On Monday December 17th the ILS 2.0, SOLID project will hold an afternoon Symposium on ‘Challenges to European Integration: welfare states and free movement in the EU’ from 11.45 – 16.30. The symposium will take place in room A.014 at the Kamerlingh Onnes Building (Steenschuur 25) of Leiden Law Scho…

An international team of astronomers, including Leiden’s Christian Ginski, has discovered previously unobserved structures in a debris disk around a nearby star. Article published in Nature on 8 October.

More than 700 visitors got to know the Science Faculty during the Leiden Science Family Day. People of all ages could enjoy fascinating experiments, tours, interesting lectures, spectacular nitrogen shows and various workshops. It was an informative day with many (future) scientists, amazement and,…

Wouter Halfwerk (IBL) received a Veni grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research for his research project on the influence of man-made noise on foraging birds.

Using artificial intelligence to find new antibiotics. With that, researchers from Leiden University are nominated by magazine KIJK for the Best Tech-idea of 2021. From September 14 onwards people can vote to crown one of the nominees as the winner.

Knots come in all shapes and sizes: mariners and scouts can vouch for this. Sjabbo Schaveling will obtain his PhD on 1 September for a mathematical method to distinguish between all these knots. ‘I flatten them to a pretzel.’

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) announced on 25 April that it has appointed 18 new members. These include Leiden professors Andrew Webb and Jos Raaijmakers.

On Tuesday 19 March Major General (ret) Patrick Cammaert gave a guest lecture about peacekeeping to the students from Leiden University Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs. The lecture was made possible by the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA).

On 26 and 27 September 2024, Leiden University's Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies hosted the H2OLAW conference entitled 'Law-science interfaces within the law of the sea and fresh water law’. The conference marked the launch of a multi-year research project led by Dr Hilde Woker and Dr…

Soil that is too wet, or too dry. Or with a lot or few nutrients. Due to climate change, the differences are becoming bigger, and plants must increasingly be able to adapt to survive. How do you make plants more stress-resistant? For this purpose, researchers from Leiden, along with other universities,…

A rejuvenated Naturalis opens its doors to the public on Saturday 31 August. Many researchers from Leiden University also work at the Naturalis research centre. Their workplace has also undergone a major facelift, and museum visitors can now watch their every move.

Combining geometry and number theory. That is what Dr Jan Vonk of the Institute of Mathematics receives a Vidi grant for today. ‘By fusing these two disciplines we may be able to solve a century-old mathematical problem.’

On December 16th 23 students of the Institute of Environmental Sciences of Leiden University took part of the first total species inventory to assess the effectiveness of an underwater landscape that was build in March 2003 to restore the biodiversity in an area where the environment was destroyed by…

Ups and downs for students from year 12 and/or vwo 6 who are selected for the Academic Challenge and the Dutch version of this challenge, the ‘Wetenschapscongres voor vwo’.

Emeritus Professor Ben Lugtenberg edited a book on “Principles of Plant-Microbe Interactions” together with Paul Hooykaas, Eddy van der Meijden and Jos Raaijmakers, all from the IBL.

Amidst concerns over what the re-election of Donald Trump will mean for the international system, Prof. Dr. Jan Aart Scholte will give a Cleveringa Lecture titled ‘Trump, geopolitics and the future of globalization’ on 28 November 2024.

Small, remote islands were long thought to have been the last frontiers of pristine natural systems. Humans are not thought to have been able to reach or inhabit these environments prior to the dawn of agriculture, and the technological shift that accompanied this transition. A paper recently published…

IBL-PhD-student Michelle Spierings delivered a great performance at the FameLab national final on the 21st of April. She is now also happy to be back behind her desk.

The Child Law Department of Leiden University and Defence for Children kindly invites you to the fourth Jaap Doek Children’s Rights Thesis Award Ceremony and the official launch of the book ‘The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Taking Stock after 25 Years and Looking Ahead’ (Brill…

A school lesson by a professor, for instance about the history of Africa, the climate or research and healthcare. A hundred Leiden professors told primary school children about their work in the Meet the Professor project.

Lecture, Unfolding Finitudes

PhD candidates in medicine, Wouter Jan Geelhoed and Nan van Geloven, are the winners of the Leiden preliminary round of FameLab. They are through to the final on 22 April.

Using a clever experiment, PhD candidate Shengxiang Yang discovered how gold electrodes convert water into oxygen. He is the first to unravel the mechanism of this reaction. Yang published his results in the journal ACS Catalysis.

Which two scientists will present their research best in three minutes? It could be the one with the most supporters.

The Honours Academy has recently started working with the new visual technology Virtual Reality (VR). 'It is important to look beyond your own borders and to keep on experimenting. It may not work out, but at least you tried.'

