The Faculty of Humanities’ On-Campus Master’s Experience Day was a pleasantly busy event. The information sessions and corresponding information market went down well with interested undergraduates.

A course that concludes with a video pitch, instead of a paper or examination: Italian Language and Culture students each recorded their own knowledge clip, speaking to a wide audience about Italian cultural expressions. We asked Goran Bouaziz, Cameron-May Bosch and Katja Timmer what they thought of…

Leiden or The Hague? Dutch or English? These two questions decide which introduction week new students at Leiden University can best choose: EL CID, HOP or OWL.

There was a time when student Lelani Antar wanted to go to film school. She ended up studying International Studies, yet she didn’t quite say goodbye to film. For her minor, she and three other students made an essay film.

I recently went to the anniversary celebration of The Meeting Point, and the stories the refugee students told made a huge impression on me. The Meeting Point helps students from different backgrounds feel part of our university community.

In the past years access to EU law has been significantly enhanced via services such as EUR-Lex. This development not only allows for easy retrieval of individual legal acts, but for collecting information about the evolution of EU law in the aggregate as well.

Six PhD candidates from the Institute for History took part in a pilot project targeted at career development. Between September and December 2016 group meetings and individual coaching sessions helped them position themselves better on the job market outside of academia.

Are you dealing with an educational challenge or would like to explore innovation opportunities? We actively ideate, design, prototype, build, test real-world solutions to transform theoretical ideas into tangible solutions to enhance the educational landscape for the benefit of your students.

Looking for a job after a financial crisis is not easy, but Ward Hoskens (28) managed to take his fate into his own hands. During an internship, he found his way to the Pieterskerk, where he now works as a junior curator. Director Frieke Hurkmans took him on.

Elif Naz Kayran and Anna-Lena Nadler have received the European Political Science Review (EPSR) Prize for early career scholars.

Almost 3,000 students from the Faculty of Humanities completed the National Student Survey (NSE) in the spring of 2022. With a response rate of 38%, the Faculty scored slightly above the national average.

Dr Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, Assistant Professor at eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies, and 8 partners have been awarded the project 'BIAS: Mitigating Diversity Biases in the Labour Market', a large €4.7M Horizon Europe grant.

Jack Segbars publishes 'Artistic Production in the Context of Neoliberalism, Autonomy and Heteronomy Revisited by Means of Infrastructural Critique' in PARSE, Issue 9.

Researchers need to work in specialized environments when they work with dangerous bacteria and viruses. These microbes spread easily, so only in labs with a high biosafety levels they can be studied. Unfortunately, to look at the microbes properly, expensive microscopes are needed that are not always…

Prof. Marcel Reinders is a data science specialist at Delft University of technology. Using smart algorithms, he searches for links in complex data. For example, he studies patterns in DNA that lead to aberrant cell behaviour. This knowledge will help detect serious diseases such as Alzheimer's and…

A breakthrough from the PhD research of medical chemist Elmer Maurits may help patients with autoimmune diseases and blood cancer in the future. But bringing a discovery from the lab to the clinic is not so easily done. Thanks to NWO's Venture Challenge, Maurits and his team will receive ten weeks of…

What are the origins of the Islamic Empire? And what was daily life like there? Two new Ted Ed animations answer these questions in simple language. Arabists Petra Sijpesteijn and Birte Kristiansen explain what the process of developing the videos was like.

The Dutch horticultural sector faces the challenge of becoming fully circular by 2030. Professor of Environmental Biology Peter van Bodegom is going to commit himself for four years to guiding this transition and nudging it into the right direction. Together with Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Sustainability…

For many high school students, mathematical formulas are nothing more than abracadabra. Didactic and mathematics teacher Peter Kop wants to change this. For his PhD research, he devised a new series of lessons full of drawing assignments that learn students to assign more meaning to the formulas. Kop:…

An Honours Class about the ostensibly unrecognisable worlds of insular Southeast Asia teaches students a fundamental piece of wisdom:

A job thanks to COVID—something not many people can claim. But PhD candidate Vera Arntzen can. Over the past four years, she has mapped two crucial characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 infections. Thanks to her research, experts can now make well-informed decisions on matters like quarantine duration, which…

Many alumni are frontline health workers and are working day and night to treat thousands of corona patients. Intensivist Michael Frank (53) is one of them. As head of intensive care at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Dordrecht, he is steering his department through the corona crisis.

Positive expectations about treatment increase the likelihood of success. The new Center for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies Leiden is therefore promoting research on the placebo effect and offering expertise and training for care providers. At the opening, the founders demonstrated their VR communications…

The use of fire can tell us a lot about human evolution. Archaeologist Femke Reidsma has developed a more accurate technique to identify how our ancestors used fire. Existing archaeological studies will need to be revised. Reidsma’s study was published in Nature Scientific Reports on 2 November.

Trail, FGGA’s online internship platform, exists one year in November. High time to get to know the organisations making use of Trail. What do these organisations stand for? What tasks do interns have? And what have FGGA students to offer?

