A The Hague-based project is aiming to tackle teacher shortage and socioeconomic inequality reflected in primary education – and the objective is to do so while helping schools face the challenges imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic in the Netherlands. Higher education students are joining hands with primary…

Het zal niemand ontgaan zijn dat de digitale dreigingen blijven toenemen. Uit monitoring door onze cybersecurity-experts blijkt dat er continu wordt geprobeerd om ook onze systemen binnen te dringen. Wat doen wij daartegen en hoe kan jij als medewerker bijdragen aan onze cyberveiligheid?

The ‘Stans Prize 2016' (for the best thesis, report or article produced by a CML student) has been awarded to Carlos Felipe Blanco Rocha. Other CML prizes were awarded to Henrik Barmentlo, Arnold Tukker and Coen van der Giesen.

On Monday, 09 April 2018, Aron Fischer Ph.D., freelance mathematician and researcher of Colony and Ethereum Foundation’s Swarm team, delivered an absorbing presentation on the Ethereum blockchain, smart contracts and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) at Leiden Law School. These headline-grabbing…

Leiden University has become more sustainable in the past few years, but it could do better, particularly in the area of teaching and research. A student and staff workgroup is preparing a new Sustainability Vision 2030. Programme Manager Daphne van den Berg explains how this is taking shape and where…

A celebration was held in the Tabú restaurant: Mark Rutgers, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, was presented with the first copy of LEAP, a journal where Humanities master’s students can prepare for an academic career by publishing articles themselves.

Erik Danen is the new Dean of the Graduate School from 1 January. He is a professor at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research and conducts research into cancer drugs. Danen is really looking forward to it: ‘PhD candidates are a special group: that's what I like to dedicate myself to.’

On September 29th LUC celebrated its 6th birthday. Lieke Schreel, the Educational Director of LUC has been involved with the programme from the start. She reflects on the growth and the development of LUC in those six years.

The Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science congratulates alumnus Pepijn van Heiningen and the with the Technische Hochschule Köln shared PhD-student Samineh Bagheri. At the SSCI 2016 conference on computational intelligence in Athens last week, both of them won an award for the high quality of…

Before patients can take a pill, scientists often spend years in the lab developing and testing a candidate drug. That often includes experiments with laboratory animals. As head of the rodent facility, Ilze Bot and her colleagues ensure that these experiments are conducted in an ethically responsible…

PhD candidate Sebastiaan van de Lubben has written live blogs about Leiden politics. But how do you go about covering an event while it unfolds? ‘You don’t have time to think while you’re at it.’ Much proved to be unknown about this relatively new journalistic genre.

Three new initiatives will provide a more diverse view of Leiden’s academic history, literally and figuratively: a historical study on the background of students and scientists, a new book about the Academy Building, and two new sculptures of female scientists, Ewine van Dishoek, Professor of Molecular…

In 2012, Swedish power company Vattenfall went to an investor-state tribunal in response to the decision of Germany to close three Vattenfall nuclear power plants on its territory. The tribunal now has to decide whether Germany’s decision is in accordance with the international Energy Charter Treaty.…

Extremely painful chronic cluster headaches – sometimes referred to as ‘suicide headaches’ – can be prevented by stimulating the occipital nerve in the back of the head, according to research conducted by Professor Emeritus of Neurology Michel Ferrari from Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). The…

How do molecules originate and evolve in space? And how does that ultimately determine the chemical composition of planets and their atmospheres? The Dutch Astrochemistry Network (DANIII) receives 1.6 million euros from NWO to find out. A large group of Leiden astronomers and chemists is contributing:…

The ILS Lunch seminars bring colleagues and students from Leiden Law School together, providing an informal setting to hear what researchers from other research programs and institutes are working on. On Thursday 14 February, the first edition of the ILS Lunch Seminar series of 2019 takes place. This…

Governments and public sector organisations consider evidence-based or evidence-informed policymaking as one of the pillars of good governance. That is to say: policies that are informed by scientific knowledge, expertise and evidence. In the research programme 'Power of Evidence', Valérie Pattyn and…

Five projects with a lead applicant from Leiden will receive an Open Science Fund grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Trinidad and Tobago, a twin-island nation, has over 300 identified archaeological sites that testify to its diverse history, covering pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. Many of these sites were discovered by archaeologists in the 20th century and have not been regularly visited and assessed.…

The euro crisis of 2010 has shown that the Eurozone lacks economic cohesion and that EU fiscal integration is needed for a stable euro. But can this integration exist without clashing with the national constitutional interests of the Member States? Frederik Behre looked into this matter in his PhD-thesis…

The Dutch-Japanese made DESHIMA instrument has passed its first practical tests when measuring the distances and ages of distant galaxies. The core of the instrument is a chip the size of two euro coins that measures 49 shades of far infrared light. The developers of the spectrometer publish the results…

The Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) is looking for a: PhD The Illustrated Aesopian Fable in Education in France 1500-2010 (1.0 fte) Vacancy number: 16-123

25 Years ago, the Center for Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences was founded at Leiden University; one year later, in 1985, the education program of Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences started. On Friday September 18th, this was celebrated with a Symposium, an anniversary booklet, and a grand party.

