Four female computer scientists share a common goal: to showcase the significant contributions of women in computer science and inspire their students. Together, they are organising this year’s Alice & Eve event, a one-day symposium dedicated to celebrating women in computer science. The event, scheduled…

Upcoming events, new publications and news about our PhD-candidates

Everything is different this year because of the corona measures; introduction weeks, student life and education. In order to give new students a proper and warm welcome, a lot of work has been done to create the frameworks for a mentor programme. The working group 'Tutoring and Cohorting' has prepared…

'In Leiden, I can continue on the path towards my dream: having my own pharmacy,' says Duaa Abbas. She studied pharmaceutics in Syria and worked in a pharmacy there for a year and a half. After having to flee the country, she ended up in the Netherlands. Thanks to the help of the Foundation for Refugee…

This project on the role of FoxPs in vocal perception and production learning is part of nine PhD-positions funded by the NWO Gravitation Programme which was granted to the Dutch Research Consortium 'Language in Interaction'

How do children learn to see the world through someone else’s perspective? Max van Duijn, assistant professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), receives 24,167 euros from the Elise Mathilde Foundation and the Leiden University Fund (LUF). With this grant he will set up a…

Since September, a large part of education is 'hybrid': students can attend courses both at home (online) and in person in lecture halls. How do students themselves feel about this? We asked Emma and Cornelia of the Research Master Classics and Ancient Civilizations.

This is a call for papers for the upcoming tenth issue of the Journal of the Lucas Graduate Conference (JLGC), intended to be published by the end of this year.

Who doesn't love to turn on a horror film on a rainy evening? Fortunately, it is only fiction - or is it? According to university lecturer Evert Jan van Leeuwen, modern horror says more about our society than we think. He has been nominated for the Klokhuis Science Prize for his research into addiction…

We need to dispel the arrogant and misguided idea that modern humans are superior to earlier human species. It is thanks in part to all our predecessors such as Neanderthals that we are who we are today. This is what Marie Soressi, Professor of Hominin Diversity Archaeology, will argue in her inaugural…

What is freedom worth in times of hunger? ‘Beleg’ is a modern interpretation of Lucretia van Merken’s 1774 play. With five performances in Leiden’s Schouwburg theatre, the play is a prominent part of the Relief of Leiden celebrations, and Leiden alumni are playing a big role. Take a look behind the…

Five researchers from Leiden University have been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant of on average 1.5m euros enables researchers who show potential to start their own project, lead a research team and implement their best ideas.

Three lecturers from Leiden University have each been awarded a €50,000 Comenius Teaching Fellows grant to implement an educational innovation project. They are Carlijn Bergwerff (Education and Child Studies), Francesco Ragazzi (Political Science) and Krista Murchison (Centre for the Arts in Society…

Op 26 april 2012 kwamen ze samen om ervaringen te delen met Leidse staf: twaalf Chinese promovendi die in Nederland zijn in het kader van het beursprogramma van de China Scholarship Council. Tien dagen eerder, op 16 april, ontving de Universiteit Leiden een delegatie van Peking University.

This variation on Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be’ is exercising the emotions of the academic world in the Netherlands. Leiden's Vice-Rector, professors and students explain their viewpoints in the alumni magazine Leidraad.

It was busy at the Bachelor's Open Day of Leiden University. Over 7,000 prospective students had come to take a look at Leiden. What did they expect of their chosen programme? Would they join a student association? Would they move out of home? Feedback from five prospective students.

More than a thousand 17th- and 18th-century Dutch letters from seized ships are now available online. The letters are a gold mine for researchers wanting to study the everyday language used by men and women during this period.

Learning about the newest communication technology in China and solving a business case at telecom giant Huawei. Four Leiden science students get to know China's Silicon Valley.

Sara Polak, PhD researcher and lecturer at LUCAS, has won a Fulbright scholarship to work on her research on Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yale University from September 2014 till February 2015.

A special find has been made in the Alkmaar Regional Archive: a number of 17th-century book bindings contained pieces of parchment from a manuscript from the 11th century. The original manuscript may have belonged to a princess who fled England after the Norman Conquest.

After a long night of partying, hundreds of people head to Leiden’s Van der Werfpark early on 3 October for a good singsong. Lecturer in Dutch literature Olga van Marion helped compile the new songbook for the occasion. Which songs were left out and which new hits have taken their place?

Daniël Vredenberg did his master’s internship at the communications department of the Rijksvastgoedbedrijf. In this interview, he talks about his internship and the difference between actually working at an organisation, as he is currently doing, and doing an internship.

Four lecturers from Leiden University will receive a 50,000-euro Comenius Teaching Fellow grant. This will enable them and their team to realise an educational innovation within their own teaching.

Speakers from all over the world offered their interesting views on the relationship between humans and animals during the LUCAS Graduate Conference, based around the central theme ‘Animals: Theory, Practice, and Representation’.

Indigenous philosophies have been ignored for too long. This prompted Osiris González Romero to study the wisdom of the Nahua in Mexico. Their philosophy has an important message for the consumption society: see the earth and nature as living beings and not just as resources. PhD defence 22 June.

