Author: Andrew F. Cooper

Lecture

How does ICT affect society? Mirjam van Reisen, professor Computing for Society at the Leiden Centre of Data Science, is intrigued by this question. We speak with her about innovation, changes in health care, and mobile human trafficking. ‘Innovation has many benefits, but it can also be very disrup…

The recent consecration of India’s Ayodhya temple by Prime Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party figurehead Narendra Modi raises important questions. Is secularism giving way to religious rule in the world’s largest democracy? How does this resonate with India’s culturally diverse population? France 24…

On Thursday 12 December, the day of the UK general election, Armin Cuyvers was interviewed by BNR Nieuwsradio.

Since 2000 the Leiden Student Council (LSR) yearly awards a prize for the best teacher of the university at the Dies Natalis.

On 3 and 4 November 2022, Melanie Fink convened a Workshop to bring together the authors of an Edited Volume on ‘Access to Justice and the EU’s Remedies System’, to be published in early 2024 by Cambridge University Press.

A number of European countries have started evacuating their citizens and there is a threat of military intervention by neighbouring countries: the situation in Niger is deteriorating rapidly. A military coup has thrown the country into turmoil, partly aided by social media.

Intensify cooperation between the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) and the Netherlands Defence Academy (NLDA). This is the purpose of the agreement that will be signed on 16 November at the Campus The Hague. On that day, Defence Minister Ank Bijleveld will also give a lecture in Wijnhaven…

Come to the Night of Discoveries art and science festival on 16 September. Various researchers from the university are speaking at the festival.

Art historian and professor Kitty Zijlmans is on a mission: she wants to get rid of the notion that the West dominates the art world. To no longer put 'the West and the rest', but the exchange between ideas and cultures at the centre of art history. ‘You will see that there has been so much exchange,…

Art and science: are they polar opposites? The theme of this year’s Sculptures in Leiden open air exhibition is ‘life sciences’. It has resulted in many intriguing sculptures, including one that is especially endearing.

On Thursday 16 June, a seminar will be held on 'Public Prosecution Services and the Rule of Law in Europe' with the subtitle 'Conceptions and Misconceptions on the Required Level of Independence in a Transnational Context Conference theme and objective'.

On 28 May 2021, Melanie Fink spoke at the conference ‘Twenty years of Regulation 1049/2001 on Public Access to EU Documents: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead’

Postdoctoral researcher Joost de Moor, who joined the interdisciplinary Global Transformations and Governance Challenges (GTGC) initiative at Leiden University since April 2021, will spend 50% of his time doing research for the project

Until recently the Congo’s isolated Boa community had never read a single letter in their own language: quite simply, there was no alphabet to describe the language. A crowdfunding campaign by guest staff member Gerrit de Wit has changed that. He plans to use the rest of the money to work with a Congolese…

Het strategisch plan van de faculteit wiskunde en natuurwetenschappen (FWN) werd gepresenteerd tijdens de opening van het academisch jaar 2023-2024.

Opening van het Quantum Delta NL (QDNL) Talent & Learning Centre (TLC) Leiden-Delft.

One of the largest roofs at Leiden University, that of the Snellius building, has recently been equipped with 590 solar panels and 57,000 sedum plants, making it the largest combined roof in the Benelux. The roof was officially opened on Monday 10 October by Annetje Ottow and Martijn Ridderbos, President…

On Monday June 15 Prof. Dr. Grzegorz Rozenberg received his fifth Honorary Doctorate.

Instead of feasting on one of the many Easter meals or enjoying the sun on Scheveningen Beach, a delegation of Leiden University College The Hague students spend last week on the preparations for hosting the UCSRN Sports Tournament. On a sunny Easter Monday, University College students from 8 different…

Festival

The RED team, a group of independent experts, has advised the Dutch government to close down all (secondary) schools. It is a difficult balance the government has to find between limiting the number of contagions and the social consequences of closing down the schools. As a result of the first lockdown…

The programme for the Leiden Asia Year in 2017 is now available. Rector Carel Stolker launched the new website www.leidenasiayear.nl at the opening of the Academic Year of Leiden University on 5 September.

We always need to find a new way to tell the story of 3 October, believes Ariadne Schmidt. The professor by special appointment of History of Urban Culture will be working with students to involve more people in the history of that day. ‘I’m too much of a historian to say: we can just let it be a “fun…

Leiden University has partnerships in the local region, in the Netherlands, in Europe and with countries on almost all the world's continents. Students and researchers benefit from these partnerships, but society is also a beneficiary, says Rector Carel Stolker.

Chinese athletes must perform this Olympics. Anything less than a gold is being seen as athletes being unpatriotic by furious nationalists online. Florian Schneider, director of the Leiden Asia Centre, explains the situation on BBC News.

On 26 and 27 September 2023, the conference

Rogier Kegge, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Law of Leiden University, was interviewed by Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant in response to the recent recommendations by Johan Remkes on how to approach the nitrogen crisis.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

VVI Research Meetings 2022-2023

The online summer programme Space in Your Living Room by Leiden Observatory has won the first prize ‘Most Innovative Event’ of the Astronomy@Home Awards from the International Astronomical Union. In July and August 2020, participants could for example talk to real astronauts and imagine life forms in…

Since 2008 every half a year an SBB student starts with an internship for Merck Serono Ventures in Geneva. Head of the company Roel Bulthuis selects and works with the SBB interns and shares his experiences as an employer. He is very pleased.

Radio telescope LOFAR maps the sky. It produces incredibly detailed images of the universe - and vast amounts of data. Huub Röttgering, director of the Leiden Observatory, talks about the challenges of working with those enormous datasets.

Every year around 8 February, Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands, is celebrating its birthday. Why does the King still receive a telegram on the day of the Dies Natalis? 4 questions on the origins of Leiden University and its traditions for celebrating its foundation day.

Going to school during the summer holidays? Some of our students accepted the challenge. And they didn’t do that just around the corner. During their holidays, students bio pharmaceutical sciences and computer science visited special summer schools in China. ‘China is a global player that we should…

An internship at the Police Academy in Apeldoorn. This will be possible for the first time for third-year students of the bachelor's programme Security Studies as of September 2021, now that Leiden University and the Police Academy have joined forces. ‘The internships offer students a unique opportunity…

The freedom to be who you are – woman, man, homosexual, heterosexual, transgender, religious, atheist, and so on – is perhaps the Netherlands’ greatest attribute. The principle of equality and the right not to be discriminated against are in the very first article of our constitution. Yet there is a…

Author: Ilan Manor

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.

A 35-year-old uranium crystal will not disclose its secret: what causes a dramatic phase transition at 17.5 Kelvin? Thanks to a new artificial intelligence approach, half of the possible explanations are excluded, but the definitive answer remains to be found. 'It is very frustrating', says physicist…

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'.

This project contemplates an ethics of difference and singularity that can effectuate a displacement of anthropocentrism and radical transformation in the way we understand and approach relationality across species borders. PhD defence on 16 December 2019.

External PhD candidate Annette Jenowein investigated how women have changed the meaning of gender by claiming their place in traditionally male-dominated domains. Her research focuses on the life of Charlotte Jacobs: the first woman to establish herself as an independent pharmacist in the Dutch East…

The ASEAN community formed by Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, and The Pacific Alliance formed by Chile, Colombia, México and Perú adopted the ASEAN-Pacific Alliance Work Plan (2021-2025) back in 2021.