Public Administration has been around for 40 years, and that deserves to be celebrated. Before the festivities begin, four figures from the Institute of Public Administration reflect on the past years, with one even looking back over the last 25 years. Speaking are: Bernard Steunenberg, Caelesta Braun,…

Good news for Linguistics alumna Anne-Mieke Thieme, who has won the thesis prize awarded by the European Federation of National Institutions for Language (EFNIL). ‘I emailed my thesis supervisor right away.’

During the Late Pleistocene, Europe was a cold and unforgiving place to live. Even so, groups of early modern humans roamed around, just like their Neanderthal counterparts. It is unclear what kind of dwellings these people inhabited to shelter them against the elements, especially in regions without…

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030, an effort to reduce the country’s reliance on oil, may open up new opportunities for Korea. Spearheading the way is Hallyu — the Korean wave, led by K-pop and dramas as a soft power to open new business opportunities in the Middle East, especially…

NUFFIC’s Orange Knowledge programme, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, awarded a grant to the proposal of Jacqueline Vel, Adriaan Bedner and Leiden alumnus Fachrizal Afandi just before the Christmas holidays.

There has been good progress with the new South Cluster construction through the summer months. All the door and window frames are now in place, the building will soon be wind and watertight and the interior finishing has already begun. The work will be completed in the months ahead, with the building…

A better integration of Digital Humanities into study programmes, so that students develop their digital skills as well as possible. That is what Hossam Ahmed wants to achieve in the coming years. He received a senior Comenius Fellowship to develop a digital programme for students.

Education, Research

The thesis is a major milestone for master students graduating in Political Science. It demonstrates their ability to conduct research independently and to provide a thorough, objective and sound analysis. That requires instruction, discussion, thinking and hard work. Lots of it. In some cases this…

The end of the year often means looking back with lists, overviews and stories. This combines nicely in a list of all the books published this year by various political scientists at Leiden University. Indeed, in terms of books, these scholars have certainly not been idle. A unique collection of stories,…

PhD defence

PhD defence

Connecting worlds, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. In that respect, a huge amount happened at Leiden University in 2023.

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Thousands of students and researchers from eight partner universities in the Netherlands and Flanders have been able to gain valuable experience in Egypt through the institute. Good reason for a celebrat…

There is a real chance of war closer to home, political and military leaders in Europe have warned. What does Frans Osinga, Professor of War Studies, think about the threat and what we should do?

Conference

Florian Herrendorf has won the Fruin Prize 2023. His thesis was chosen out of 11 nominees as the best master's thesis in history studies.

The EU’s programme for research and innovation Horizon Europe is funding the ISGA project ‘NET-ROL: Networks and the Rule of Law: Uncovering Socio-Economic Outcomes’. The funding amounts to 3 million euros, with 760,000 euros going to ISGA. Researchers Antoaneta Dimitrova and Jaroslaw Kantorowicz are…

As both old and new democracies experience increasing democratic backsliding, there is a critical societal need to rethink the design and effectiveness of democratic checks and balances. In this conference on Friday 9 June, the aim is to explore multidisciplinary insights about what makes the checks…

Het college van bestuur heeft Wim Voermans benoemd tot Universiteitshoogleraar. Hij gaat zich richten op duurzaam institutioneel vertrouwen.

Dubai is teeming with world leaders these days at the United Nations' annual climate conference. What can we expect? We look ahead with university lecturer and environmental politics specialist Shiming Yang. 'The funding always comes slowly.'

PhD defence

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The interdisciplinary, English-taught minor ‘Violence Studies’ looks at violence from very diverse scientific perspectives. What are the benefits from this approach? Students and lecturers evaluate: ‘This minor’s a goldmine’.

Language can be a time machine: we can learn from ancient texts how our ancestors interacted with the world around them. But can language also teach us something about people whose language has been lost? PhD candidate Anthony Jakob investigated whether the languages of prehistoric populations left…

In September 2023, Geert Ham started working at the Institute for History as a PhD candidate within the ERC-funded project 'Anchoring Innovation'. Below he introduces himself.

The impact of war extends beyond destroyed buildings and torn families. In bilingual Ukraine, the ongoing war with Russia is a major driver for increasingly discarding the Russian language. What does this mean for the position of Russian in Ukraine?

According to Russian propaganda Ukrainians are Nazis and people from the West are Satanists. Egbert Fortuin thinks we should take this propaganda seriously.

Mirjam Twigt recently joined the Institute for History as a Research Officer ⁠/ Postdoctoral Researcher for the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Governance of Migration and Diversity (LDE GMD)⁠. Below she introduces herself.

Three Humanities lecturers received the Senior Teaching Qualification (SKO) this year. Lecturer Hossam Ahmed is one of them. What does he think makes for good education?

For 2022, The Iranian-German project 'The Iranian Highlands: Resilience and Integration of Premodern Societies' announces the second round of fellowship grants. The fellowship is open for both iranian and non-iranian researchers, especially in archaeology but also in other interdisciplinary fields focussing…

To honour the work of its longstanding chair Nick Ryan, CAA International provides the annual Nick Ryan Bursary Award. The Nick Ryan Bursary Award winner is chosen from each year’s student paper presenters. The award goes towards the costs of attending the CAA Conference the following year, up to a…

Seventy students, researchers and PhD candidates from the Institute of Philosophy gathered on Friday 23 February 2024. to discuss the responsibilities of citizens, scholars, and intellectual communities to the civilian population in Gaza.

Five thousand years before the common era (BCE), Proto-Indo-European, the mother of many languages that are spoken today in Europe, Central Asia and South Asia, originated in eastern Europe. PhD candidate Axel Palmér has combined a 175-year-old hypothesis with new techniques to demonstrate how descendants…

Three international research projects involving Leiden University researchers will receive funding from the Una Europa university alliance.

Suddenly there they were, the Russian soldiers near the border of Ukraine. Since then, reports of tensions between Russia on the one hand and the United States and Europe on the other have dominated the news. What is going on? An interview with Russia expert André Gerrits.

An exhibition at Oude UB takes visitors to the historical Silk Road. Old maps, clothes and jewellery reflect the rich heritage of the cities of Central Asia and their inhabitants.

This month marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. NINO, the Language Museum, Things that Talk and the National Museum of Antiquities are seizing the opportunity to organise the first Week of Ancient Writing.

The Faculty of Humanities has been ranked 17th Arts and humanities faculty in the Times Higher Education world ranking 2015-16. This makes it the top non-Anglo-Saxon institution on the list. The position is 7 places up in comparison with last year's list.