Our university recently joined the European university alliance Una Europa. Staff from the 11 affiliated universities met in Leiden last week to discuss our collaboration.

Now the introduction weeks can go ahead as usual, the new students’ enthusiasm is overwhelming. It’s back to normal for the student associations too, having had a hard time of it during the pandemic.

Glorious sunshine, dozens of enthusiastic academics and huge numbers of Leiden residents ensured that this year’s special jubilee version of 3 October University was a great success.

With only a month until the 2020 United States elections, William Michael Schmidli, University Lecturer of American history, reflects on the latest developments. President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis seems apt for the nation too, he argues.

Sarah Michiel is the Institute Manager of NIMAR and has been living in Morocco since 2012. Due to the coronavirus, she has been working in Belgium since 20 March, where she grew up. The NIMAR office in Rabat is currently empty and all visits and conferences have been cancelled. Sarah is trying to run…

‘Academics have descended from their ivory tower, but there’s still too little action or financing.’ Leiden professor of Science Communication Ionica Smeets saw all her wishes come true on 28 January, with the presentation of the Letter to Parliament sent by Minister Van Engelshoven of the Ministry…

Consumers are encouraged to think of food production and consumption as amoral activities – Michiel Korthals in his book Goed Eten: Filosofie van voeding en landbouw (2019, 353)

Why do some smokers quit much more easily than others? Can we think ourself to insomnia? And does playing music together help to calm conflicts? Psychology students investigated these questions and presented their findings during the Psychology Science Day 2023.

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For the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, women students and researchers from physics talk about what inspires them about their work. From quantum to cosmology and biophysics, their curiosity about how nature works is what connects these women. What do these 5 scientists want to share…

Scientific research at the molecular level on a collection of medieval skeletons from Norton Priory in Cheshire, United Kingdom, could help rewrite history after revealing they were affected by an unusual ancient form of the bone disorder, Paget’s disease. Osteoarchaeologist Carla Burrell, attached…

The placebo effect was completely new to her when Lingling Weng began the PhD project in Leiden. She is now a postdoc in China. 'It would be great to investigate the underlying mechanisms of placebo and nocebo effects with my current knowledge of EEG and fMRI.' PhD defence on 17 October.

How can we supply the growing world population with sustainable energy? At Laurens College in Rotterdam, Prof. Marc Koper speaks with the students about the crucial role of chemistry in the energy transition. Guest classes like this are a good way for school students to learn about the academic world,…

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.’

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.

Five questions about the event ‘Germany after the Elections: implications for Foreign Policy and European Security’ answered by one of the experts at the event: Joachim Koops. Come by at the Spanish Steps in Wijnhaven on Friday 15 October or join the event online (link below).

A team led by Erik Danen from the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research has received a 3 million euros NWO Science Groot grant to unravel the first steps of metastasis. Danen will work together with biologists and theoretical and experimental physicists from Dutch Universities. ‘Understanding these…

Psychologists Anna van ‘t Veer and Eiko Fried will start a scientific integrity workshop tour after the summer, called Responsible Scholarship: Psychology. Their aim: giving the subject a more prominent position in the academic’s mind.

Having mostly ignored the gains Dutch traders, investors and firms attained from serving the French, English and Iberian empires, debate in the Netherlands now demands a re-evaluation of Dutch colonial responsibilities. By recovering knowledge of these gains, this project will measure the wealth obtained…

On 11 March, pharmaceutical company Janssen received approval to launch its corona vaccine on the European market. This made Janssen the fourth company to be given the green light by the European Medicines Agency. As Lead of the Janssen Campus in the Netherlands, Biology alumnus Bart van Zijll Langhout…

This blogpost is a reflection of research assistant Marilena Poulopoulou on the food relief initiative she took part in between May and August 2020 in the city of Utrecht.

“You want to be a great leader? Start by figuring out who you are.” On February 2nd, Elanor Boekholt-O’Sullivan, the first female three-star general of the Netherlands, addressed the students of the Leiden Leadership Programme in an inspirational seminar about leadership and authenticity. “Hearing this…

From exercises for working more healthily to practical tips about getting a good night's sleep. Students and staff who take part in the Healthy University Workshops on 18 or 19 October will be given tips to suit their personal situation.

For the duration of a month, the portraits of female professors only will hang in the Senate Chamber of Leiden University. This is the initiative of Athena’s Angels, who want more room for women, literally and figuratively. Vice-Rector Simone Buitendijk unveiled the portrait photos on 8 March.

Playing with tiny building blocks might sound like child’s play, but Vera Meester knows better. On June 7 she will defend her thesis on colloids: micro particles with which you can form larger structures. Meester developed a method to make unusable structures usable.

