On Wednesday 4 September, Queen Máxima opened the renovated tropical greenhouse complex of the Leiden Hortus Botanicus, an event that attracted wide public interest. Thanks to this renovation, the greenhouses are even better equipped for scientific research.

Neuroscientist Anne Urai has been awarded a Veni subsidy to further develop her ideas over the coming four years on how the brain makes choices. Why did she receive the award? Urai answers five questions about her Veni grant for young researchers.

Many thanks for visiting the Master’s Open Day on Friday 15 March! We hope that you enjoyed the day and that all your questions were answered.

King Willem-Alexander visited Leiden on 6 December to open the new wing of the Leiden Instrumentmakers School. Students of this vocational programme make instruments needed for scientific research.

The academic year of Leiden University's Honours Academy opened on 9 October. The opening ceremony was held in the Hooglandse church in Leiden.

Leiden University will be opening a new Student Centre in The Hague, in the Orion Building at Turfmarkt. The Centre will have room for social and cultural activities, study workplaces and a fitness room for the growing number of students and staff at the Hague Campus.

ACPA offers students from both the Leiden University and the University of the Arts The Hague elective courses in visual art and music.

The Leiden Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia (LeiCenSAA) announces a new open access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the epigraphy of Arabia and its cultural and linguistic context: Arabian Epigraphic Notes

The registrations for the Science Based Business specialisation of the Fall 2017 (Management track, starting in September) has now been opened, and it is thus now possible to apply. The ability to apply for the New Technology Ventures track will also follow soon.

After a turbulent Covid year, the well-being of our students and staff has the highest priority. How can we prevent physical and mental health problems? This was the key question at the Opening of the Academic Year in Pieterskerk in Leiden on 6 September.

Saskia Gras, PhD graduate from the Dual PhD Center, presents her book on Wednesday 6 June:

The ‘Contagious!’ exhibition was set to open at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in April but had to be postponed because of the corona crisis. The museum hasn’t been twiddling its thumbs in the meantime. The exhibition will now open on 16 July, and the corona crisis has a major role.

JSixty researchers have received a grant of approximately 50,000 Euros during round 3 of the NWO Open Competition SSH-XS pilot programme. Two of them are working at FGGA: Jolien van Breen and Honorata Mazepus. The sixty researchers received the grant to start working on a promising concept or an innovative…

‘Discipline and Place’ is a lecture series offered by LeidenGlobal to PhD and Research MA students in the Fall of 2020. It gives students an opportunity to reflect on the broader field of the Social Sciences and the Humanities – including Archaeology and Law – and to position their own research accordingly.…

On 29 January 2018, the new “Arbitration of International Disputes” MOOC (massive open online course), taught by Prof. Eric De Brabandere and Dr. Giulia Pinzauti, will start on Coursera.

PhD student Wen Yang discovered how certain cell receptors in E. coli bacteria signal 'smells'. With the use of ice-cold electron microscopy microbiologists from Leiden gain more insight into how bacteria respond to their environment. Publication in mBio.

The Open University and Leiden University will join forces to offer a (Dutch-taught) Joint Legal Technologies Program for professionals. In doing so, they can provide the advanced legal informatics training that is necessary in our rapidly digitising society. The joint program is a further development…

On Friday 15 March, more than 750 students from the Netherlands and abroad visited the Master’s Open Day at the Faculty of Humanities to explore their options.

Finding structure in disordered proteins and developing drugs for undruggable diseases: it might sound like mission impossible, but pharmacologist Alireza Mashaghi and his team are right on top of it. Their project was awarded by NWO through the Open Competition Domain Science -XS, a competition that…

Princess Beatrix was a guest at the opening of the conference on ‘Chinese Buddhism and the Scholarship of Erik Zürcher’ in Leiden on 12 February. Buddhism researchers from all parts of the world came together to reflect on the work of Leiden sinologist Erik Zürcher.

Professor of Psychiatry Anne Speckens studied medicine in Leiden and did her psychiatry training there too. She opened the Radboudumc Center for Mindfulness in Nijmegen. What does she do there and how does she look back on her time as a student?

Image from ESOF Forum programme page.

On March 16th, students from all over the world visited Leiden's Humanities Faculty to explore their options during the Master's Open Day. 'Leiden is a beautiful city, I feel like I could definitely study here.'

Due to the COVID19 crisis (especially the impossibility to meet in person), the course "Foundations of Research-2" could not take place as scheduled. However, a second opportunity to participate in this course in October will be offered. The course is aimed at PhD students who are about halfway…

On Thursday 9 September, Lord Martin Richardson (Scottish Supreme Court judge) gave a keynote speech to the new group of Advanced Master’s students.

