That Tessa Schiethart finished her bachelor's degree in International Studies with a thesis on Indonesian women's reasons for veiling was a coincidence. Or so she thought. Six years later, her book Seeing and Being Seen, in which she writes about her life with a wine stain and vision loss, is in the…

Dutch and Flemish partners, including Leiden University, are joining forces as the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) in the fight against the spread of fake news, and have received the support of the European Commission.

During adolescence, some young people have stable best-friend relationships, while others change best friends frequently. Developmental psychologist Lisa Schreuders has studied the brains of young adolescents: ‘It seems that friendships in your early years can have consequences for your friendships…

Healthy lifestyle campaigns are often unsuccessful. It is hard to get people to eat healthily or do more exercise. Behavioural science expertise should be drawn on at a much earlier stage in policy development, say twelve behavioural scientists in a position paper. They will present the paper to Maarten…

Since 2009-2010, the West viewed China as more assertive. Especially after Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the country abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s ‘low profile’ foreign policy. Friso Stevens explains in his dissertation where this change has come from. The dissertation defence is on 28 March.

What developments preceded modern Standard Dutch? PhD candidate Iris Van de Voorde conducted research on ‘pluricentricity’, or the idea that language norms arise in different places and spread outwards from there. PhD defence on 19 April.

Tuberculosis stands as one of the most lethal infectious diseases worldwide. A significant challenge in combatting tuberculosis lies in the emergence of antibiotic resistance triggered by genetic alterations, commonly known as mutations. These mutations can diminish the responsiveness to antibiotics,…

Medical psychologist Willeke Kitselaar developed a model that helps identify patients with persistent somatic symptoms earlier, based on an extensive large medical database. ‘I advise GPs to ask patients to fill in a questionnaire about both physical and mental symptoms at an earlier stage.’ PhD defence…

Andreas Häuselmann and Eduard Fosch-Villaronga from eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies wrote an article on the legal and regulatory aspects of emotion data and presented it to the Affective Computing + Intelligent Interaction (ACII ‘23) Conference held at MIT. Andreas Häuselmann also hosted…

Karwan Fatah-Black and Lauren Lauret are co-authors of Geketend voor Hollands Glorie (The Chains of Holland’s Glory) that studies the political and economic connections between South Holland and slavery. The findings of this research will be presented with Dr. Joris van den Tol (Radboud University)…

From Soledad Acosta de Samper and Albalucía Angel to Hazel Robinson Abrahams and Amalialú Posso Figueroa. During the Symposium & Workshop Experience and Voice: Library of Colombian Women Writers, we focus on books written by Colombian women writers from different historical periods. The symposium and…

We are pleased to invite paper proposals for the 1.5-day interdisciplinary workshop: “Who rules over migrants? Autocratic elements in migration policies”, that will take place at the University of Leiden on 14 and 15 November 2024.

On December 16, 2023, our respected and beloved former colleague prof.dr.ir. Bert Peletier passed away.

As an employee, the Faculty of Law at Leiden University also allows you to go on an exchange. Read here how Esther Kentin experienced this and where to find more information.

Glorious sunshine, dozens of enthusiastic academics and huge numbers of Leiden residents ensured that this year’s special jubilee version of 3 October University was a great success.

Lecture

Valedictory lecture

PhD defence

Collaborating in drug discovery and health research was the goal of a visit to the Leiden Bio Science Park on 14 May by a Swedish delegation including His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden. The delegation visited Leiden University’s Faculty of Science.

Public agencies are keen to use new technology such as AI to speed up their primary processes. But the internal organisation is often a major stumbling block. SAILS researcher Friso Selten conducts research at the interface between data science and public administration.

On January 16, 2022, our respected and beloved colleague Prof. dr. Bas Edixhoven passed away after a short period of serious illness.

Several of the most important manuscript collections in the Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Special Collections, comprising 443 extremely rare and often unique volumes, have been made available in Open Access via Digital Collections. The available manuscript collections include the private collections…

Patients and healthcare providers use Remote Patient Management platforms to exchange information with each other. New methods like this are desperately needed to future-proof our healthcare systems. Professor Maaike Kleinsmann is working to scale up these systems and implement them nationwide.

This Thursday, January 18th 2024, our esteemed colleague Jan Zaanen passed away. Jan was one of our star scientists, larger than life, with an unabashed, boisterous drive for the best of physics at the Institute Lorentz, at the Leiden Institute of Physics and in the full international scientific community.…

Paul Wouters has been reappointed as Dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. His second term runs from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2023.

On March 25, the Advanced Masters of Science in International Relations and Diplomacy (MIRD) celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the programme. The celebrations began with the Reconnect event, bringing current students and alumni together, and concluded with the MIRD Gala. Throughout the day, the tight-knit…

Bruno Allahissem and Luca Bruls recently joined the Institute for History as PhD candidates in the NWO-funded project 'Digital warfare in the Sahel: popular networks of war and Cultural Violence', led by Mirjam de Bruijn and Jelena Prokic (LUCL). Below they introduce themselves.

Photographing fluorescent flowers, searching for frogs and shooting tropical cucumbers out of trees: this is only a small part of the course Tropical Biodiversity and Field Methods. For this class, master’s students biology traveled to Malaysian Borneo for two weeks to gain experience in fieldwork.…

Researchers at the Universities of Amsterdam (Uva) and Leiden together with the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Oncode Institute have received a €10,6 million ERC Synergy Grant to develop innovative therapeutic approaches to target glioblastoma. This is a deadly primary brain tumour for which no curing…

The new government needs to look further ahead, says environmental scientist Rutger Hoekstra. ‘We keep pushing forward big dossiers like demographic ageing, climate and migration. Even though we know they play a big role in our future.’ Hoekstra therefore hopes that the new coalition agreement will…

A safe place to discuss burning social issues such as racism with each other. The student workspace Space to Talk About Race and the Afro Student Association both meet this need and also organise many other activities. Three board members explain why this is necessary.

The Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) is closely connected to the education of our biopharmaceutical students, providing both courses and immersive internship projects. Among these is the Bachelor Research Project (BOO), which offers many students their first real scientific experience…

How has evolution shaped our curiosity? And how does that curiosity ensure that we now have the technological ability to discover whether we are alone in the universe? This was all covered during the celebration of Leiden University’s 449th Dies Natalis.