In a world beset with war, climate problems and skyrocketing energy prices, it is good to have some 'slack time' now and then. That was Dean Mark Rutgers' message at the Faculty of Humanities' New Year reception.

Researchers at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) have managed to culture human heart muscle cells on a massive scale. This is an exceptional achievement because it is very difficult to replicate heart muscle cells outside the body. Using a special technique, the researchers have now created…

Leiden University's humanities have one of the top places in the Times Higher Education Rankings. This year, we were placed 26th.

How unique is the human capacity for learning and adapting to an environment? In field research – in the rainforest and Artis Zoo – primatologist Karline Janmaat is studying how humans and other primates adapt to their environment in their search for food. She will give her inaugural lecture as Professor…

What impact will the new workspace standards have? What will the adjustments cost? And can we use the former V&D building? Questions followed each other in quick succession during a meeting with staff of the Faculty of Humanities about the necessary adjustments to the Humanities Campus, now that the…

Salvador Santino Regilme received Honorable Mention for the 2022 Best Scholarly Article Award from the Sociology of Human Rights Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA). He won for his paper “Visions of Peace Amidst a Human Rights Crisis: War on Drugs in Colombia and the Philippines,”…

The Faculty of Humanities will introduce a new assessment system in the next academic year. Marcel van Brunschot, the project leader for the digital assessment migration, is responsible for overseeing the transition to ANS.

In recent months, a number of academics, a sounding board group and the relevant directors of education, in collaboration with Campus The Hague, have been working on the development of a new Master’s programme: Environmental Humanities. With this programme, we aimed to offer a new and necessary perspective…

On Monday 14 March, the members of the Humanities Campus Think Tank came together for their first meeting in the restaurant of the Pieter de la Court building at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FSW).

An international team of researchers led by Leiden archaeology professor Marie Soressi and Leipzig senior geneticist Matthias Meyer has recovered the DNA of a woman belonging to an Ancient North Eurasian population from a 20,000-year-old pendant. This is the first time DNA analysis has been used to…

As of 1 July, toxicologist Mirjam Luijten from the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) starts as professor by special appointment at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR).

There was a lot of interest. In front of nearly a hundred researchers, supporting colleagues and Martijn Ridderbos, the Vice-Chairman of the Executive Board, Lotte van Dillen, Research Director of Psychology and Saskia Goedhard, Director of Humanities Operations jointly opened the new lab with a classic…

The volume, Heritage Destruction, Human Rights and International Law, co-edited by Grotius Centre, Associate Professor Joe Powderly, and Dr Amy Strecker (Associate Professor, UCD), has been published by Brill/Nijhoff.

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…

The tour for programme chairs through the new Humanities Hub covered just one corridor. Previously, the labs were spread across the campus, but now most of them have been consolidated in the Huizinga Building.

Ten participants and two observers from the Faculty Council and the University Council attended the third and final meeting of the Humanities Campus Think Tank.

Mirjam de Baar has been Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and portfolio holder for education of master’s and research master’s programmes since 2016. As a result of her reappointment, she will continue to fulfil this role for an additional four years. ‘Being asked by the Vice-Rector and the Dean…

The university is committed to providing an accessible learning and working environment for students and staff. They should be able to feel at home at our faculty. That is why there is now an all-gender toilet in every humanities building to contribute to that feeling of recognition and safety.

Alumna Jolien Schukking has been working as a judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg since 2017. In this special role, she provides legal protection at an international level in major cases and concerning various topics. What is her job like and what motivates her?

Buried beneath a Suffolk forest, archaeologists have uncovered the earliest known human-made fire. A fire that was sparked 400,000 years ago. This stunning UK discovery may rewrite our evolutionary story, potentially pushing fire-making back by more than 350,000 years.

External PhD Candidate Liselore Tissen was interviewed by Leiden Global about her work, in which she uses 3D printing. Recently she made a copy of a decorative human skill this way.

On June 30, eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies of Leiden University organised the annual Hans Franken Lecture. This year the lecture was delivered by Jan Kleijssen, former Human Rights Director at the Council of Europe.

Since the publication of the article in the interdisciplinary journal Nature, over 200 news outlets have showcased the pioneering research.

In 2024, Professor Joanita Vroom received a substantial grant from the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) in support for her Hinterlands of Medieval Chalcis Project (HMC Project) in Greece. PHI, a California-based non-profit organization, is dedicated to archaeological research as well as to the preservation…

Deep-brain stimulation (DBS) is the most promising surgical treatment for movement and neuropsychiatric disorders, but is accompanied by unwanted side effects. Birte Forstmann, professor by special appointment, has been awarded a ERC Proof of Concept Grant to create an atlas of the human deep brain…

On 12 April the Humanities Campus Think Tank held its second meeting in the Lipsius Building. In a Q&A session with Elisa Meijer, the Facilities project leader, the members asked about the context and room for manoeuvre in the development of the new Humanities Campus work environment.

What do ten-year-old children and chatbots have in common? PhD researcher Bram van Dijk studied language development in both children and AI language models. ‘It’s actually quite practical that we attribute human traits to a chatbot.’

Which teacher knows best how to inspire their students? Carmen van den Bergh (Humanities), Egbert Koops (Law) and Arjan Louwen (Archaeology) have been nominated for the 2025 Leiden Teaching Prize.

Five researchers from Leiden University have been awarded an Open Competition Domain Science ENW XS grant by the Dutch Research Council for their research projects.

How should the municipality of Eindhoven organise the reception of asylum seekers? What is the best electoral system for the Dutch Parliament? Governments regularly ask citizens for their opinions. Computer scientist Michiel van der Meer has improved the method used for citizen assemblies. He will defend…

In zoos, at festivals and in a mobile lab at the market: everywhere, Mariska Kret tries to understand human and animal emotions with her distinctive behavioural research. Now she has received the Mercator Sapiens Stimulus of €1 million for her efforts.