon Portegies Zwart used simulations to reconstruct how three stars were ejected from the star cluster R136, 60,000 years ago. The analysis reveals that five stars were involved in the event in the Tarantula Nebula.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has formally approved the withdrawal of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso from the regional body. The approval comes just days after President Bola Tinubu promised German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier that ECOWAS would handle the three countries'…

Leiden University contributed to colonialism and slavery through its research and teaching. And governors and residents of Leiden had an active role in colonial networks. These are the findings of two explorative studies presented on 3 April.

Chen Wang has recently finished her doctoral research and will be defending her dissertation on May 13th. For her PhD she researched the lead in artefacts from ancient China, using isotope analysis to match them to their origins. She applied analytical methods to new contexts and used the data from…

On January 25th, artist Jonas Staal will defend his dissertation which explores the development of propaganda art from the 20th to the 21st century.

Collaboration within Europe is currently at a low ebb. This is threatening to undermine our freedom and the rights that are anchored in the European legal order, says Piet Hein Donner, Vice-President of the Council of State and Cleveringa professor at Leiden University for 2015. His lecture on 26 November…

This week Dr. Lara Weiss (of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden), who together with Dr Christian Greco (of the Museo Egizio in Turin) heads the project "The Walking Dead: The Making of a Cultural Geography in Saqqara", was visited by the NVIC team. During the visit she introduced them to the…

Alumnus Sam van Raalte followed his passion into freelance journalism.

The ERC Council has awarded Starting Grants to five promising Leiden researchers. With an impressive three laureates, the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences has done particularly well. The fourth grant goes to the LUMC and the fifth to the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs.

This summer, Leiden University will be setting up camp at Lowlands with two research projects. Participants are invited to explore their fears and feelings, and in doing so, contribute to scientific research.

The Centre for Public Values & Ethics (CPVE) is an interdisciplinary, academic centre of expertise aiming to conduct and disseminate scientific research on normative issues in the public sector, in particular the fulfillment of public office and the planning, making and executing of public policy, both…

This abrupt climate change of 8200 years ago (the so-called 8.2k calBP climate event) has received wide attention among natural scientists, also because of today's rapid climate changes and their impact on our own society. The archaeological implications, however, have not been investigated so far.…

Both the international perspective and the Dutch language and culture are deeply embedded in Leiden University’s identity.

Connect art and academia at ACPA

The Faculties of Leiden University have developed several themes for research cooperation between Leiden University and its Indonesian partners.

Studying International Relations and Organisations (IRO) you will address transboundary issues from a social sciences point of view. It is an international 3-year programme with a strong focus on current global affairs.

This one-year master's programme explores the political and cultural evolution of the world from a long-term, and broad comparative perspective. This creates a better understanding of the entangled nature of today's society.

History of Inequality and Power provides you with an in-depth understanding of the past and present that will contribute to solving current societal problems.

The one-year Master's specialisation in Ancient History: Empires, Societies and Cultures offers an attractive mix of theoretical knowledge and practical experience.

Uniting an international consortium of scholars, the Skandapurāṇa Project comprises a team of researchers working in fields across the Humanities. We are creating a critical edition of a foundational work of purāṇic literature and, in doing so, tracing the dynamics of a textual tradition to better understand…

Una Europa launches regular seed funding calls. Leiden University and other Una Europa partners also often offer funding for projects involving Una Europa universities.

The Dutch museum landscape is among the most forward-thinking worldwide, in terms of innovations in engaging diverse audiences and stakeholders. Building on the museum studies and art history programmes at Leiden University, the Museum Lab explored conceptual and practical aspects of the museum as a…

At Humanities, students are the point of focus. They are trained to be critical thinkers, academic professionals and involved citizens. Our lecturers and researchers encourage students to develop knowledge with which they can understand and indicate the major topics in our society. Because everything…

On Tuesday 9 June 2020, researcher Maral Darouei defended her PhD thesis on sustainable careers. A large part of her research dealt with working from home.

The Sixteenth International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN XVI) will be held in Leiden, The Netherlands on September 5-9, 2020. Leiden University and the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) are proud to host the 30th anniversary of PPSN.

The 'language analysis interview' on the basis of which the Immigration and Naturalisation Department attempts to determine where an asylum-seeker without any documents comes from, does not meet the criteria of reliability and validity. Joachim Detailleur, student of Arabic, substantiates this statement…

Professor Ewine van Dishoeck, together with an international team of colleagues, has written an overview of everything we know about water in interstellar clouds thanks to the Herschel space observatory. The article, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, summarizes existing knowledge and…

As Secretary General of the Royal Dutch Football Association, Gijs de Jong travels the world. The career of this Leiden public administration graduate tells the story of a petrol station attendant who became one of the top diplomats in Dutch football.

