How can social scientists contribute to a healthier society? That question was central to the Healthy Society Event on 9 June 2022, which successfully marked the start of a more conscious and intensive collaboration between the five Institutes of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences on education…

Tax scandals, like the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, and the Pandora Papers, have made tax avoidance by large multinationals and rich individuals a major topic of public debate. Policymakers are pushed to close tax loopholes and reform the global tax system. But this is no easy task.

Since 1 June, the Faculty of Humanities has gained a position. As knowledge broker, Marlieke Ernst wants to connect researchers: with each other and with the outside world.

During the kick-off meeting, master students taking part in the Thesis Workshop The Hague Southwest presented their thesis ideas to stakeholders from the neighbourhood.

The Faculty Council is the most important co-participatory body of the Faculty of Archaeology. Its members represent staff and students in meetings with the Faculty Board, and they can have a profound impact on the Faculty's policies. We speak with the council's chair, Merlijn Veltman, about the goals…

Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf (Education, Culture and Science) spoke with lecturers and students from Leiden University at Campus The Hague on 27 October about the impact of the Israel-Hamas war. He wanted to know how the conflict was affecting the academic community. Lecturers and students shared their…

In een goedgevuld Teldersauditorium vond op maandag 24 juni het symposium ‘Het Erfgoed van Meijers: 70 jaar waardering en inspiratie’ plaats. Vanuit verschillende perspectieven werd gereflecteerd op de omvangrijke nalatenschap van de Leidse hoogleraar Eduard Maurits Meijers, die precies zeventig jaar…

Education, Research

Dr Alex Geurds was elected as a Fellow for the Society of Antiquaries, a prestigious and old educational charity based in London. Established in 1707, the society aims at the encouragement and advancement of the study and knowledge of the antiquities.

The Netherlands in September 2021 could be characterised as a low-trust society. Trust in the government has declined significantly in the past one-and-a-half years: from almost 70 percent in April 2020 to less than 30 percent in September 2021. There has also been a slight decrease in trust between…

Friday 4 November marked the 65th anniversary of the founding of Leiden’s P.C. Hooft Historical Debating Society. Although new members have not been accepted for several decades, the society is still alive and kicking. A retrospective with former presidents Jos Hooghuis and Saskia Leupen.

During the final event of the PRE-Class Rechtsgeleerdheid, secondary school pupils organised a mock trial on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on society. Together with the audience, they explored the possibilities and pitfalls of AI. ‘They all did a wonderful job.’

Professor emeritus of Animal Behaviour Carel ten Cate is awarded honorary membership by the Dutch Society for Behavioural Biology (NVG). He received the honour for his activities for the Society and the discipline of behavioural biology.

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…

The trustees handling the bankruptcy of Dutch GP chain Co-Med are facing difficult dilemmas. Who is first in line: patients, employees or creditors? Assistant Professor Jessie Pool, an expert in insolvency law, calls for insolvency procedures that are better geared to this type of bankruptcy.

Professor Johan Frijns treats people with hearing loss, conducts research on hearing implants, and gladly shares his knowledge about electrical stimulation of the nervous system.

Technological developments never stop. Machines can already perform many tasks and in the future they will probably take over even more of the work we do. Which jobs could disappear and which will remain in the future? Olaf van Vliet, Professor of Economics at Leiden Law School, commented on these issues…

Technology, medical knowledge, social measures and the design of the living environment: all these needed to achieve a healthier society. In a series of interviews, 14 researchers from Zuid-Holland, including from Leiden University, argue for an integrated care approach.

Eduard Fosch Villaronga, Assistant Professor at eLaw, co-organised together with Aurelia Tamò-Larrieux, Christoph Lutz, Anton Fedesov, and Anto Čartolovni the GoodBrother International Conference on Privacy-friendly and Trustworthy Technology for Society on 28 June 2022 in Zagreb, Croatia.

In academia, the mention of Wikipedia might be met with suspicion. However, for Tsolin Nalbantian, university lecturer Modern Middle Eastern Studies, the encyclopedia is an opportunity to broaden the skills of her students and to increase public knowledge. She received a Teaching Comenius Fellowship…

As well as offering students a first-rate education, Leiden University provides a wide range of training for professionals, so they can be lifelong learners. And that is not just of value to participants. ‘As a university, you start a dialogue with society to achieve better knowledge together.’

External PhD candidate Liselore Tissen has been appointed ambassador for Leiden City of Science. As the youngest member and the only non-professor in the network, she will be working to raise Leiden's prominence as a city of science.

