As academics we devote our time mainly to education and research activities. Some of us are also active as an editor for a scientific journal. For example, I am an editor for Microchemical Journal (from Elsevier, established in 1957) since January 2019, a task I fulfill with pleasure every Saturday…

Research

Climate change is going to have more and more influence on our daily lives in the near future. For example, tackling it is going to have significant consequences for many people in our society.

Eleven researchers of the Faculty of Science are on the 2021 Highly Cited Researchers list of Clarivate Analytics. Only 0.1 per cent of researchers are included in this list, literally making them one in a thousand.

Leiden University is concerned about the plans presented by Minister of Education, Culture and Science Robbert Dijkgraaf to limit English-taught courses in higher education. If these plans go forward, the university believes this could have major consequences for our international students and staff.…

Research

Kimia Heidary and Helen Pluut received the Best Paper Award at the Munich Summer Institute for their paper on consumer perceptions and personalized pricing.

Stay tuned for updates on relevant media appearances of Anne-Laura van Harmelen.

From April 2022, Professor Paul Nieuwbeerta will be working one day a week as affiliated professor for Statistics Netherlands (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS)). He is Professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, Leiden University.

In an interview on the website of the NWO, Sabine Luning, Marjo de Theije and Esther van de Camp talk about the gold miners they met in various African and South American countries and they come to new insights.

Self-directed learning is more suitable for intermediate and advanced language learners than for beginners.

Kimia Heidary and Helen Pluut received the Best Paper Award at the Munich Summer Institute for their paper on consumer perceptions and personalized pricing.

Leiderschap in een publieke organisatie is niet langer voorbehouden aan managers alleen. Daarnaast vereist modern leiderschap toepassing van een divers gedragsrepertoire. De manager van nu put daarvoor uit een gereedschapskist vol tools, betoogt Marieke van der Hoek, promovenda bij het Instituut Bestuurskunde…

In De Kookshow, Universiteit Van Nederland explores the scientific world behind food. Ever wondered which senses influence how tasty you find something? And why do you always have room for pudding after a meal? Leiden historian Kim Beerden is among the scholars providing answers.

Marie Schwed Shenker, PhD candidate at eLaw, has successfully completed an intensive summer school on Social Robotics at Utrecht University. The program offered a comprehensive mix of theoretical instruction and hands-on experience, providing her with the skills to design and experiment with social…

Houdt de rechtbank tijdens een echtscheiding wel voldoende rekening met de ervaringen van een kind? Onderzoek van Villa Pinedo toont aan dat kinderen vaak vrezen het verkeerde te zeggen tegen rechters. Hoogleraar jeugdrecht Mariëlle Bruning praatte erover met NRC.

Nicole ter Laak (Master student Biopharmaceutical sciences) has won the third price of the “Dr Saal van Zwanenberg research price”. The award ceremony is on 14 November.

The master’s programme 'Jeugdrecht' (Child Law) at Leiden Law School has been awarded the gold medal by EW Beste Studies. It is the only degree programme at Leiden University to have earned this top award. Professor Mariëlle Bruning says, 'it’s the best compliment you could ever get in your career'.

Professor Felix Ameka and university lecturer Maria del Carmen Parafita Couta have received an NWO Open Competition grant together with Enoch Aboh (University of Amsterdam) to do research on ‘code-switching’: switching languages by multilinguals.

On 21 January 2021, Fachrizal Afandi defended his thesis ‘Maintaining Order: Public Prosecutors in Post-Authoritarian Countries, the case of Indonesia’. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. A.W. Bedner and Prof. J.H. Crijns.

Rüya Akdağ is part of a research team with the aim of further studying social anxiety. The Leiden psychologist receives the grant for her doctoral research on the role of emotions and cognition in the emergence and occurrence of social anxiety in adolescents.

Dr Mark Leiser, Assistant Professor in Law and Digital Technologies at eLaw, is part of a successful €1.5 million bid for a research grant from the acclaimed Volkswagen Institute on “Reclaiming individual autonomy and democratic discourse online: How to rebalance human and algorithmic decision makin…

In July 2021 the Leiden Empowerment Fonds (LEF) awarded a research grant of €13,500 for research into the history of maritime law in early modern times.

Towards the graduation ceremonies, you sense an increasing nervousness. Not only because all the tradition and glamour surrounding the event, also because that will be the day that the winner of the Political Science master’s thesis award will be announced. For 2022-2023, the jury is considering seven…

Leiden researchers Fenneke Sysling and Joris van der Voet will be admitted to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences’ The Young Academy.

