If you missed the annual LUCDH Winter School Week of Digital Humanities workshops and Pilot Project Symposium (27 – 31 January 2025) this time around, you’ll have a chance to take part next year. Save the dates for the last week of January 2026!

A programming competition in Minecraft? It really exists! And even better news: this time LIACS’ student team Mike's Angels achieved the first place! The team has been rewarded $500.

Last Saturday, Reijer Passchier was a guest on one of his favourite radio programmes: Dr. Kelder en Co.

Education, Organisation, Research

On Friday the 29th of October, LACDR presented highlights of its research and teaching program during an online Lunchtime Talk session at the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Education, ICT

Education

Gianclaudio Malgieri, Associate Professor at eLaw Leiden, was invited as a speaker at the Annual Conference of the European Academy of Law (ERA), on 21 March in Brussels.

Education, ICT

Leiden University has had a turbulent week. There have been protests inside and outside our buildings that have evoked reactions, and students and staff have felt unsafe. We want with this message to look back at the past week and look forward to the future. What happened and how do we now want to move…

When we think of unethical medical experiments, we tend to think first of Nazi Germany. What is less well known is that experiments were also carried out in colonised areas without the explicit consent of the test subject. University lecturer Fenneke Sysling has received a European grant to research…

There are differing opinions about healthcare for transgender young people. Lieke Vrouenraets investigated the ethical dilemmas.

After a week of shadowing for her master's degree in Public Sector Management, it has become very clear to student Loes what a manager's day looks like. 'He was putting out fires all day.'

Two Leiden legal scholars have been awarded funding from the KNAW pilot fund 'Science communication by scientists: Appreciated!'. The fund supports scientists who have demonstrated a continued commitment to science communication.

Every year, an NWO PhD in the Humanities grant is awarded to a prospective PhD candidate at the Faculty of Archaeology. This year, the grant went to Maia Casna, enabling her to study respiratory disease in the past. ‘My hypothesis is that the rapid formation of cities in the medieval Netherlands, must…

On August 18, 2022, Henk Bodewitz, distinguished Indologist and emeritus professor of Sanskrit at Leiden University, passed away in his hometown of Utrecht.

Workshop

The Health Council of the Netherlands has published an advisory report entitled ‘Ethische en juridische overwegingen Covid-19’ (Covid-19: ethical and legal considerations). According to the Council, businesses and organisations may request a vaccination certificate, but can only do so under strict c…

The Executive Board is delighted to announce that Joanne van der Leun took up the position of the university’s Academic Lead International Affairs as of 1 January 2025.

Organisation

It is becoming increasingly common to collect data from children and young people through digital means. The impact of this so-called ‘dataveillance’ on children, who are monitored from birth via smartphones and Fitbits, is great.

The Minister has requested urgent advice from Sombroek-van Doorm in relation to the vaccination of children aged between 5 and 12 years against COVID-19.

'Engaging With Everyday Sounds' is a rich and inspiring exploration of the role of sounds in everyday life, including their impact on human actions, emotions, and imagination. Marcel Cobussen intertwines sonic studies with philosophy, sound art, sociology and more to create an impressively lucid and…

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

Whispp, a Leiden-based speech technology start-up, is developing an app to help people who stutter express themselves more freely. Among those working together with Joris Castermans and his team at Whispp, are researchers and students from the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL).

Many intelligence services have an outdated view of the world while the threats they should protect us from are becoming more complex. Serviceman and researcher Bram Spoor warns that NATO and member state intelligence organisations cannot always predict the dangers.

