Thousands of first-year students and hundreds of mentors kicked off the EL CID on Monday morning. This year for the first time, the introduction week of Leiden University and Leiden University of Applied Sciences was also open for students of Regional Training Centre mboRijnland and the Leiden Instrument…

Interest organisations are increasingly taking legal action and that’s a good thing for democracy, says PhD candidate Rowie Stolk. ‘It means that the most vulnerable social groups – including children and refugees, who tend to have a weaker political position – are protected.’

On 25 September, Leiden University Campus The Hague organised a partner day ahead of the European Association for International Education (EAIE) 2023 Conference in Rotterdam. The EAIE partner day took place both in Leiden and The Hague, to make international partners of Leiden University understand…

Leiden archaeologists have been conducting research with students and local archaeologists in Oss (in the province of Brabant) for 50 years. An exhibition at Leiden University shows how these finds tell the region’s story.

From 2020 to 2023, Professor Miguel John Versluys and his research group will participate in an international consortium co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union in the framework of the international project “Alexandria: (Re)activating Common Urban Imaginaries”. This ERC project…

On 21 and 22 March 2019 the workshop 'Criptic Identities. Historicizing the identity formation of persons with disabilities across the globe' takes place at the Leiden Institute for History.

On Thursday 1 December 2016 at 13.45 hrs, Francisco Sepulveda Ramirez will defend his doctoral thesis ‘Residence in Tax Treaties' at the Academy Building of Leiden University. Supervisor is Professor F.A. Engelen.

The sixteenth Annual Convention of Austria Centers took place in Budapest, Hungary in June 2024. There, colleagues gathered from around the world, coming from Jerusalem, Olomouc, Vienna, Berkeley, Edmonton, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Budapest and, of course, Leiden.

You’re about to start your minor at Leiden University. Make sure you are well prepared and get your studies off to a good start.

On June 14th, Jeroen Duindam, Professor of History at the Faculty of Humanities, was awarded an exceptionally high distinction for his achievements in the field of Austrian history.

In our rapidly evolving and interconnected world, the study of International Relations has expanded beyond conventional disciplinary boundaries. Leiden University’s MA in International Relations program (MAIR-Humanities), with its emphasis on humanities-oriented and multidisciplinary perspectives, contends…

Dutch universities have responded positively to the new coalition plans. Investments in education, research and innovation will be prioritised, and the stringent cutbacks proposed by the previous cabinet will be reversed. Optimism is the order of the day in Leiden, though caution is advised.

Leiden alumna Tulasi Das moved to England to pursue a career in film, was accepted onto the BBC Trainee Scheme and now works in London as a researcher on historical documentaries. “I still can’t believe I get to do such cool work.”

An impressive 875 students from all corners of the globe are taking part in Orientation Week Leiden (OWL). After all the lockdowns in their own countries, they’re glad to meet up in real life in Leiden. What do they expect of their studies here?

In December 2024, Dr. Jonathan Singerton (University of Amsterdam) was the featured guest speaker at the last lunch talk of the Fall 2025 semester. A full house assembled to hear Dr. Singerton take us on a journey across the Habsburg Empire and to spots far-flung from Vienna. Dr. Singerton told us a…

With the passing of Henk Jan de Jonge on 16 April 2022, Leiden University has lost one of its most characteristic, learned and devoted professors.

With the new academic year, the Honours Academy welcomes a new assessor: Maarten Kolpa. What does an assessor do? And what can he do for honours students? Maarten talks about it in an interview.

In 2025, Leiden University College (LUC) celebrates its 15th anniversary with the theme 'Global challenges, local impact'. To kick off this anniversary year, we have shared fifteen stories over the past few weeks showcasing how LUC students, researchers, and alumni contribute to societal challenges…

Five Leiden research projects in history, law and AI have received SSH Open Competition M 2024 funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The researchers have up to five years to work on a promising idea.

Raymond Fagel, university lecturer in General History, wrote a book about his research on Spanish commander Mondragón. He spared Zierikzee during the Eighty Years’ War and is considered to be ‘the good Spaniard’. What led Fagel to research this topic? And how does such research work? We asked him:

One of the baffling aspects of international power politics is the unexpectedly major influence exercised by particular small states. Professor of International Studies and Global History Isabelle Duijvesteijn discovered that peace missions and development aid help generate power. Inaugural lecture…

North Korea is generally thought to be an isolated country. But, according to PhD candidate Tycho van der Hoog from Leiden’s African Studies Centre, the opposite is in fact the case. North Korea actually has strong alliances with countries in southern Africa. Van der Hoog is trying to shed more light…

When delegations from Leiden University visit foreign countries, they often arrange a meeting specially for alumni of the country. Mexico was no exception. On Monday 23 October, some thirty alumni got together in Mexico City.

Dr Bleda Düring deemed it was time for an archaeological approach on the imperialisation of Assyria. ‘While there are lot of archaeological studies of Assyrian sites, they are not really trying to address this broader picture of imperialism and how this imperialisation actually worked.’ These imperialisation…

Maxine David is a lecturer in European Politics in the Institute for History and is a busy bee when it comes to teaching. When countries started locking down due to the corona virus, she was in the United States. After some difficulty getting a flight back to her home country, the United Kingdom, she…

From games to scavenger hunts: museums already do all sorts of things for children. But how do children really look at art? Do paintings affect them more if they receive information that is specially tailored to young visitors? Join psychologist Francesco Walker at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and see…

For the past year, Anne Wellink represented students' interests on the Faculty Board. As of September, Nova Verkerk will take over. In this interview, the two of them look back and ahead to the future.