Too often, tax scholars have a dual role: advising the government on legislation, while at the same time helping companies to pay as little tax as possible. This needs to change according to Bart Snels, a member of parliament for Dutch GreenLeft party.

On 7 and 8 March 2024, SciencesPo Law School hosted the ‘Legal Technologies and the Bodies’ conference, where Carlotta Rigotti, postdoctoral researcher focusing on law, gender, and technology at eLaw, presented her working paper about legal perspectives on sex robots and consent.

Liveable Planet, the Leiden interdisciplinary research programme on sustainability, has a full presence at the LUGO Sustainability Day on Tuesday 9 May. Professor Jan Willem Erisman will deliver the keynote lecture. You can also ask questions about sustainability research and interdisciplinary collaboration…

When designing public spaces, noise is often a neglected issue. Architects and urban planners know little about it; noise experts see it mainly as a problem that should be solved simply by reducing the volume. University lecturer Andrea Giolai (LIAS), researcher Kevin Toksöz Fairbairn (ACPA) and Professor…

Education, Organisation

Na Zhou (PhD at ICLON) researched how vocational teachers’ learning takes place in a work placement programme and how their learning supports their teaching in school. Defence on 1 March.

Tijdens de campagnes voor de Europese Verkiezingen werd beweerd dat 70 of zelfs 80 procent van onze wetten door de EU worden bepaald. Maar klopt dit wel? Hoogleraren Armin Cuyvers en Kutsal Yesilkagit spraken erover met Pointer.

After the new government announced its plans to cut expenditure on academic education, the Faculty of Humanities launched the flash campaign ‘Stop the Catastrophic Cuts to Universities!’. Now academics across the university have been explaining why their discipline is needed.

It was the Night of Discoveries on Saturday 16 September: a summer encounter between art and science. Leiden researchers from various disciplines inspired the public with their quest to understand our world.

Mirjam Sombroek van Doorm, Professor of Law and Health, became a member of the Netherlands Sports Council in September 2024. This council is an independent advisory body that focuses on bolstering high level sport, grassroots sport and exercise for Dutch society.

The Young Academy Leiden (YAL) acquired six new members on 1 September. We talked to the new and former chair of this platform for young academics about what they have achieved over the recent period and what is on the agenda for the coming year.

At science festival 'Over de kop', surprising brain facts alternate with confronting stories from the operating room. Researchers explain why our brains love beans and why you should never ride a racing bike without a helmet.

Ten Leiden researchers have been awarded a Veni grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The grant, of up to 280,000 euros, will enable them to elaborate their ideas over a period of three years.

In September 2023 the new minor Sustainability, Climate Change and Food starts. This minor critically examines the complexities of food sustainability through ecological, socio-economic, political, and cultural systems.

The nominees for the IRO thesis prize 2021 and for the Prof. Dr. J.Th.J. van den Berg prize 2021. Who wrote the best Political Science bachelor’s theses?

Research master student Linda Bomm found in her thesis that men, compared to women, believe female sexual assault survivors less, blame women more, and judge them more negatively – especially if they identify strongly with their male gender.

Governance of the internet is chaotic, says Professor Jan Aart Scholte. Can we learn from this relatively new form of governance?

Running, walking or horseback riding: colleagues from the Health, Medical and Neuropsychology unit are each working up a sweat this month to raise money for research on Multiple Sclerosis. How much have they collected so far?

The secular West is struggling with the rise of AI, but so too is Muslim Southeast Asia. What can we learn from each other?

The late 1960s: across Europe, students are demanding the right to more participation within their universities. In 1971 Leiden University was granted an elected University Council. It became quite powerful: the Council even had the right to dismiss the Chairman of the Board.

Even though it is generally known that Autism and ADHD are more common in men, and depression or anxiety disorders are more common among women, it is still not well understood if, how and when sex differences impact neurodiversity and mental health. To better understand this complex issue, 25 international…

Contrary to what one might expect, societal actors influence China’s foreign policy. PhD candidate Sabine Mokry investigated how Chinese academics and think tanks impact the authoritarian leadership’s views on what constitutes the country’s national interest in the international arena. On 14 November…

The annual commemoration of the nation’s war dead on Dam Square and at Waalsdorpervlakte, the Dutch apologies for historical slavery and the Cleveringa Lecture itself: our relationship with history is often ritualistic, Cleveringa Professor Frank van Vree will say in his inaugural lecture on 27 Nove…

The sustainable production of hydrogen could potentially be made more efficient by adding a cleverly chosen salt to the process. Researchers at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC), in collaboration with physicists at the University of Twente, have discovered that the type of salt present in the…