On Thursday 20 May 2021, Tania Li delivered the annual Van Vollenhoven Lecture.

Collecting as much information as possible about administering a new medicine to people can save a lot of money.

The advanced insights obtained for the CNS PBPK model development are currently used to develop advanced mathematical models for drug distribution prediction in other body tissues protected by barriers, such as the gut. The gut PBPK model will be linked to drug effects for treatment of colon cancer.

Vocal learning is a trait shared by songbirds and humans. It is also a trait that is restricted by the brain rather than by a species' vocal apparatus. In this dissertation, functional MRI is employed in both species in order to explore potential common neural mechanisms underlying the ability to develop…

You can ask virtual assistant Siri about the weather, but you can’t have a real conversation with it yet. You can’t refer to anything that’s been said before, or ask the system why it says what it says. Stephan Raaijmakers, Professor by Special Appointment from TNO, hopes to change this.

PhD defence

If an algorithm has to learn to understand language, simply having a lot of data doesn’t help much. Like us, a computer has to learn the language in interaction with others. Tessa Verhoef is fascinated by how this interaction works.

In the last weeks, ASEAN published different Statements about the human rights situation in Myanmar and the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

On Wednesday 13 December, Melanie Fink will defend her doctoral thesis ‘Frontex and Human Rights: Responsibility in “Multi-Actor Situations” under the ECHR and EU Public Liability Law’. The defence will take place at 10.00 hrs at the Academy Building of Leiden University, Rapenburg 73. The supervisors…

The development of the Humanities Campus is entering a new phase. On 13 June, the Municipal Council approved both the zoning plan and the visual quality plan. This means that the university can now go forward with developing the new construction and the central green square on the Doelen side of the…

On 7 May 2020, Jolanda van der Vliet defended her thesis 'The International Legal Protection of Environmental Refugees. A human rights-based, security and State responsibility approach'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. N.J. Schrijver and Prof. J.J.C. Voorhoeve.

The Executive Committee consists of the following members:

Promotores: G.R. de Snoo, B. Sinsin, Co-Promotor: H.H. de Iongh

The third and final participation session was held on 20 September; the evening was attended by local residents, business owners, students and other stakeholders.

To celebrate the end of the semester the Science and Humanities Buddy Programme organised a barbecue together, which has become a small tradition. The barbecue marks the third co-organised activity between the two Programmes and helps to bring international and Dutch students together. The Buddy Programme…

The Sackler Distinguished Lecture Series on Human Rights was established at Leiden University through an endowment given by Dr. Raymond R. Sackler and his wife, Beverly, international philanthropists with a commitment to supporting scientific research. The lectures mark the annual celebration of International…

Professor of Dutch History prof.dr. H. (Henk) te Velde will become interim Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University for a two-year term with effect from 1 March 2025. He will succeed prof.dr. M.R. (Mark) Rutgers. Mark Rutgers’ second term of office expires on 1 March 2025; he will be professor…

Since the emergence of humankind people have maintained social contacts and traveled widely, establishing interaction networks in which goods are traded and ideas are transmitted, increasingly on a global scale.

On 1 October 2019 the Hazelhoff Centre for Financial law hosted its 19th guest lecture starring Paul Sharma, managing director at Alvarez & Marsal and co-head of the European Financial Industry Regulatory Advisory Services practices.

While humanities once mainly involved books and archives, nowadays we can’t imagine life without AI. Next semester a new faculty-wide course will be introduced, taking you along with this development. University lecturer and course coordinator Yann Ryan tells us more about it.

Promotor: J.P. Abrahams, Co-Promotor: N.S. Pannu

On 22 March 2016, Prof. Carsten Stahn spoke on prosecuting Human Trafficking as a Crime Against Humanity at a Conference on International Criminal Justice, hosted by the Collaborative Innovation Center of Judicial Civilization of Zhejing University in Hangzhou, China.

Leiden University and the Municipality of Leiden will develop new plans for an alternative Humanities Campus in the city centre. This means they will not proceed with the compulsory purchase of the De Doelen housing complex to facilitate the construction of the new Humanities Campus. The plans to demolish…

On 24 January an interdisciplinary workshop organised by Anna Smulders, PhD candidate at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, and Tarlach McGonagle, Professor of Media Law and Information Society, took place on the interaction between disinformation, emerging technologies and human rights.…

What do a linguist, an artist, a Professor of Conservation and Restoration, and a lecturer at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science have in common? They all use Artificial Intelligence. On 7 April they discussed the use of AI at Leiden’s Kijkhuis cinema.

Zijn sociale aspecten van anxiety-like gedrag bij zeer jonge zebravissen al aanwezig? Zijn deze afhankelijk van de coping style (persoonlijkheid) van het individu? Zijn deze gedragingen endocrien te moduleren, bv door oxytocine?

Begin oktober vond de eerste Psychology Connected van dit nieuwe academische jaar weer plaats. Met de vallende herfstbladeren voelen velen zich ook somberder. Onderzoekers delen hoe je een winterdepressie verzacht, en hoe je als ouder het beste kunt omgaan met de depressieve klachten van je kind.

The renovation of Cluster Zuid (Van Eyckhof-Van Wijkplaats) is the third project in the development of the Humanities Campus. The circular dismantling of Cluster Zuid has started.

Leiden University can build an alternative Humanities Campus on its own available land at the current location in the city. This is the conclusion of a feasibility study and is what the mayor and aldermen of Leiden write in a letter to the city council.

Conference

The Faculty of Humanities is ranked 25th within the subject area 'Arts and Humanities' in the Times Higher Education Ranking (THE) of 2014-2015. The faculty scores particularly high in teaching, research and international outlook.

Two Vidi subsidies for Faculty of Archaeology.

Friday October 24th Honours students had to present their case studies on a topical issue related to Humanities. All Honours students made posters in pairs of two and had to defend their case in front of an audience at the Old Observatory. It was a tense experience, since they were being graded by…

Neuroscientist Elseline Hoekzema receives a large European grant from the European Research Council (ERC). This ERC starting grant for promising young researchers allows her to investigate the effects of pregnancy on the brain in detail.

Humanities Faculty Leiden occupies a 49th place in the field of Arts & Humanities in the QS World University Ranking. Especially the subject areas Linguistics and History & Archeology rank high, with respectively a 26th and 28th place. Leiden University has fallen by one place in the annual QS World…

In a letter initiated by Wil Roebroeks, among others, serious concerns were raised about three research papers claiming evidence for one of the earliest human occupations of Europe.

On 3 December 2019, Hanna Bosdriesz defended her thesis 'Furthering the fight against impunity in Latin America: the contributions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to domestic accountability processes'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. L.J. van den Herik and Prof. M.A.H. van…

Many international students start their master programme at the Humanities Faculty in Leiden every semester. Among them also Ronghu Zu (29, China), Yucheng Lu (28, China), Mariana Diaz (25, Mexico) en Julia Seidel (27, Germany). For many students the university, city and country were completely new…

Aleydis Nissen was awarded the René Cassin Thesis Prize 2021. The René Cassin Foundation - International Institute of Human Rights organises the competition. This Prize is awarded to the best PhD theses on human rights.

Professor of Media Law and Information Society Tarlach McGonagle is concerned about the increase in online disinformation and hate speech. He argues that human rights should guide new policies for the online world. McGonagle will give his inaugural lecture on 9 May.