Last Friday, Leiden University College The Hague (LUC) celebrated the graduation of the Class of 2020 ½ and 2021. The 186 students received their Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree’s in LUC’s interdisciplinary honours programme Liberal Arts & Sciences: Global Challenges. Under the silver-…

There are more molecules that could conceivably be candidate drugs than there are stars in the universe. How can we ever efficiently identify those molecules? Professor of AI and Medicinal Chemistry, Gerard van Westen: ‘I’m going to use artificial intelligence as the co-pilot to make an automated search.’…

On 16 May 2022, Professor Michel Wouters from the Department of Biomedical Data Sciences at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), will deliver his inaugural lecture titled ‘Quality of Cancer Care: why the real world matters’. Wouters will use the opportunity to describe how quality registries…

People who move most in the afternoon and evening are less insulin resistant than people who move mainly in the morning or spread throughout the day. This makes them at lower risk of type 2 diabetes. These are the results that researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have published…

On Wednesday 6 July 2022 Leiden University College The Hague (LUC) celebrated the graduation of the Class of 2022. The 170 students received their Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree’s in LUC’s interdisciplinary honours programme Liberal Arts & Sciences: Global Challenges.

Ad IJzerman, Emeritus Professor of Pharmacochemistry, was made a Knight of the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands on 26 April. He was presented with the royal honour by Mayor Elbert Roest in the town hall in Bloemendaal.

From 14 to 29 PhD candidates, seven actively involved faculties and, above all, lots of innovative interdisciplinary research, all with data science as the common denominator. The university’s Data Science Research Programme (DSO) has proven so successful that after five years on a start-up grant it…

A new challenge for Felix Ameka. The senior lecturer at the Centre for Linguistics has been appointed professor by special appointment of Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Diversity in the World. ‘I am looking forward to promoting ethnolinguistic diversity and vitality.’

‘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.

How can you do your bit for sustainability? Students from Leiden University have launched an interactive website with 150 sustainable initiatives in and around The Hague. The website Sustainable The Hague makes it easy to find a sustainable shop, restaurant or community initiative in your local area…

Alumni event, Lecture

Although the official start of the academic year has to wait for another fortnight, Leiden University College The Hague (LUC) welcomed the Class of 2024 to the Anna van Bueren campus this week. The new cohort of 204 incoming students will spend the next three years studying different majors and minors…

Giving lectures, marking exams, essays or theses, supervising students and PhDs, doing research and, as if that wasn’t enough, also trying to raise the necessary funding. There is a limited number of funds for academic research and a large number of applications. Many of our researchers therefore experience…

Are all murderers calculating psychopaths with an obscene predilection for bloody chainsaws? Yes, if Hollywood is to be believed, but in the real world they are generally everyday people with problematic backgrounds. Professor of Violence and Interventions Marieke Liem therefore calls for the demythologisation…

LUC historian Jacqueline Hylkema unmasks forgeries from the early modern Dutch Republic in the research project "Mapping the Fake Republic".

Arts and culture

Leiden University's International Honours College, Leiden University College The Hague (LUC) experienced empty halls and empty classrooms this past year on the residential campus on the Anna van Buerenplein in The Hague due to the global pandemic. Dr Paul Hudson designed a Covid-proof course that enabled…

Spatial technology such as virtual reality can help patients who have difficulty with spatial cognition, for instance if they keep on losing their way. In her inaugural lecture, neuropsychologist Ineke van der Ham will talk about the importance of avatars, the patient experience and room for innovat…

The Master of Medicine at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) has won the national biennial award for best educational innovation in medical teaching. It was awarded the prize by the Netherlands Association for Medical Education (NVMO) for its MasterMinds Challenge (MMC).

Is the child benefits scandal an omen for the future and will people’s lives soon be fully dominated by algorithms? Assistant Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law Reijer Passchier warns that the encroaching digitalisation is giving the executive branch even more power, leaving parliament…

In the 60s and 70s, Black Power groups were also active in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This is what PhD candidate Debby Esmeé de Vlugt has discovered.

As early as 2030, batteries in electric vehicles could fully meet the need for short-term electricity storage around the world. By connecting them to the power grid they can provide their stored energy, improving energy security and enabling renewable technologies in cleaning the grid.