A moon rock from the Apollo 17 mission, antique globes and the cosmos according to Wassily Kandinsky. Ewine van Dishoeck, Professor of Molecular Astrophysics, has put together an impressive exhibition at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave.

We are pleased to invite abstracts for the conference ‘H2OLAW – Law-Science Interfaces within the Law of the Sea and Fresh Water Law’ hosted by the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University. The conference will take place on 26 and 27 September 2024 at Leiden University in the…

The rule of law is crumbling in the Netherlands, lawyer Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You warned in her Cleveringa Lecture.

By reforming agriculture in targeted areas, we can protect the Natura 2000 areas much more effectively. This is what Jan Willem Erisman of Leiden University and Ton Brouwer of Gispoint consultancy write in a new report. They have created a special, nitrogen map of the Netherlands that shows the areas…

'An international environment is my natural habitat. I really thrive when I am in a setting where I am around people of all kinds of countries and cultures.'

A new year that will bring all sorts of developments in the world of research. What are the new year’s resolutions in social sciences research at our faculty? What unites us, and what exciting developments do we anticipate?

The brain structure of young people with conduct disorder differs significantly from that of their typically developing peers. This is the conclusion of an international study that analysed more than two thousand MRI scans, recently published in The Lancet Psychiatry. Dr Moji Aghajani, one of the principal…

‘We’ve come because our granddaughter started studying archaeology here this year. But I’m really interested in archaeology too.’ The Open Day at the Faculty of Archaeology on 12 October was a field day for archaeology fans: workshops, lectures, activities for children and a pub quiz that covered the…

Arbitration law has grown into a ‘sexy’ area of practice about which students are keen to write a thesis and in which many lawyers specialise.

Since the horrific events of October 7, 2023, Leiden students have grappled with difficult questions about Israel, Gaza and Israel/Palestine conflict more generally. Drawing on her expertise in the history of the Jewish experience in the diaspora and beyond, Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey has held multiple…

At the conference of the Honours College Science & Society, students present TED Talks on a social issue of their interest. ‘It brings together everything they have learned in the past two and a half years.’

Every day, Arie Kraaijenoord (64) can be seen driving around in his little blue van, delivering the mail in and around the Lipsius building. He’s been with campus general services since the post of concierge was first created.

Sixteen master’s students from a variety of disciplines are helping The Hague Police to find new clues in a cold case.

Types of supervision for prisoners on conditional release include the requirement to report regularly to a parole officer, electronic house arrest or community service. These are all serious measures for the person on whom they are imposed and for society. But it is a subject on which little research…

Leiden archaeologists appealed for help from volunteers to search for archaeological remains on satellite images of Utrechtse Heuvelrug, a national park close to Utrecht. The outbreak of the corona virus made the project a resounding success: in a single month, all 300,971 maps had been examined. 'That's…

Biophysicist Alireza Mashaghi and his collaborators are taking up the fight against muscular dystrophy: genetic disorders that cause muscle weakness. They want to inhibit the clumping of proteins that results in toxic aggregates. For this, the team receives 550,000 euros from Health Holland. The team…

How ethical is research involving humans and robots? And can research on artificial intelligence cause problems when it ends up in the wrong hands? In any research involving humans or their data, the ethics committee assesses where the issues are. Associate professor at LIACS Suzan Verberne chairs the…

Raymond Fagel, university lecturer in General History, wrote a book about his research on Spanish commander Mondragón. He spared Zierikzee during the Eighty Years’ War and is considered to be ‘the good Spaniard’. What led Fagel to research this topic? And how does such research work? We asked him:

The Life in Custody (LIC) Study comprises a large-scale research project into prison climate and the quality of prison life in Dutch prisons.

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‘If you want to implement open science, you at least need someone at each faculty who can help researchers to solve practical problems.’ Dorien Huijser spent two years managing the transition to a new working method at the Institute of Psychology’s Brain and Development Research Center.

Last Friday was Master’s Open Day time once again. Students from home and abroad descended on Leiden and The Hague to find out more about our master’s programmes. Alongside the presentations, the information fairs gave them a good opportunity to ask any questions.

What motivates citizens to participate in a citizen science project on plastic pollution? And does that motivation change over time? Liselotte Rambonnet tried to answer these and other questions with her research on the Clean Rivers (‘Schone Rivieren’) project. Rambonnet is a PhD student at the Institute…

It matters a lot whether a fatwa is given by a female or male Islamic scholar, discovered doctoral student Nor Ismah.

Eight young researchers from Leiden University have received a Rubicon grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This will allow them to conduct research at a top institute or university abroad.