Every year diplomatic representatives of Latin American countries, researchers and students come together during a conference of the GRULAC region group. This year different researchers talked about their work during a visit to the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs in The Hague.

Dr. Mikihiro Moriyama was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1960. He first came to Leiden for a year in 1988, and then stayed from 1992 to 1995 and was back again in June 2003 for his PhD. 'I’d never heard of the Sweat Room until I heard about it at a Leiden alumni meeting in Jakarta. When I visited Leiden in…

Joost van den Vondel is considered to be the greatest Dutch poet and playwright of his time, but he certainly wasn’t the most popular. The 17th- and 18th-century public preferred to watch ‘Spanish theatre’. University lecturer Olga van Marion has written a book about this, together with Frans Blom (University…

Not passed your Dutch exam? Then there’s no HAVO (Higher General Secondary) or VWO (pre-university) diploma for you, says the Inspectorate of Education's Inspector General. This comment fuels a discussion on an exam that is already under fire. The final exam for Dutch is said to be uninspiring, too…

After the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the Islamic Empire expanded at a tremendous pace. Within a hundred years, it stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian subcontinent. How did such a rapidly conquered territory become one empire? Professor Petra Sijpesteijn has been awarded a Vici grant…

More and more Leiden students are studying in China. Two of them talk about their summer course there. 'Now I understand better the kind of country Chinese students come from who are studying in Leiden.'

Senior lecturer Rick Honings has been appointed Scaliger professor with effect from 1 July 2020. In the coming years his focus will be on promoting teaching and research on the Special Collections of the Leiden University Library. Honings succeeds book historian Erik Kwakkel, who held this chair until…

As a student, Ratna Lachmansingh wrote her thesis on horror films. Now she is the director of Leiden International Film Festival.

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…

The advent of script has never managed to eliminate the use of symbols. This is the finding of research carried out by Kyra van der Moezel on Ancient Egyptian identity marks. PhD defence 7 September.

In a new series we talk to past and present students who were the first in their family to go to university. In this first instalment: novelist and columnist Christiaan Weijts (1976). ‘I always felt as though someone would tap me on my shoulder once they’d discovered my clandestine presence.’

Viktorija Kostadinova, from Macedonia and currently a second-year PhD student at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, has just returned after two and a half months at the University of Michigan: ‘It was a truly rewarding experience.’

Rain or shine: in the course ‘The Ecology Project’ students of Leiden University College visit the nature of The Hague each week.

What do you do if you have a book from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, but you suspect that the binding contains a fragment of a medieval manuscript? University lecturer Thijs Porck has received an NWO grant to experiment with a camera attached to a tube. 'The project boils down to keyhole surgeries…

Professor of Sociohistorical Linguistics Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade was appointed Knight in the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands on 11 September in her home city of The Hague. Deputy Mayor Bert van Alphen presented her with the decoration.

The Netherlands and Morocco: relations between the two countries go back a long way. Assistant professor Nadia Bouras is researching these relations. Of Moroccan migrant workers, she says, 'In the seventies the predominant idea was that everyone had the right to their own culture and religion. That's…

The theme for this year’s Week of the Classics (19 to 27 March) is war in Classical Antiquity. Leiden Classics scholars are organising various activities, including the popular Know-Your-Classics Pub Quiz.

The Young Academy has gained a new Leiden humanities scholar as a member. University lecturer Greek language and literature Tazuko van Berkel will be appointed as a member as of March.

Princess Beatrix was a guest at the opening of the conference on ‘Chinese Buddhism and the Scholarship of Erik Zürcher’ in Leiden on 12 February. Buddhism researchers from all parts of the world came together to reflect on the work of Leiden sinologist Erik Zürcher.

Three enormous maps of China, created during the reign of three different emperors of the Qing dynasty, have now been made available in open access and are downloadable via Leiden University Libraries’ (UBL) Digital Collections. The rich maps are an early example of academic collaboration between the…

In the midterm elections in the United States on 6 November, the Democrats won the majority in the House of Representatives, thus regaining control of the House over the Republicans. But the Republicans expanded their majority in the Senate. Three of our researchers, experts on US politics, share their…

The archive of a 17th-century postmaster has been discovered in the Museum for Communication in The Hague. Using new scanning techniques, the international research team Signed, Sealed & Undelivered, headed by literary scholar Nadine Akkerman from Leiden University and historian David van der Linden…

In the research for her upcoming book, Elizabeth Stuart: Queen of Hearts, author and academic Nadine Akkerman stumbled upon a little-known portrait of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia and grandmother of King George I, which she believes would have been considered treasonous at the time it was pain…

My name is Pepijn Reeser, I’m 34 years old and I graduated in 2008 as a historian. I’ve been working in the museum world for about ten years, mainly as a freelancer. My most important project is Het Taalmuseum (the Language Museum); I’ve been involved in that since 2016. Leiden University is one of…

Katarzyna Cwiertka, Leiden Professor of Modern Japan Studies, was already the recipient of a VENI and a VIDI grant. Now she has also been granted a VICI, worth 1.5 million euro, for her research project Garbage Matters: A Comparative History of Waste in East Asia. ‘I want to do something that hasn’t…