Over hundreds of thousands of years, our region witnessed the comings and goings of various types of hominin. This depended on the temperature as ice ages alternated with warmer periods. In ‘De eerste mensen in de Lage Landen’ (‘The First Humans in the Low Countries’) Leiden archaeologists Yannick Raczynski-Henk…

Aesthetic attraction plays a big role in orangutans’ mate choice, behavioural biologist and PhD candidate Tom Roth has observed. But to discover just how big that role is, more research is needed into the emotions of the great apes.

Video conferencing from your sitting room and algorithms on social media that know your interests: new technology is an increasingly integral part of our lives. At the same time there is a growing call to protect our privacy, and this is causing friction, at the University too. In part because of the…

Lecture, Studium Generale

Alicia Schrikker doesn't usually get involved in urban history. As a senior lecturer, her research field is generally the colonial history of Asia and partly South Africa. So, the fact that she is going to carry out an urban history research project together with colleagues, is something that even she…

Lecture

Natalia Sobrino-Saeb, third-year student at Leiden University College The Hague, won the challenge by the Ignitor Fellowship Program held by the Nobel Peace Center for her essay on the threats to journalism in Mexico. On December 10th Natalia met the Committee of the Ignitor Fellowship in Oslo and attended…

The Aernout van Lynden Global Citizenship Award award is a recognition given by the LUC community. Each year a student who has demonstrated the qualities of active engagement, responsive and responsible participation in civic and/or community building, within and/or beyond LUC is presented with the…

Life returned to something resembling normal after Covid but other crises soon took its place. These great challenges are also being felt at the University and our researchers are working on solutions. The nitrogen crisis, problems with young people’s services and an increasingly urgent climate crisis:…

They never cross our minds until, that is, they become damaged and then they’re a huge problem: our sewers. Their maintenance could be much faster and more accurate, PhD candidate Dirk Meijer has discovered. Algorithms are also proving to be a godsend deep underground.

Roman philosopher and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero is still used as an intellectual example by politicians and speech writers today. But, he did not go unchallenged in his own day, as a statesman in particular. Classicist Leanne Jansen conducted research into how classical historians judged Cicero’s…

Workshops

Debate, Roundtable Conversation

Lecture, Research Seminar

In his new book 'Flooding and Management of Large Fluvial Lowlands', Paul Hudson Associate Professor of Physical Geography at Leiden University College in The Hague, examines human impacts on lowlands rivers. The past twenty years the pressure on large fluvial lowlands has increased tremendously because…

Last Saturday, Wijnhaven Campus and the Anna van Buerenplein were the setting for the first 'on campus' Experience Days in The Hague since the restrictive measures in higher education were introduced in March 2020. Spread over the day, some 200 students visited the campus to delve deeper into the 3…

It may seem as though adolescents do as they please, but they are more sensitive to their parents’ opinions than they would appear. The adolescent brain reacts strongly to parental criticism or praise. These are the results of a study by an interdisciplinary research group of psychologists and neuroscientists…

The Aernout van Lynden Global Citizenship Award award is a recognition given by the LUC community. Each year a student who has demonstrated the qualities of active engagement, responsive and responsible participation in civic and/or community building, within and/or beyond LUC is presented with the…

The law and Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications need to be better aligned to ensure our personal data and privacy are protected. PhD candidate Andreas Häuselmann can see opportunities with AI, but dangers if this does not happen.

Teens with depression appear to be more sensitive to criticism from their parents than their healthy peers are.

The Covid pandemic has had a considerable impact on academics’ work and well-being. They have had much less time to spend on their research. The Young Academy and the Dutch Network of Women Professors have conducted research into how the situation has been for academics. The two organisations have recommendations…

On 11 November Professor of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Monique van Leerdam will deliver her inaugural lecture entitled, ‘Aiming for Prevention’. Van Leerdam, who specialises in hereditary tumours, was appointed professor in July 2020. In her inaugural lecture she will discuss the importance of…

More people seeking asylum, overcrowded asylum accommodation and asylum procedures that take years because of a lack of capacity. The current government wants to declare an asylum crisis but what is that exactly and can they just do that?

Workshops

Dr. Josien de Klerk, Associate professor in Global Public Health at Leiden University College The Hague recently published some of her work on HIV/AIDS. In collaboration with a team of interdisciplinary researchers from the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development she came to the conclusion…

The Sustainable 100 is an initiative by Dutch newspaper Trouw, consisting of a list of the top 100 sustainable civil initiatives. In October of 2020, the Jonge Klimaatbeweging (Youth Climate Movement NL) became the first youth organization to win first prize. An interview with LUC Alumna and Board Member…

Lecture