Our lecturers had just a week to convert their subjects into online formats. It was an enormous challenge because by no means everyone was involved in remote teaching at Leiden University. As well as being Vice-Dean of Leiden Law School, Ton Liefaard is also a lecturer. ‘I especially want to support…

Assistant professor Carmen Van den Bergh has been nominated for the Leiden University Teaching Prize. ‘I combine literature education with social relevance and personal experience.’

During the digital education seminar 'Reflections on 2020 and new perspectives for 2021', we will discuss our achievements in online & blended education. There will be a diverse selection of workshops relevant for anyone involved in education. Senior university lecturer Jan Sleutels will be giving a…

Using enslaved people as servants, becoming an administrator in the Dutch West India Company or making uniforms for the colonial army. Many people from Leiden played a role in colonialism and slavery. Historians are conducting preliminary research and finding striking examples.

What is ‘teaching excellence’ in Higher Education? Which different teaching excellence training, promotion and reward schemes exist across Europe? How can a common European teaching scheme look like? The e-NOTE project led by Leiden University with the participation of Charles University and other partners…

How can I get students to collaborate more and increase their engagement? That was the question that teacher, and winner of the 2022 Faculty Teaching Award, Astrid Van Weyenberg asked herself two years ago. Her solution? A method in which the use of podcasts ensures that students actively engage with…

‘It was the biggest bunch of flowers I’d ever seen,’ says Emily Strange about the moment she won the Leiden Teaching Prize 2022. The judge praised the conservation biologist for her passion, engaging personality, and the way she motivates her students. On the Dutch Day of the Teacher, we get to know…

Since the horrific events of October 7, 2023, Leiden students have grappled with difficult questions about Israel, Gaza and Israel/Palestine conflict more generally. Drawing on her expertise in the history of the Jewish experience in the diaspora and beyond, Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey has held multiple…

Debate, Kickstart

Determined, innovative lecturers are the driving force behind our teaching. Alexandra Langers, a specialist in gastroenterology and hepatology at the LUMC, is an active educator, both within and outside the hospital. She passed the Senior Teaching Qualification at the end of last year. ‘I want to cultivate…

In line with tradition, the opening of the academic year will see the presentation of the LUS Teaching Prize to the University's best lecturer. Get to know the nominees. This week: Kim Beerden.

Passionate, innovative lecturers are the driving force behind our education. Janine Geerling, former assistant professor of the Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences programme, obtained her Senior Teaching Qualification (STQ) at the end of last year. ‘You have to make time for educational innovation, and not…

‘In recent publications about the slave trade the same rhetorical weapons are used as two centuries ago in the battle for the abolition of the British slave trade. It is a topic fraught with emotions, but that should not prevent historians from being as careful and impartial as possible in their research,’…

Monday 26 September, 2016 saw the first confrontation between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Expectations were high – not only about the content of the debate, but also about how the two presidential candidates would behave, and how this might influence their campaigns. We asked three researchers…

Every year, the Leiden University Student Platform (LUS) chooses the best lecturer in the university. The prize is awarded during the Opening of the Academic Year, this year on 5 September.

Course, Hackathon

Lecturers Marjo de Graauw and Malte Riemann have both received a Comenius Teaching Fellowship.

It's good to have high expectations of your students, says public administration lecturer Maarja Beerkens. ‘But I don't stand at the top of the mountain telling them to climb up.' This empathic and at the same time demanding lecturer has been nominated for the LUS Teaching Prize.

Eleven lecturers from Leiden University have been awarded Comenius grants that will allow them to work with their teams on an innovation project within their own teaching. They have been awarded three grants of 100,000 euros within the Senior Fellows programme and four grants of 50,000 euros within…

The opening of the academic year will see the presentation of the LUS Teaching Prize to the best lecturer at Leiden University. Get to know the nominees. This week: Jan van Lith.

The topics of discussion included multiple choices questions, research on teaching, workload and many other things. On 29 October four new enthusiastic fellows were installed in the Leiden Teachers’ Academy and presented their research innovation projects.

Didactics

How do you keep students’ attention when you have to compete with digital distractions like Facebook? What skills do you need in today’s rapidly changing world? Teachers attended a congress on innovative teaching on 23 November.

Three lecturers from Leiden University have each been awarded a €50,000 Comenius Teaching Fellows grant to implement an educational innovation project. They are Carlijn Bergwerff (Education and Child Studies), Francesco Ragazzi (Political Science) and Krista Murchison (Centre for the Arts in Society…

Connecting generations, reducing loneliness and slowing mental decline: these are goals of the Oud Geleerd Jong Gedaan foundation’s lectures, which are given by students. What is it like to be a student giving these lectures? And what do the seniors think of them?

