Library

This Subject Guide is designed to support students of International Studies with writing their BA thesis and research papers. This guide focuses on the research process, and suggests effective ways to: 1. find a topic and formulate a good research question; 2. search, find and evaluate literature; 3.…

The First Americans exhibition in the National Museum of Ethnology showcases the resilience and creativity of native Americans. Striking artworks, fashion and prints show that the past is never far away. Artist Jacob Meders was inspired by 16th-century prints from the Leiden University Library. The…

Early 2022, the UKB consortium renewed a number of 'read and publish' contracts with major publishers.

A renewed agreement between VSNU and the publisher Taylor & Francis for 2016 and 2017 offers the opportunity for Leiden researchers to publish open access without additional costs in all hybrid journals published by Taylor & Francis and Routledge. We consider this to be an important step towards facilitating…

Overview of reference works, journals and website for research in Politics and International Relations of Japan

This subject guide is a work in progress, aimed to provide access to relevant academic works and online resources on Palestine and Israel, as well as, documentaries, films, and literature to familiarize yourself with the complexities of the conflict.

With its more than 1400 bindings and over a thousand fragments Leiden’s collection of medieval manuscripts (up to ca. 1550) is the largest in the Netherlands.

A systematic review answers a central question by summarising (all) relevant studies.

The Chinese Special Collections are part of the Asian Library. Items can be consulted at the Special Collections Reading Room.

As people spend ever more time in cyberspace, so do criminals. The more reliant we become on digital technology, the more vulnerable we are to hackers, surveillance, and cybercrime. The past decade has made clear that cybercrime does not only affect individuals and organizations, but that nation states,…

A flamboyant politician, a divisive figure in the Dutch political landscape and a 'man of the people' who presented himself as an unconventional minister. Exactly twenty years ago today, the Netherlands was shocked to its core by the political murder of Pim Fortuyn. Who was Pim Fortuyn? What were his…

Library, Research

On 21st June 2017, Yury Uraksin, First Secretary of the Russian Embassy in the Netherlands, presented the Illustrated Chronicles of Ivan the Terrible also known as the “Tsar Book” to Leiden University.

The Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies is delighted to announce that Dr Farouk El-Hosseny will join the teaching staff as Visiting Assistant Professor of International Law.

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

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.

How should we address our colonial heritage? And how digital and accessible are our collections? Outgoing State Secretary Fleur Gräper spoke with researchers and heritage specialists about this on 25 January.

As Professor of Literature, Culture and Law, Frans Willem Korsten explores the interplay between literature and law. These are two disciplines that most people wouldn’t immediately connect, but Korsten can see a lot of common ground between them. ‘A fictional story can have a huge impact on law.’

Does medicine make patients feel better or worse? We are getting better at predicting this from people’s DNA profiles, says Professor Jesse Swen. ‘It never fails to fascinate me how one DNA base pair can have such a huge effect on treatment with medication and the outcome.’

The Dutch universities will give Open Access an extra boost from 2019 by starting a pilot titled ‘You share, we take care’ to make publications available after six months in collaboration with researchers.

Library, Research

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has acquired a rare manuscript map of Suriname. The map from 1830 is almost 2.5 meters long and is highly detailed. It was hand-drawn by Helmuth Hendrik Hiemcke (1808-1858), one of the official surveyors employed by the colonial administration, and shows Suriname in…

Jurist Gineke Wiggers wants to predict the expected impact of legal articles. Carel Stolker, Rector of the University and, like Wiggers, a legal specialist, is enthusiastic about the research. ‘A big data project like this will help us establish the effect of our work on society.’

Leiden University celebrated its 444th anniversary with a historical procession on 8 February. It celebrated this year’s Dies Natalis in time-honoured fashion with a ceremony in the Pieterskerk, but broke with tradition by sending professors out to primary schools.

The people behind the Leiden University Libraries aim to maintain the level of their services to clients as much as possible. They are making thankful use of internet, but not everything can be put online.