In the nineteenth century many Dutch people believed in the end of time and the coming of God's thousand-year reign. This belief effectively slowed down the process of modernisation that was taking place in the Netherlands at that time, concludes historian Rie Kielman. PhD defence 13 April.

Roman philosopher and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero is still used as an intellectual example by politicians and speech writers today. But, he did not go unchallenged in his own day, as a statesman in particular. Classicist Leanne Jansen conducted research into how classical historians judged Cicero’s…

How do democracies develop? The Institute for History is devoting a three-day conference to this question.

Just one year ago, nobody would have given Trump a cat's chance in the US presidential elections. Now he will be the next President of the United States. Professor of Journalism and New Media Jaap de Jong explains the rhetoric that has got Trump so far.

On Wednesday, September 17, 2025, Prof.dr. Sarah Cramsey convened a book manuscript event at the beach of Wassenaar near Leiden to discuss her new book 'Caring through Catastrophe: Jewish Children and their Caretakers during the Holocaust' which is under contract with Indiana University Press.

Building off the success of the 'Jews at Home' conference in December 2023, the Leiden Jewish Studies Network convened its second conference 'Care and the Jewish Experience' this past September in Leiden.

In two weeks' time, the official opening of the Humanities Hub will take place in the Huizinga Building. The first projects have already begun. Professor Journalism and New Media Jaap de Jong and director of the AI and Digital Humanities Lab Jelena Prokic share their experiences.

Fiction is more effective than autobiographical non-fiction when it comes to conveying the sensation of enforced solitary confinement. That is the conclusion of writer and lawyer Maarten Asscher in his study 'Het uur der waarheid. Over de gevangenschap als literaire ervaring' (The Moment of Truth: Imprisonment…

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2018, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

Leading computer scientists from a variety of fields share their expertise and insights. Dive into the minds of these researchers and learn about real-world applications, the future of AI and related technologies and cutting-edge research. From chatbots to cybersecurity, from quantum to children's stories,…

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded Veni funding to seventeen researchers who recently obtained their PhD. This award offers promising young scientists the opportunity to develop their own ideas over a period of three years.

Controversial environmental organisation Sea Shepherd fights illegal fishing all around the world and is not afraid to take direct action. Alumnus Geert Vons is director of Sea Shepherd Netherlands. How does he look back on his degree in Chinese Studies, and what motivates him in his work? ‘If we don’t…

Lecture, Astronomy on Tap

The receptor nomenclature committee of IUPHAR, the International Union of Pharmacology, has several subgroups. Among these are a few that our division is involved in, those for adenosine, nicotinic acid, and GnRH receptors.

During the online panel discussion ‘Het spel en de macht’ (the game and the power) held on 9 March, six members of Leiden’s Centre for Dutch Politics and Governance (CNPB) discussed trends regarding the current and previous general elections. Will it be tense, this campaign? ‘Baudet probably still has…

Writing a book on the recent history of Leiden University in corona times. For educational and policy historian Pieter Slaman (34), this has meant working in the attic of his parents’ house while they looked after his daughter, along with numerous online conversations and very few, if any, visits to…

Street theatre, drama, poetry and a lot of science: Leiden's Rapenburg was the backdrop for the fifth Night of Art and Knowledge on Saturday 16 September. Many University buildings - from the Observatory to the Hortus - opened their doors to artists, scientists and a public curious to know more.

Dutch people are far more law-abiding than they might like to think. And they are very different from the Belgians in that regard. The different approaches of the two governments towards the coronavirus crisis, for example, can be explained from the history of both countries since the Middle Ages. Historians…

Didi van Trijp started her PhD project at LUCAS in October 2015. Her PhD project is part of A New History of Fishes. A long-term approach to fishes in science and culture, 1550-1880, a project directed by prof. dr. Paul Smith.

Global problems such as diseases of affluence or microplastics in the sea are too complex to be dealt with from a single scientific discipline or by just one country. Leiden University has the expertise to bring solutions to these enormous problems a step closer. Read more in the research dossier on…

Fish populations in lakes and rivers have declined in recent decades. This is probably due to light and noise pollution. The Horizon Europe grant enables ecologist Hans Slabbekoorn to investigate this and improve the situation for migrating fish. In order to do so, a seven-metre-long swimming tunnel…

Salma Balazadeh, Víctor Carrión, and Jos Raaijmakers, biologists at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), have successfully applied for an NWO grant and got awarded 730.000 euros. The board of NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences awarded funding for their project within the Open Technology Programme…

Many Western defence strategies concentrate on maintaining the status quo. Actively promoting universal values can also be a good strategy for resilience, according to Theo Brinkel, Professor by Special Appointment in Military-Social Studies. Inaugural lecture 15 January.