More focus on diversity in Antiquity, workshops for students with disabilities, and a card game to share stories about diversity: these and other projects will receive funding from the JEDI Fund in 2023.

Sara Petrollino, a university lecturer in linguistics, strongly believes that language influences the way we see the world. An NWO Open Competition (XS) grant will enable her to test this hypothesis among the Ethiopian Hamar people. ‘The idea that everyone thinks in geometric shapes is culturally de…

Lecture, Research Seminar

Conference

How do you co-create with researchers in other parts of the world? LDE wants to gather and share knowledge on the grand challenges and to do so across national borders. A delegation of 27 researchers will therefore travel to Indonesia at the end of October to take part in the LDE-BRIN Academy.

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…

Saskia Goedhard was previously director of operations at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam and the UvA. Since April, she has brought her expertise to the Faculty of Humanities as director of business operations. 'Good business management is like water from a tap. You only notice it when it’s no longer th…

From energy transition to the nitrogen crisis: artificial intelligence can be of great help. Researchers from the three universities in Zuid-Holland are seizing the opportunity. Three of them talk about collaborative research in the AI for Energy and Sustainability focus group within the Zuid-Holland…

Lecture, Leiden Lectures on Arabic Language & Culture

On Friday 10 June a workshop on students’ unique skills was organised in the context of the joint Erasmus+ project ASSET-H. In this workshop, teaching staff learned how to showcase the skills that students can learn in their classes. Trainer Catho Jacobs has five tips on helping students to recognise…

After a process of more than two decades, the new Greek-Dutch dictionary was presented on Wednesday 5 June. University lecturer Lucien van Beek acted as manager of this project headed by Ineke Sluiter for the last nine years. He is also one of its editors-in-chief.

Lecture

The latest generation of artificial intelligence (AI) can use natural language to answer complex questions and tasks. OpenAI launched the ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022. This has caused a stir in the world of education and is a cause of concern for many. What could AI in general and ChatGPT in particular…

PhD defence

It was announced in December that a new draft urban development plan for the Humanities Campus is now ready. In drawing up this plan for the various buildings, outdoor space and traffic routes on campus, the facilities and layout of the buildings themselves were, of course, also considered. Discussions…

Mathematician Francesca Arici has joined the Raising Public Awareness Committee of the European Mathematical Society. She aims to coordinate and unite the European efforts of communicating and promoting mathematics. ‘We also hope to achieve more recognition for people who do science communication.’

Lecture, LIAS Lunch Talk Series

Master’s students in the Honours Class ‘Leiden, City of Refugees?’ were asked to contemplate the concept of ‘the other’ from both an academic and an artistic perspective. The result was the exhibition ‘The Invitation’ which was presented at Stadsbauhaus on 4 June.

Conference, Carte Blanche

So much has happened this year! 2023 was an eventful year in which several wars raged about which our experts could offer interpretation. It was also the year in which the government made apologies for the slavery past. Leiden humanities scholars were at the forefront of this with their research on…

Lecture, Leiden University Nationalism Network

The challenge: take three hundred students from vastly varying disciplines and teach them the basics of academic thinking in twelve lessons. Impossible? Professor Ben Arps and his team of tutors succeeded. It resulted in a large amount of positive student evaluations.

PhD defence

A delegation from Leiden University recently embarked on a knowledge mission to various NGOs, universities and government organisations in Indonesia. New partnerships were formed and important knowledge exchanged, and researchers from Leiden gave guest lectures.

World Heritage status comes at a cost to the local population’s human rights. PhD Candidate Sophie Starrenburg explains the drawbacks of poetic terms such as ‘the cultural heritage of mankind’.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many staff of Leiden institutes abroad to leave their posts in a hurry. How is the KITLV Jakarta team doing now? Director Marrik Bellen talks about the turbulent times for this Leiden institute and its staff. And can we learn anything from the Indonesian approach?

The airspace had almost closed last year as Leiden students and staff rushed to leave the Netherlands Institute Morocco (NIMAR). How is this Leiden institute in Rabat doing over a year later? ‘Luckily we’d done a crisis exercise a few months before. Everyone managed leave the country in time.’

An impressive 21 research projects by Leiden researchers have been awarded Veni funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).