Why are health problems such as loneliness and obesity so persistent? What causes them to occur more frequently in some neighborhoods than others? And how can we solve them? You will learn about these topics in the new minor 'Co-creating a Healthy Society'.

Expert in Classics Renske Janssen has been awarded a Rubicon grant. She will use the grant to conduct research at the University of Edinburgh into how Roman law was perceived by society at the time.

The University of Oslo and Leiden University have joined forces to organise a Tutorial on Robots and Society: Ethical, Legal, and Technical Perspectives on Integrating Robots in the Home and Healthcare Systems and Services at the IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communica…

The Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) has appointed Jos Raaijmakers, professor of Microbial Interactions and diversity, as a new scientific member.

Education

The speed at which science is changing our lives gives rise to tensions and concerns. In his talk at Leiden University, Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf (Education, Culture and Science) said we should talk more about science’s relationship with society and political decision-making.

The film Blade Runner as part of the law curriculum? It’s not that weird to Maartje van der Woude, Professor of Law and Society, and Frans-Willem Korsten, Professor of Literature, Culture and Law. ‘The film raises a fundamental question: what’s a human and what’s not?’ From the next academic year onwards,…

Senior Researcher at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs and Associate Fellow of The Hague Program of Cyber Norms François Delerue was awarded the 2021 Book Prize of the European Society of International Law for his book Cyber Operations and International Law published by Cambridge University…

Violent conflicts and civil wars in Chad impede most rural households' access to food security, agricultural activities and access to essential services such as health care. In her dissertation, Nakar Djindil Syntyche denounces this issue. She obtained her PhD on 24 November.

Since the beginning of September, urban criminologist Marianne Franken has been the linchpin of a special partnership between Leiden University, the municipality of Leiden and the police. As a PhD candidate she will spend four years conducting research into how safe the people of Leiden feel.

During her lecture, Professor Annelou van Gijn explored user-wear analysis and experimental archaeology, showing details about past human life.

Do you practice public engagement? The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has just released a unique set of open-source materials designed to be used in public engagement training workshops.

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…

How can I align science, society and myself to address today’s major challenges? That’s what students of the Honours College track ‘Science, Society and Self’ aim to find out. How do their classes at honours differ from their regular education?

Research

On 28 and 29 May, Carlotta Rigotti, postdoctoral researcher at eLaw, held a workshop on fairness and diversity bias in AI-driven recruitment at the annual symposium of the Japanese Society on Artificial Intelligence (JSAI) in Hamamatsu, Japan. The workshop was organised as part of the BIAS project in…

Watching and analysing hundreds of TEDx talks, that too can be research. That becomes clear from the work of PhD student Aletta Meinsma, who is studying potential problems in popular communication about quantum technologies. She explains how she approaches this and why it is so important.

What is the best way for us as a society to deal with all the different forms of diversity? Professor Marlou Schrover will use the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) to explore this question with colleagues and the public.

Three students in Elpine de Boer’s class “Practicing Religious Studies” have been working together on a “Leren met de Stad” (“Learning with the City”) project with community centre Morschwijck, located in Leiden. The students were asked by the organization Incluzio to investigate to which extent cultural…

Het faillissement van zorgonderneming Co-Med stelt de curatoren voor dilemma’s. Want wie krijgen voorrang: patiënten, personeel of de schuldeisers? Universitair docent Jessie Pool, gespecialiseerd in het ondernemings- en insolventierecht, pleit voor insolventieprocedures die beter zijn toegespitst op…

People who have negative expectations about a treatment actually experience more pain. Merve Karacaoglu discovered in her PhD research that anxious and pessimistic individuals are particularly susceptible to this nocebo effect. However, this sensitivity comes with a silver lining.

Conference

Level Up is a non-profit project led by a multi-disciplinary team of doctoral researchers in the framework of the Europaeum Network was founded by the University of Oxford University. Sophie Veriter explains the importance of Level Up, the development of the ‘Level Up Toolkit’, and why this project…

Theo van den Doel received his PhD in January for his research on veteran support. This showed that for long the government learned little from past missions. He has since presented his dissertation to the Lower House of Representatives, and the Minister for Defence, Kajsa Ollongren, has responded to…

In one in four criminal cases in the Netherlands, the court receives a report on the state of the defendant’s mental health. How is that information used exactly and what are the consequences? Scientific research has been lacking in this area. The PhD research of Roosmarijn van Es is a first step in…