The European Network on Teaching Excellence invites applications from interested Academic Staff to participate in a five-day intensive training on PhD supervision excellence.

He teaches, as he puts it, the ‘most brutal class’ at Leiden University College (LUC). Despite this, David Zetland’s students have nominated him for the LUS Teaching Prize. We asked him why he thinks this is.

As of 1 January 2020 Daan Weggemans has succeeded Ruth Prins as programme director of the bachelor Security Studies. We asked him several questions about himself and his new position.

Advanced fluorescence microscopy techniques have revealed how steroid receptors move inside the nucleus. The results were published by a team from Leiden University and the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, led by IBL-researcher Marcel Schaaf.

Three years after the very first cohort of the Leiden University Bachelor of International Studies graduated, approximately 40 alumni and staff got together for a day of recollecting pleasant memories and sharing new stories. The BAIS Alumni Board collected some ‘Lessons learned’ from their alumni.

Egyptian artist Bahia Shebab will give a masterclass in Leiden on 13 December. She is one of this year's laureates of the Prins Claus Award and has become known for her subversive graffiti. Judith Naeff, lecturer in Cultures of the Middle East, introduces Shebab and calls on students to register for…

Staff and students from the Faculty of Archaeology are just back from a newly started Field School in the inland of Portugal.

The ancient Roman province of Lusitania, more or less contemporary Portugal, has been the focus of a joint research project by Leiden University, Évora University and the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. The research project has now been provided with a new boost by a large Regato grant managed…

2024 was an eventful year for the Faculty of Humanities. Despite becoming the centre of political discussion and budget cuts as faculty ourselves, exceptional research projects were carried out and new initiatives were launched.

A number of calls for proposals have been launched to finance innovative educational projects. An overview is given below.

At a meeting in The Hague from 20 to 22 March, lecturers, university administrators and online teaching specialists made plans for better teaching using technology. Leiden University organised the meeting and launched a successful new element: the research track.

Francesco Ragazzi loves to talk about international relations. But what makes him really happy is if his students question the discipline. This has won him a nomination for the LUS Teaching Prize. Is he the best lecturer for 2019?

Awareness of the functioning of a regional integration process and the benefits it can offer is crucial for its success, as the European Union experience has proven.

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?

Even embryos can become embroiled in an evolutionary arms race with another species. Leiden biologists demonstrate this with larvae of the rosy bitterling that parasitize the gills of freshwater mussels. They published their research on February 19 in PNAS.

Organised by the Common Law Society of Charles University, Prague, the summer school takes place during two weeks in July at the University’s mountain house 'Patejdlova bouda'.

On 3 August Frederik Behre, PhD candidate at the Europa Institute, taught an international group of students and practitioners at the annual Summer School specialized in Information Technology Law organized by the Institute for Legal Informatics at the University of Hannover.

What can we learn from Cleveringa’s courageous protest speech? ‘Without imagination and a strong community, people do not stand up for one another,' says Cleveringa Professor Michael Ignatieff in his lecture on 26 November.

Armin Cuyvers, Stefaan Van den Bogaert and Veronika Yefremova taught in the course on History, Principles and Institutions. The online course took place within the context of the 2025 Summer School in European law for Ukraine, organised by the Kyiv Institute for European Integration and Concordia Un…

Engaged, active students who can see the links within their discipline. These are key aims of the University vision on teaching and learning, but how do you achieve them? An interdisciplinary research team led by ICLON has developed an inventive method that helps lecturers do just that.

The Academy for Professionals project started in November. The project will focus on further developing existing and new educational programmes for professionals. ‘This is part of taking valorisation seriously.’

Professor of Ecotoxicology Martina Vijver had planned an eight-week field work course for her students, but the corona virus threw a spanner in the works and Vijver had to come up with a new plan at short notice. ‘Without the help of my own network and that of my colleagues this would have been very…

International Archaeology student Grace Alonzo went back to her home country when the coronavirus situation developed. Now she is living at her parents place in the US, following Leiden lectures remotely, while juggling a tight schedule with a job, and the effect of time difference. ‘I have all my exams…

The Leiden University College team behind the Learning Mindset project has been nominated for the Dutch Higher Education Award, an award for innovative teaching in higher education. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science announced this on 15 March.

Can the academic year be structured in such a way to give students, lecturers and researchers a bit more breathing space? To find out, Leiden University is taking part in ‘smarter academic year’ pilots.