In the past few decades, LGBTQ+ acceptance has come a long way. Coming out, however, is still a difficult experience for many people on a personal level. Everyone’s story is different and not everyone belongs to a clear denomination within the LGBTQ+ spectrum. That is why learning about the personal…

Fungi germinating in the lungs of patients. Doesn’t sound too nice, does it? Luckily, humans can deal with this normally, and we are able to clear the infection before anything comes to harm. However, in people with health issues, Aspergillosis can cause a lot of damage, especially if the fungus becomes…

A collection of uncatalogued books from the Middle East is now available through the Leiden University Libraries’ (UBL) catalogue. The collection contains over 12,000 books mainly written in Arabic, but also in multiple other languages from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, including Persian,…

Close to twenty thousand pages of new material have been added to the online collection of unofficial poetry journals from China in the Leiden Digital Collections. Produced “outside the system,” these journals are hugely influential yet very hard to find. To address this paradox, Leiden University Libraries…

They might not have had Twitter, but they did have brochures (pamphlets), the Roman Catholics and ‘modern’ Protestants between 1840 and 1870. In these, they launched a passionate attack on each other’s ideas. Ineke Smit has catalogued the brochures from the collection of the University Library and outlined…

Elsevier collaborates with Leiden University Libraries’ Centre for Digital Scholarship and Scaliger Institute to enhance the study of digital collections.

Leiden University has adopted a new Open Access policy that will easily allow Leiden researchers to accomplish 100% Open Access of peer reviewed articles. Based on the principles of Article 25fa of the Copyright Act (the Taverne amendment), authors can use LUCRIS and the Leiden Repository to make the…

From now on publications of Leiden researchers can be found in the fully renewed Leiden University Scholarly Publications Repository. This newest version of the repository includes improved presentation of Leiden research output and allows for better findability in search engines. As a result of the…

The perception of the Middle East is riddled with stereotypes that have had dire consequences on its people. What is myth and what is reality? How did these stereotypes come about? What consequences have they had? All of these questions and more are answered within this reading list.

Artificial Intelligence is likely to have far-reaching consequences for all actors in the realm of academic publishing, including authors, editors, researchers, and readers. This symposium aims to foster the conversation about the various ways in which we evaluate, enrich, and disseminate academic knowledge,…

Writers are not just storytellers: with their novels, tales and critiques they broaden the social imagination, reflect on societal developments and sometimes put new themes on the map. This can easily lead to a conflict because writers and literati often think very differently about issues such as…

Tensions between Israel and Palestine again reached fever pitch in May, with hundreds of – mainly Palestinian – deaths as a result. Now that a ceasefire offers some respite, there is an opportunity to reflect on the history of the conflict. Are there lessons to be learned from the past? How do historians…

Dutch troops, judges and politicians collectively condoned and concealed the systematic use of extreme violence during the Indonesian War of Independence. Historians have now shown how this could happen. ‘It was scandal management rather than prevention,’ says Leiden historian and research leader Gert…

Four prints, ten years of research. Not that she got bored of them, on the contrary. Corrie van Maris, who receives her PhD this week, has always remained fascinated by her 17th-century series, for which she feels so much love. ‘I kept seeing different, new things.’

The Middle East has a rich literary tradition, which is steadily gaining a foothold in the West. Modern literary works deal with contemporary issues, such as the legacy of colonialism, the struggles between traditionalism and modernity, the place of women in society and the war in Israel/Palestine.

In short, data management can be defined as the creation, storage, maintenance, disclosure, archiving and sustainable preservation of research data. Increasingly the so called FAIR principles are referred to as a final goal: data should be made 'Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable'.

Thousands of first-year students and hundreds of mentors kicked off the EL CID on Monday morning. This year for the first time, the introduction week of Leiden University and Leiden University of Applied Sciences was also open for students of Regional Training Centre mboRijnland and the Leiden Instrument…

VSNU, NFU, NWO and Elsevier have agreed publishing, reading and open science services to support Dutch research and innovation ambitions.

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.

Delve into the depths of black hole imaging as anthropologist Rodrigo Ochigame unveils the human decisions shaping its portrayal. Explore four alternative color choices at the 'Towards the Black Hole' exhibit, now showing at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, Leiden.

Better pay and new agreements with streaming platforms: the actors’ strike that brought Hollywood to a standstill a few days ago is mainly about money. But there is something else that film actors are worried about: the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence. Is this fear justified?

Rembrandt Year is concluding with a major exhibition at Museum De Lakenhal. There are still numerous other activities such as lectures, the University Rembrandt Route and the screening of a critical documentary.

The importance of science communication and cross-boundary collaboration, and the ‘mantra’ of diminishing social cohesion in society: these all came up at Leiden University’s 448th Dies Natalis. A panel discussion including Leiden’s mayor Lenferink, music and two honorary doctorates completed the special…