Envoys jumping out of windows, fights, and illegal diplomacy: history student Tessa de Boer encountered them all while writing her master's thesis on Amsterdam as a diplomatic city during the 17th and 18th centuries. For her thesis, she was awarded the Uitgeverij Verloren/Johan de Witt thesis prize…

In higher education, Open Educational Resources (OER) are available for anyone to use, but they are not widely used. Marjon Baas, PhD student at ICLON, investigated how instructors deal with OER. Defence on 5 October.

Lecture hall A0.06 in the Schouwburgstraat in The Hague was packed with parents, friends and other loved ones on Friday, 27 September. No fewer than 61 graduates received their Urban Studies diploma there, the highest number in the four years since the programme started.

Meerdere kranten schrijven over een onderzoek van Wimar Bolhuis naar de Nederlandse belastingopbrengsten.

Leiden University has received a Lifelong Learning grant that will enable it to significantly expand its learning for professionals, for example for the government in The Hague and the Leiden Bio Science Park.

On 1 September 2024, lecturer and researcher Suzanne Kali, who works at Leiden Law School’s Labour Law and Social Security department, took over from Marica Wismeijer (Athora Netherlands) as Chair of the women’s network ‘Netwerk Vrouwen FNV’. The network, which is part of the FNV trade union, focuses…

On ASEAN, there is broad agreement on two points. First, effective economic integration in ASEAN has serious potential. Second, ASEAN has so far failed to realise much of this potential, despite ambitious roadmaps. Consequently, business confidence in ASEAN as a region is starting to erode. Valuable…

Children could do better at school if they exercise during their maths, English and science lessons, a study has suggested. Researchers reviewed 42 studies that looked at the benefits of physical activity in the classroom for youngsters.

On 9 October 2023, Carlotta Rigotti and Eduard Fosch-Villaronga participated in the BIAS webinar on citizen science and AI technologies, namely the first awareness-raising activity of the Horizon Europe BIAS project. They discussed online citizens’ engagement on tackling gender and intersectional biases…

Knowledge that benefits society is the domain of the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA). FGGA provides high-quality interdisciplinary education on and research into social and governance issues such as terrorism, organisation of public administration, climate change and economic crises.

This pioneering project will answer this question by examining migrants through the eyes of the courts between 1600 and 1900. It aims to reveal patterns of continuity and change in: 1. Treatment of migrants by criminal courts; 2. Violence and conflicts between migrants and native born.

Extensive research is being conducted at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology on developments in sentencing and punitive measures and how judges and other actors in the criminal justice system reach decisions. Another focus area is how punishments and measures are implemented and the effect…

How public service motivation and professionalism affect decision-making in dilemma situations. Individuals who work in the public sector see themselves confronted with conflicting values, contradictory demands, and the need to serve an at times difficult to define ‘public interest’.

At the age of 16, Alisa Lavrenchenko fled to the Netherlands with her mother. She is now taking a Master’s in Russian and Eurasian Studies at Leiden University. For her support of Ukrainian refugees, she has earned a nomination for the UAF Award for refugees and their professional and academic achie…

Ineke van der Ham has been appointed professor of Technological Innovations in Neuropsychology on 1 January. She researches how virtual reality and games help people navigate better. And this matters, as good navigation skills are about more than coming home safely.

Professor of Molecular Astrophysics Ewine van Dishoeck is portrayed as a heroine in a pictorial children's book. ‘It starts with a dream' tells the stories of twenty exceptional Dutch women who have had a positive impact on society. The book aims to give young girls role models and encourage them to…

The short film Alma & Esperanza , directed by Itandehui Jansen, a PhD candidate (directing supervisor Professor Dr. Kitty Zijlmans) of the Leiden University Academy for Creative and Performing Arts, has been selected to the Short Film Corner of this year’s edition of the Cannes International Film Fe…

Recently, Prime Minister Dirk Schoof caused quite the stir in the political arena of The Hague following the release of policy documents on the asylum debate. This came ahead of a decision that had not yet been made. The question has since arisen as to whether it’s still possible for civil servants…

Sophie Vériter explores a small state’s impact on EU security governance, a hard challenge means against big states in this policy area.

On 1 February 2018 Professor Maartje van der Woude (professor of Law and Society at the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society) became Associate Director of the Oxford-based Border Criminologies Network.

Barend Barentsen, Professor Labour Law, talked about the local public transportation strikes in the Netherlands with Omroep Gelderland.

‘I’m Erik Owusu, I’m 20 years old and I’m a student of the bachelor’s programme Urban Studies in The Hague. I was born in The Netherlands, but I’ve lived in Ghana for almost 7 years. Because of this, I was able to see a lot of different cities, cultures and social structures. That got me thinking: what…

(1) What are the institutional factors that influence AI adoption and implementation? and (2) How does AI reshape the exercise of administrative discretion within public organisations, and how do adoption and implementation choices moderate these effects?

What does a political party do in the wake of a disastrous electoral defeat? Martijn van Nijnanten researched this and discovered that parties turn to core values from the past. PhD defence on 12 September.

Carlotta Rigotti and Eduard Fosch-Villaronga have published a new article that offers an insightful and critical literature review on fairness and AI in the labour market as part of the BIAS project.