What does the future of quantum look like? Vedran Dunjko (Assistant professor at LIACS and LION) is co-founder of the applied quantum algorithms (aQa) leiden interdepartmental initiative research that will investigate this. They are part of the Quantum Delta NL consortium that was recently awarded substantial…

Seed funding to summer schools, research collaborations and joint degree programmes: in these ways and more, we’re creating impact as a partner in Una Europa, an alliance of 11 leading research universities. To wrap up the year, we asked six colleagues to reflect on what they’ve achieved through Una…

How does our brain interpret traces of evidence? Can someone who is suffering from brain damage be held accountable for criminal offences? And should it be possible to adjust a criminal’s behaviour with deep brain stimulation? These questions were addressed during the Public Scientific Day Brein & Recht…

A patent for what may be a potent, new antibiotic. And: a clear overview of promising approaches to overcome a crucial resistance tactic employed by bacteria. In the span of one week, two researchers from Leiden are receiving their PhDs, each of them on an important step in the battle against bacteria…

On this page you will find an overview of the activities organised by the Leiden Research Support Network.

Staff from Leiden University are starting the Dutch universities’ staggered strike against the government cuts on 10 March. Follow the strike in this liveblog.

In a new Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities white paper, researchers and practitioners start the conversation that society desperately needs to have. ‘We’ve outsourced the visionary thinking to tech companies.’

Wat als je advies zou kunnen krijgen van je toekomstige zelf? Jean-Louis van Gelder en zijn collega’s ontvangen een ERC Proof of Concept-beurs voor het project YourFutureU, waarin deelnemers gecoacht worden door een virtuele AI-versie hun toekomstige ‘ik’.

‘AI can’t do half as much as people think,’ says computer scientist and psychologist Roy de Kleijn. He tries to teach robots seemingly easy things, and keeps on discovering how smart human intelligence really is. Three things that computers are no way near doing.

Oud-studenten gingen op 30 augustus weer de collegezalen in om hun vaste plekje op de banken op te zoeken tijdens Leiden Revisited. Bezoekers konden genieten van inspirerende lezingen, maar ook van een gezellige borrel, buffet, en livemuziek.

Scientific Director of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) Hubertus Irth: ‘We test substances and look for new concepts for treating disease.’

Thirteen Leiden University exchange projects have been awarded an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility grant. The total award of around 450,000 euros will enable 103 students and staff to go on an exchange.

Board members Annetje Ottow and Hester Bijl recently visited the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL, Faculty of Humanities) and the Mathematical Institute (MI, Faculty of Science). This was the start of a series of visits to institutes at our university. The focus is on talking to researchers…

During the annual Teaching Fair, teaching staff in the Faculty of Humanities met up to exchange tips & tricks and attend workshops.

Last year, investments were made in new research facilities within the Faculty of Humanities. It is now time for the next step: improving research infrastructure, funded by a COIn grant.

Geopolitiek, klimaat, pandemieën, migratie, AI, genderpolitiek: de wereld van vandaag verandert in in meerdere opzichten. Hoe ga je als bestuursorganisatie om met deze veranderingen? Dat was het thema van de tweede internationale conferentie van het Leiden University's Global Transformations and Governance…

Carlotta Rigotti, post-doc researcher at eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies, and Alexandre Puttick (Bern University of Applied Science) presented some research outputs of the Horizon Europe BIAS project during the European Workshop on Algorithmic Fairness '23.

Research

Misleading social media posts are falsely claiming that the Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo uses facial recognition at self-service checkouts. Jumbo denies this, although it has launched trials with AI cameras to combat shoplifting without using facial recognition.

On Wednesday 6 March, eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies will be hosting Professor Margot Kaminski, an eminent scholar from Colorado Law School, for a research morning on her new paper on Participatory Data Governance, co-authored with Dr Gianclaudio Malgieri, Associate Professor at eL…

The pre-university course organized by eLaw, with the support of the Honours Academy concluded on Monday, March 18, 2024. Led by Carlotta Rigotti, the program provided students from various Dutch high schools with a rich tapestry of insights at the intersections of law, technology, and society.

In an interview with Jaap van den Herik, Professor emeritus Law and IT, legal magazine Mr. writes that The Hague municipality wants to attract more legal tech start-ups. The municipality has therefore commissioned the Leiden Centre of Data Science (LCDS) of Leiden University to conduct a study into…