Would you like to organise a session during the biggest multidisciplinary event in Europe - the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) conference - to be held in Leiden from 13 to 16 July 2022? If so, send us your proposal! Archaeologist Corinne Hofman is one of the driving forces behind the conference and…

From Wednesday 13 July 2022, for four days, Leiden is at the epicentre of European science, as it hosts Europe's largest interdisciplinary conference, the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF). We interviewed Marja Spierenburg, Professor in the Anthropology of Sustainability and Livelihood. In addition to being…

Tuesday was the opening session of the LDE Bachelor Honours Programme Sustainability. Lecturers introduced themselves, students got to know each other and it was revealed what they will do to contribute to a more sustainable world in the coming months.

With the launch of the Albabtain Leiden University Centre for Arabic Culture, Leiden University and the AbdulAziz Saud Al-Babtain Cultural Foundation will join hands in promoting the understanding of Arabic culture. Have a look at the centre's plans for the years ahead.

He is said to be one of the greatest living statisticians. Bradley Efron gave a lecture in Marekerk and opened LUXs, the Leiden University Center for Statistical Science, the first university statistics centre in the Netherlands.

The oldest forms of literature and law originate from Mesopotamia (3000 BC until AD 70), as do important discoveries in science and technology. All these developments were recorded in cuneiform texts on clay tablets. There is still a lot to learn from the study of cuneiform texts, says Professor of…

The ICT.OPEN conference had no less than five Leiden highlights. PhD candidate Anna Louise Latour won the pitch prize of 500 euros and PhD candidate Can Wang won the second prize in the Commit2Data poster competition. In addition, Professor Holger Hoos gave the keynote lecture on the first day and Suzan…

Leiden's city centre, bathed in autumn sunshine and teeming with visitors. On 14 October, several thousands of students and their parents came to visit the University's Open Day. We spoke to a number of students at the information fair in the Pieterskerk; each of them had their own questions, doubts…

On 12 January 2018 Jorrit Rijpma, associate professor of the Europa Institute and Jean Monnet Professor, held the yearly Meijers lecture. In the well-attended lecture he spoke on the topics of his Jean Monnet Chair on Mobility and Security: the aftermath of the refugee crisis and the effects on free…

From this autumn, students at Leiden University will be able to use the new student centre in The Hague. The building offers space for student organisations, sporting activities and support services.

The touring exhibition 'Presenting with the city' has touched down in the Lipsius Building. In the presentation, students and researchers show how their research has contributed to the city.

Students support primary schools in reducing backlogs due to Covid-19

Bjørn Peare Bartholdy is Archaeology’s representative in the Open Science Community Leiden (OSCL) . We spoke with him about the value of Open Science and how to make a good start. ‘Open Science is headed to be a regular way of academic work.’ So better to jump on the Open Science bandwagon early on.

The Faculty of Science celebrated the 500,000th open access publication in NARCIS with all employees who help making Leiden Science publications open access. During this event the importance of open access was stressed, for both the Faculty and the researcher.

... together our steps make the journey!

Open Science Hub, a science education project coordinated by Leiden University, has won the 2021 Portuguese Medal of Scientific Merit for its contributions to community development through science education, research and innovation.

Almost 7,000 prospective students came to Leiden last Saturday to visit the Open Day. They came from all corners of the Netherlands and even from abroad to start the process of choosing a degree programme. At the Information Fair in the Pieterskerk they were able to ask students and study advisers all…

Six researchers from Leiden University have been awarded NWO Open Competition funding.

With a call for dialogue and collaboration, vice dean Bart de Smit kicked off the new academic year for the Faculty of Science on Tuesday 3 September. Theoretical physicist Carlo Beenakker outlined the possibilities of quantum as a disruptive technology.

Three enormous maps of China, created during the reign of three different emperors of the Qing dynasty, have now been made available in open access and are downloadable via Leiden University Libraries’ (UBL) Digital Collections. The rich maps are an early example of academic collaboration between the…

With a single sample of water or soil, researches can analyse the DNA of everything that is living in that environment. During her research, PhD candidate Beilun Zhao discovered a way to analyse not only the kind of species, but also the age of the species in a water sample. The method showed its first…

Professor Jenny Doetjes has received an NWO grant to research the cross-linguistic properties of quantity expressions and our brain's influence on language.

How do you experience a quieter city? Or a silenced city? Our cities are normally filled with noise. The corona crisis has changed that. Few or no people on the streets, shops closed, much less traffic, hardly any planes coming over. The soundscape of the city has completely changed. Soundtrackcity,…

Professor Susanna Lindberg has been appointed Scientific Director of the Institute for Philosophy with effect from 1 February. In her new role, she aims to foster connections among people. ‘I want my colleagues to feel good.’