How can the people of Leiden age as well as possible? And what is needed to reduce health disparities? That is the mission of Leiden Healthy Society Center, a new partnership between the Municipality of Leiden, Leiden University and many other partners in the city.

The university elections are approaching. Are you going to represent student and staff interests this coming year? University Council chair Pauline Vincenten gives a peek behind the scenes at student and staff participation at Leiden University. ‘I get so much energy from collaborating with the students…

Leiden University is currently working on the new Gorlaeus Building, a sustainable modern building for the Faculty of Science. To make room for the phase 2A construction work, a plane tree of over 20 metres in height was moved on 17 December. The tree has been conserved. Its new home will be on the…

On Thursday 9 December, Dr Upik Djalins presented an online lecture, entitled 'The Colonial Bureaucratic Network versus the Metropole: The Origin Story of Land Alienation Prohibition in the 1870s East Indies'.

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.

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.

Lecture, Conversation

As part of her Anthropology studies, Leiden student Marleen Kop has made a short documentary about the importance of Leiden-Noord’s ‘soup time’. Her chosen method was participative observation – she spent months helping residents prepare the soup – and the film can now be viewed online.

In addition to his Film and Literature Studies, Bob van Oosterhout is a bassoonist with several orchestras. He is going to Milan with the student choir and orchestra ‘Collegium Musicum’.

Organisation

Social

Neuroscientists Ineke van der Ham (Leiden University) and Anouk Keizer (Utrecht University) regularly use VR in their research. Their experiences with the medium raise many questions about the ways VR is experienced by different people. Therefore they conducted an VR experiment at the cinedans festival…

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.

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…

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…

An Honours Class about the ostensibly unrecognisable worlds of insular Southeast Asia teaches students a fundamental piece of wisdom: "We do not differ much from the people at the other end of the world."

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…

Diversity and inclusion within the police creates opportunities but also meets resistance. Professor by special appointment and former police officer, Saniye Çelik, emphasises how ambivalent feelings about D&I are essential to the learning process and can lead to informed decisions and real change.

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?

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.

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.

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…

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.

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…

Education, Research

Studium Generale

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.

There are approximately 60 million skateboarders worldwide. And yet in the academic world, this culture is not always looked upon seriously. Visual anthropologist Sander Hölsgens believes that this has to change. Last summer his book 'Skateboarding in Seoul' and the accompanying film 'Reverberations'…

Leiden alumnus Emma Govaart (24) wanted to make an impact on society, so she took a job in the non-profit sector after graduating.

From films, video games and historical novels to Nordic folk bands, Old English from the early Middle Ages is experiencing a revival in the 21st century. Together with international colleagues, university lecturer Thijs Porck (LUCAS) made a book about the 'resurrection' of this dead language.

Quietly read a book in our new reading nook, listen to interesting and bizarre stories set in early twentieth-century Leiden, walk past literary locations in Leiden and watch the best film adapted from a Leiden novel as decided on by you. April is Literary Leiden month! A month in which we pay special…

Lack of money impacts how a person takes financial decisions: now or preferably later. Procrastination and avoidance behaviours in turn have an effect on lack of money, which can result in a sense of loss of control. These are the findings of psychologist Leon Hilbert in his PhD research, although the…

For an assignment for the course Medical Anthropology, students were asked to choose a theme related to the Covid-19 pandemic, find information and present their work in a creative way. The results are impressive.

If it was up to alumna and member of the Advisory Board Anne Marie van Rietschoten, philosophy and ethics would be part of the standard curriculum for a law degree. In our monthly flash interview with alumni, Anne Marie explains why she believes this is so important.

Is aviation on a one-way journey or a round trip? That is the question Steven Truxal will answer in his inaugural lecture From Disruption to Innovation in Air and Space: Legal Solutions for a Sustainable Future on Monday 15 November. This professor of air and space law is positive. That’s one thing…

White clouds of ice-cold gas flowing across the floor. Magical, but be careful not to freeze your fingers off. We are of course talking about liquid nitrogen and helium. You may have seen the spectacular Freezing Physics science show by the student organisation Rino. But did you know that this commodity…

She narrowly defied bureaucracy and spent days angling for cod. In the North Sea, marine biologist Inge van der Knaap discovered that noise significantly disturbs fish behaviour. ‘There is now a lot of attention for underwater noise.’

On 8, 9 and 10 October 2021 'Share the LUVE' takes place. During this graduation show the works of this year's graduates of the Visual Ethnography master of Leiden University will be screened. So mark your agenda and enjoy three days full of film, photo, artwork, exhibitions, good conversations and…

The Leiden Teachers Academy (LTA) was founded to help collaboration between excellent teachers. Osteoarchaeologist Dr Rachel Schats has been one of the latest additions to the Academy, nominated by the Faculty Board for the position as a Teaching Fellow. ‘In the LTA we talk about new innovations in…

Leiden University is pressing ahead with Open Science and Recognition & Rewards! This is the key message of the new Academia in Motion steering group.

When politicians claim they can make major differences with their migration policies, they’re raising false expectations. The opportunities for the government to restrict migration are in fact very limited. And what about the little room they do have? Mark Klaassen’s advice is to make use of those opportunities…

The slogan of the Faculty of Archaeology, ‘The Future of the Past starts at Leiden University’, might sound like empty marketing speak. But there is something to it. The past can teach us a lot about climate change and that could make us fear the worst for our future. Archaeologist Gerrit Dusseldorp…

Willemijn de Best’s career path led her to the media sector. Besides the more obvious legal professions, a degree in law actually offers many other possibilities: film and television production with celebrities as clients, for example.

With the aid of physics and a minuscule magnet, researchers have discovered a new structure of telomeric DNA. Telomeres are sometimes seen as the key to living longer. They protect genes from damage but get a bit shorter each time a cell divides. If they become too short, the cell dies. The new discovery…

Do you often find yourself exhausted in the lecture hall or at your workplace? Not great for your mental well-being, as Laura Pape knows. She is investigating how an online self-help program can assist in addressing sleep issues and preventing mental health problems. Join her on this elevator pitch…

175 years ago, the Netherlands took great strides towards parliamentary democracy with a revamped Constitution. Where does the Constitution stand today?

Facility

If you want to stay fit, you have to go to the gym regularly, and – hopefully - cleaning our teeth is something we do at least twice a day. So, why shouldn’t we keep on working on a safe and healthy work climate, HR Director Esther van Opstal asks in a conversation on where things stand now with the…