When university lecturer Martine Bruil was on exchange in Ecuador as a teenager, she fell in love with the area's ancient languages. Now, more than 20 years later, she is starting a research project on the kinship of the language Awapit with the Quechua language that was spread by the Incas.

A team of astronomers led by Dutch scientists have directly imaged a giant planet orbiting at a large distance around a sun-like star. Why this planet is so massive, and how it got to be there, is still a mystery. The researchers will publish their findings in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Researchers have used AI to reconstruct the rules of a board game carved into a stone found in the Dutch city of Heerlen. The team concludes that this type of game was played several centuries earlier than previously assumed.

What do you do when you get the chance to meet Nobel Prize winners in your field? You say ‘yes’, of course! Two young chemists from Leiden had the opportunity to attend the Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, Germany. They share what the experience was like.

Women are are on the agenda again at Leiden University. That was clear on 8 March in the Academy Building. First there was an informal get-together with women professors and talented researchers, followed by the 27th Annie Romein-Verschoor lecture, on happy and angry women.

It’s only been six years since bestselling author Jeroen Windmeijer (56) decided to become a full-time writer. Since then, he’s put Leiden and the university on the map with his gripping thrillers. From his desk on the Rapenburg canal, he now travels the world with his steadily growing body of work.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Vidi grants to Leiden researchers.

Four projects led by the Faculty of Humanities have been awarded KIEM grants. The researchers will receive €10,000 to carry out their plans.

In discussions about today’s society and multiculturalism the word is constantly bandied back and forth: diversity. At Leiden University we aspire to ‘diversity and inclusiveness’, and claim that our diversity policies put these core values into practice. We have a Diversity and Inclusiveness Working…

Compared to its European neighbouring countries, the Netherlands undertake relatively few attempts to bring back women and children from Iraq and Syria. De Roy van Zuijdewijn explains why on Dutch NPO 1 radio.

The analysis of protein residues extracted from the storage containers of circa 50,000 year old bone-tools reveals Neandertal strategic selection of bovid ribs to make some of their “lissoirs”.

A pandemic of lianas is sweeping through tropical forests, reducing their ability to store carbon and limiting their role in mitigating climate change. Two recent studies from Leiden University highlight the issue. ‘We now understand why lianas are visible in satellite imagery.’

Four years of war in Ukraine have transformed the nature of warfare, with drones, digital defence systems and improvised solutions shaping the battlefield. At a recent symposium, Dutch and Ukrainian experts discussed frontline conditions. What lessons do they see for Europe?

A significant percentage of children who have spent a period in youth care institutions or foster homes since 1945 received inadequate protection from physical, psychological and sexual violence. Interventions by supervisory authorities in cases involving violence were inadequate.

Ominous witches, gruesome monsters, and hideous freaks: from Saturday 15 June, Kunsthal Rotterdam will be putting the spotlight on the shady depths of human imagination in the exhibition Hello darkness, my old friend. Seventy works on paper from the collection of the Leiden University Libraries confront…

On an excavation site in Oegstgeest Leiden University archaeologists discovered a very rare silver bowl from the first half of the seventh century. The bowl is decorated with gold-plated representations of animals and plants and inlaid with semi-precious stones. The discovery suggests the existence…

In a new video series for the Corpus Kids Academy, researchers Marieke Bos and Janna Marie Bas-Hoogendam explain how the adolescent brain develops and how anxiety works. 'We wanted to present the information simply, while still preserving the complexity.'

As from April 2023 all students at Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam will start using the eduXchange portal to register for a minor.

An international team of scientists, including Xander Tielens of Leiden Observatory, has used space telescope Hubble and the ALMA observatory to show that UV radiation from massive stars can prevent planets from forming. The researchers publish their findings on 1 March in the journal Science.

It is time for the fifth lecture in the series Manuscript Mondays. We shall have two speakers. Jesse Keskiaho (University of Helsinki, Finland) will start with a talk about the soul. In the second talk Evina Steinova will tell us more about the medieval encyclopaedia. The talks will be followed by a…

The ILS Lunch Seminar of April will take in a slightly different format, as we have the honour of receiving Dr Leandro Mancano from the University of Edinburgh. He will present his most recent monograph on the European Union and the deprivation of liberty.

Why do innocent people sometimes spend years in prison? EUREX is a registry of miscarriages of justice in Europe that ultimately led to exonerations. The aim is to prevent such mistakes being made in future. One of the initiators is Leiden legal psychologist Linda Geven.