After a detour via the ANWB in Munich, alumna Manon Schouten works as a history teacher at two schools. ‘It's so rewarding to see the material resonate with students.’

Victoria Nyst's love for sign language was sparked when she accidentally ended up at a deaf school while studying African linguistics. The university lecturer has since been awarded a Vici grant to research the history of these languages.

The cultural linguistic minority group of deaf people who communicate using sign language systematically experiences limited access to fundamental rights. Linguist Joni Oyserman identified this problem and has received a Meijers grant to fund her investigation.

Over 160 years ago, the Hague-based photography pioneer and traveler Alexine Tinne (1835-1869) captured current South Sudan and its inhabitants on film. These photographs represent some of the earliest images taken in the heart of the African continent.

From memorials to the armed forces to memory stones for individual victims. It was only later that the Holocaust took a central role in Western remembrance culture, Cleveringa Professor Frank van Vree notes. ‘Nationalists and human rights activists both invoke the experience of the Holocaust.’

Young people are more likely to find long texts unappealing to read, particularly with all the digital distractions. To improve young people’s reading skills, Elise Swart and Hannah De Mulder are starting an innovative study to make reading fun again.

The exhibition Leiden celebrates – 450 years of parades at Museum De Lakenhal shows how parades and society have changed through the centuries. Alumnus and historian Danielle van Goethem worked on the exhibition. She gives a preview.

Armed with sunglasses, a thick layer of sunscreen and several bottles of water, over 3,300 students have arrived in Leiden for their introduction week. The start of the 55th EL CID happened to be on the hottest day of the year.

In September, the Una Europa ELSEA project, Enhancing Scholarship in Eastern Africa, officially started. Now that the project has been running for a couple of months, it’s high time to check in and see how the project is going.

20 November 2024 is World Children's Day. To mark this occasion, the UNICEF Student Team Leiden is organising a lecture on children's rights. We spoke to board members Rewina Teferi Hagos and Tugwell Chadyiwanembwa to find out what motivates them.

Online services are stored on servers in data centres. Remko Fermin researched methods to make the memory in data centres more energy efficient.

A single tiny molecule that can destroy flu, corona, HIV and Zika viruses? Yes, it really does exist. Biophysicist Niek van Hilten, who will receive his doctorate on 14 September, contributed to this discovery.

Presentations, city tours, themed cafés and information fairs − there was plenty to discover on the Bachelor’s Open Day last Saturday. Around 6,000 prospective students and 4,000 parents visited faculties in Leiden and The Hague to soak up the atmosphere and imagine how it would be to study at Leiden…

To better prepare students for lab sessions, a team from the BSc-programme Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences (BFW) creates interactive videos. These videos use humour and examples to show students basic skills and commonly used procedures. 'We want to make education more efficient and fun.'

How do politics and play relate to each other? Six Leiden academics hope to find an answer to that question over the coming years. They have received an NWO grant of 750,000 euros. Professor Sybille Lammes and University Lecturer Bram tell us how they plan to spend the money.

How do games help shape our perception of the past? Associate Professor Angus Mol receives a Vidi grant to answer this question.

Given the teacher shortage, secondary schools could use an extra pair of hands. Alfrink College in Zoetermeer is glad to have students from the university helping out in class. ‘We hope students will see how great it is to work in teaching.’

How can I get students to collaborate more and increase their engagement? That was the question that teacher, and winner of the 2022 Faculty Teaching Award, Astrid Van Weyenberg asked herself two years ago. Her solution? A method in which the use of podcasts ensures that students actively engage with…

Seven researchers from Leiden University have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant. This will enable them to start their own project, build their research team and put their best ideas into action.

Arts and culture

Lecture

PhD defence

Conference

Lecture

Opening

Stadswandeling

Lunch Lecture (and reading)

Lecture, Gerbrands Lecture

Lecture, seminar series

Inloopavond

Lecture

Lecture, Workshop

On 21 January, the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) has released two reports on circular economy and urban mining in the Netherlands. In them, together with Statistics Netherlands, they take stock of part of the Dutch ‘urban mine’: how much raw material can we reuse from the electricity grid,…

The Faculty of Humanities' Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Fund provides small grants to initiatives in support of diversity and inclusion, with specific emphasis on creating an inclusive learning environment.

Echoing corridors, chaotic lessons and the obligatory chit-chat in the playground: for pupils with autism, an average day at school is exhausting. As a result, many of them feel lonely. Elijah, an expert from personal experience, says: ‘In the breaks, I’d sit on my own in a room.’

Caroline Schep and Bianca Angelien Claveria recently joined the Institute for History as PhD candidates in the ERC-funded project “Human Subject Research and Medical Ethics in Colonial Southeast Asia”, led by Fenneke Sysling. Below they introduce themselves.

More focus on diversity in Antiquity, workshops for students with disabilities, and a card game to share stories about diversity: these and other projects will receive funding from the JEDI Fund in 2023.

To read Chekhov in the ‘original’. That was what motivated Arie van der Ent to study Slavic languages and literature with Karel van het Reve at Leiden University. ‘My love for Chekhov hasn’t faded,’ says Van der Ent from his home 60 kilometres south of Kyiv. ‘But it has for the rest of Russia.’

Anke Klein and her team have devised a fun and useful app to help anxious children. In the app, children can upload a video of themselves showing, for example, something that went well for them and share their success with parents, granny or grandad. Developmental psychologist Klein talks about the…

Sexual harassment was the theme of the recent annual symposium of student ambassadors to the Leiden-Bollenstreek police in collaboration with the police and the municipality. An extremely important issue to students − if the 100 places being claimed as soon as the symposium was announced was anything…

Symposium

Video screening

Lecture, Leiden Translation Talks

Lecture

Conference

Lecture

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Lecture