The theme for this year’s Week of the Classics (19 to 27 March) is war in Classical Antiquity. Leiden Classics scholars are organising various activities, including the popular Know-Your-Classics Pub Quiz.

PhD candidate Agnes van Steen researched the history of the Leiden women’s rights movement (1860-1990) and found that the university produced many feminists.

In August 2022 we welcome our new colleague Dr Letty ten Harkel as Assistant Professor in Roman and Post-Roman Archaeology. For the past ten years she has built up an impressive track record in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. Read the interview about her background and research…

Three years ago, Associate Professor Alicia Schrikker published 'De vlinders van Boven-Digoel', in which she chronicled several stories about colonial life in present-day Indonesia. Now there is a translation, by Rianti Manullang, who is also an assistant professor at Universitas Indonesia and doing…

Ward Hoskens started ten years ago as an intern at one of Leiden's most iconic buildings: the Pieterskerk. Now he is doing his PhD on the question of how the function of this 'church that is no longer a church' changed over recent centuries.

We invite proposals for the conference entitled ‘Ruins and Memory in the Muslim World: Typologies and Motifs (622-1800 CE)’ to be held in Leiden between 14-16 September 2026.

It is a warm day. The sun is shining brightly while biologist Marco Roos makes his way through the bushes towards a peculiar little plant. Insects buzz, birds chirp. In the background rises the LUMC: at the Bio Science Park in Leiden, people and nature come together in a special way.

The fight against insurgents, guerrillas and resistance movements is an ‘incredibly unpopular’ topic with experts and military personnel, says Professor by Special Appointment of Military History Thijs Brocades Zaalberg in his inaugural lecture. He warns that ignoring these forms of irregular warfare…

Based upon an academic partnership between the Universities of Birmingham in the UK and Leiden in the Netherlands, Universities and Society at the End of Empire and Beyond (UniSoc) uses these two global seats of learning as a starting point to examine the role of universities in the transition from…

The COIn grants enable researchers to improve the infrastructure for their research. The four initiators of two projects explain how the grant has helped them.

Alumna Lisa Koolhoven is the granddaughter of a Rotterdam woman who experienced the ‘forgotten bombing’ of the city on 31 March 1943. Her friend Kristen Hayford has an American grandfather who served in the Air Force during the Second World War. In their podcast ‘Beb & Bob| Collateral Damage ’, they…

Even when a border has officially disappeared, it is still people who decide whether others may cross freely. This was also true for the Polish-German border, where PhD candidate Maryla Klajn spend six months conducting fieldwork.

‘We didn’t find any mechanisms in the brain for transmitting child abuse from generation to generation. What we did find is that experiences of neglect and abuse affect the brain differently,’ concludes Lisa van den Berg (Clinical Psychology). PhD defence 30 June.

Many of us are working from home at the moment, but our children are at home too. While this can be fun, parents sometimes need a bit of peace and quiet. Leiden computer scientist Felienne Hermans has developed Hedy, a programming language that teaches children how to program. An educational way to…

The housing crisis is affecting a substantial group of Dutch citizens and is one of the main election themes this year. How did things get this far and what should the new cabinet do in the coming four years to address the problems? Three Leiden researchers give their answer.

What’s really happening in the space between the cells in your body? With the Collagen Canvas project, students from Leiden University invite you to explore this question by blending science with art. This interactive artwork immerses you in the dynamics of the extracellular matrix—the invisible structure…

‘In Hong Kong, the elderly found our popular nature routes boring, so they now cycle our action-packed routes through New York.’ What once started as an assignment for the Master Programme Media Technology, has grown into the international market leader in the field of virtual reality exercises for…

Fancy seeing how your job is done at a university abroad? Project Managers Christina Schlüpen and Jeannette de Wolf from the Leiden Institute of Chemistry did just that. They both spent a week shadowing a European colleague: one in Bologna and the other in Berlin. This was through the Una Europe alliance,…

For the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, women students and researchers from physics talk about what inspires them about their work. From quantum to cosmology and biophysics, their curiosity about how nature works is what connects these women. What do these 5 scientists want to share…

A breakthrough from the PhD research of medical chemist Elmer Maurits may help patients with autoimmune diseases and blood cancer in the future. But bringing a discovery from the lab to the clinic is not so easily done. Thanks to NWO's Venture Challenge, Maurits and his team will receive ten weeks of…

On Thursday, 17 October, the Crisis and Security Management (CSM) master’s programme hosted an insightful alumni panel with five graduates from different cohorts. The panel offered current students the chance to hear from professionals who have carved their own paths in crisis and security managemen…

In his last week as interim cabinet minister, alumnus and outgoing Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Geoffrey van Leeuwen set time aside to give a guest lecture at his alma mater, Leiden Law School. It was the perfect opportunity for a flash interview.

Imagine: you walk into a museum, see something that catches your eye and before you know it, you have an internship. This is what happened to history student Davey Verhoeven, who went on to work on the exhibition about the unique Japanese folding screen by Kawahara Keiga (approx. 1786 – approx. 1860)…