For centuries, astronomers have studied the universe by collecting light signals. Since 2015, the confirmation of an important prediction of Einstein allows us to explore the universe in a new way: through gravitational wave radiation. Astronomy PhD candidate Valeriya Korol proposes to use these gravitational…

Global science research serves the needs of the Global North, and is driven by the values and interests of a small number of companies, governments and funding bodies, finds a major new international study published today. As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation research is not…

Computer scientist Matthijs van Leeuwen is one of four science faculty members who obtained the Senior Qualification in Education in 2021. What was that like and what drives him? ‘In my own education I would have liked to see more attention paid to the responsibility that machine learning and data mining…

Four researchers from Leiden University will receive funding from arthritis foundation ReumaNederland over the next five years. This should facilitate long-term research into arthritis.

Benjamín Maldonado, Orestes Kyrgiakis, Roos Capel and Iskra Cvitković are the new student members of the Programme Committee (OLC). The board advises the Executive Board and the Faculty Board about educational matters, such as the determination of the Course and Examination Regulations and the evaluation…

High demand at emergency departments is not a reliable indicator of the number of patients that will be sent to the Acute Admissions Unit. The LUMC has therefore developed an admissions predictor.

Charlotte Poot (31) is co-founder and chair of Hospital Hero, an app that prepares children for a hospital visit. She studied and obtained her PhD at the LUMC.

Leiden astronomers and ecologists are developing an instrument that lets people measure the quality of surface water with a smartphone.This international citizen science project, MONOCLE, is a collaboration between scientists and local people in Tanzania, Brazil and four European countries.

Dubai is teeming with world leaders these days at the United Nations' annual climate conference. What can we expect? We look ahead with university lecturer and environmental politics specialist Shiming Yang. 'The funding always comes slowly.'

Opponents of drastic nitrogen measures argue that the nitrogen calculation model is not reliable enough. Nitrogen professor Jan Willem Erisman: 'It is now much more important to discuss the choices we make on the basis of the outcome. The differences are much bigger than the uncertainties in the mod…

Anne Marieke van der Wal-Rémy, assistant professor of African History and International Studies, has received a Comenius Teaching Fellow grant of 50,000 euros. She intends to use the grant to set up an online archive of digital primary sources, together with her students. Van der Wal-Rémy: ‘ “Once on…

The new student members of the Programme Committee (OLC) are Pablo Pandocchi, Benjamin Maldonado, Emily Berube-Palsboll and Nico Lesenfants Ramos.

How does the soil we grow our vegetables in, affects the health of our gut? And does a healthy soil gives crops a better quality and taste? These are some of the questions Soil ecologist Emilia Hannula and a big consortium will work on. With an NWO-KIC grant of 1.8 million, CML, IBL, FGGA, the LUMC,…

The environmental risks of new pesticides containing nanoparticles are inadequately researched, according to four Leiden scientists in the scientific journal Environmental Science & Technology. They call for an examination of the long-term and environmental effects of pesticides containing nanoparti…

How you think about yourself is important for the choices you make. Adolescents are faced with choosing a study programme that will determine their future, while their self-image is still under development. Tough choice? Research by psychologist Laura van der Aar has shown that taking a training course…

Has the Netherlands responded well to the corona crisis? Or are we, as Geert Wilders terms it, the ‘dunce’ of Europe? A group of authors including Leiden professor Arjen Boin have analysed the Dutch approach and come up with valuable lessons for the next pandemic.

On 12 September the students of the European Law Master gathered in the Lorentzzaal for the festive opening of their programme.

On Thursday 16 November, Dirk Broekhuijsen will defend his doctoral thesis entitled ‘A multilateral tax treaty: designing an instrument to modernise international tax law’. The defence will take place at 15.00 hrs at the Academy Building of Leiden University. The supervisors are Professor F.A. Engelen…

On 26-28 June, 2023, Leiden University’s Institute for History will host a summer school on Socioeconomic diplomacy and global empire building, 16th-19th centuries, in collaboration with the N.W. Posthumus Institute (the research school for economic and social history in the Netherlands and Flanders)…

Heritage expert Monique van den Dries has a long history with our Faculty. She did her studies and PhD in Leiden, and before returning to academia in 2008, she worked in heritage management for nearly 15 years. This has, given her a unique insight in the world outside of academia. ‘I want to literally…

Does a communal garden provide cool air and warm neighbourly relations? Does an additional row of trees increase biodiversity? These kinds of questions are key in the COMBINED project, on which Leiden scientists and residents of The Hague, among others, can work for six years with 4 million euros from…

Last Thursday the Dutch House of Representatives held a debate on children being put into care when the childcare benefits scandal (toeslagenaffaire) had caused problems for their families. Four Leiden University academics were asked by the House to produce a fact sheet for this debate, bringing together…

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.

Dutch researchers are joining forces to conduct research together with a series of societal partners to keep the biological clock healthy in our modern 24-hour society. The BioClock consortium will receive a research grant of no less than 9.7 million euros for this. It is one of the projects that receive…

The Dutch National Research Agenda announced today that it will provide 17 research projects with a total of 61 million euros in funding. Researchers from Leiden University or the Leiden University Medical Center are involved in five of the projects. All of the projects are interdisciplinary partnerships…

Crucial information about research, funding or how university rankings are created is often not freely accessible. The Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information calls for such information to be made open. Professor Ludo Waltman is one of its initiators. What needs to change?

Our ever-increasing reliance on software and technologies, out of convenience, necessity or otherwise, binds us to supranational and commercial companies that provide them. Is it essential that governments, universities, and researchers ensure that they continue to be in control of their data and software?…