Large numbers of Indonesians were active members of the resistance during the Second World War. One of them was Irawan Soejono, a student at Leiden University. He was shot dead on Boommarkt, during a raid on 13 January 1945. Seventy-five years later he was remembered in a small ceremony in the very…

How do democracies develop? The Institute for History is devoting a three-day conference to this question.

A combination of two potential drugs gives hope of a 'super blockage' of an over-active immune system, Leiden researchers report in Nature. The breakthrough came from the crystallisation of a membrane protein.

KNAW has elected eighteen new members, including two professors at Leiden University and one who studied and obtained his PhD in Leiden. The New Academy members will be installed at a later date this year.

The ability to collect and interpret huge quantities of data has become indispensable to society and academia. Leiden University is a knowledge and expertise centre for data science that places the emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation.

The Tour of Asia, an afternoon filled with science and culture about Asia, attracted many visitors. In spite of the heavy rain, the visitors chose from among dozens of lectures and debates. This knowledge festival marked the opening of the Asian Library earlier in the day.

When you think of physics, do you think only of complicated formulas? You’re not the only one. Therefore, every year, the Leiden Insitute of Physics organises the LION Image Award to show another side of physics: beautiful images about intriguing science. The winner of the 2022 photo competition captured…

Ranti Tjan has been appointed director of the Royal Academy of Art as of 1 June 2022. He succeeds Henk van der Meulen, who will stay on as director of the Royal Conservatoire and Chairman of the Executive Board.

Liwen Meng has been granted a CSC fellowship to initiate her PhD project, which will delve into the role of nature in buffering stress response. Her research will be carried out under the supervision of Dr. Henk van Steenbergen.

Nature's role in buffering stress response

The Council of State in the Netherlands has drawn up a programme of reflection to evaluate the role of the highest administrative court in the child benefits scandal and to learn lessons for the future.

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.

On April 20, sixty participants will take part in LION’s triannual meeting for high school physics teachers, to deepen their knowledge of physics and astronomy and to explore new teaching methods. This edition marks a special occasion, as it is the last meeting organized by Bert van der Hoorn, who will…

Leiden University organizes a course on quantum mechanics for high school Physics teachers. As the curriculum gains a new quantum component, the university enables teachers to give the best possible guidance to their students.

From museum collections to artificial intelligence: Leiden University has selected eight research programmes that will receive extra funding

The third generation of students of the Master of Laws: Advanced Studies in International Children’s Rights 2017-2018 received their much-coveted master diplomas on Monday 27 August.

The issue of how to deal with a development such as digitalisation in the public domain raises difficult questions for the municipality: who is responsible and when do you intervene?

At the request of outgoing minister Stef Blok, the Province of Groningen wrote a letter to support the minister in his rejection of two amendments by the Dutch House of Representatives.

Wim Willems and Hanneke Verbeek were awarded with the Die Haghe Prize of 2016 for their book ‘Hier woonden wij. Hoe een stad zijn Joodse verleden herontdekt’ (English: ‘This is where we lived. How a city re-discovers its Jewish past.’) It is an exciting book about the rise and fall of the Jewish community…

Last September Henk Borgdorff participated in the art and research funding expert meeting of funding agencies initiated by the Society for Artistic Research (SAR).

Fourteen Leiden University scientists appear on the 2018 Highly Cited Researchers list, which was announced on 28 November by Clarivate Analytics.

In his Inaugural lecture of February 10th Prof. dr. Henk Borgdorff advocated positive understanding of artistic research, of reasoning in and through art, within academia.

Student Rozita Abdolrahimi Raeni is one of this year's winners of the KNMP Student Award. The Royal Dutch Society for the Advancement of Pharmacy (KNMP) hands out the award annually. Rozita is a master's student in Pharmacy and received the award for her excellent study results, motivation and commi…

The channel through which two cell components exchange material appears to form at the edge of their contact surface, and not in the middle. This was discovered by the Leiden physical chemists Jelger Risselada and Edgar Blokhuis together with researchers from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.…

Over a seven year period an international team of scientists has mapped more than a quarter of the northern sky using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a pan-European radio telescope. From Leiden, Astronomer Timothy Shimwell and Huub Röttgering, among others, are involved. It reveals an astonishingly…

Astronomers from Leiden Observatory have developed a new method to find distant quasars and better distinguish them from other objects that look like them, using machine learning techniques. The research result has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. It is the last…

The project has been done under the supervision of Dr. Diego Garlaschelli and Dr. Frank Takes. The title of the presentation is: ''Complex Network Analysis of Darknet Black Market Forum Structure.

Cultural Anthropologist Jasmijn Rana argues in the opinion piece ''Black', 'white', or 'of colour' is not about purity' in the Leiden University Weekly Mare to use uneasiness about being reduced to skin colour and gender to fight racism.

The faculty has been investigating hundreds of ancient stone tombs in Jordan’s Black Desert.

In the next few days several compositions by Aart Strootman (guitarist, instrument builder, composer, teacher and ACPA PhD) will premiere at Festival Classique and Festival Gaudeamus.

Spirits play a important role in post-colonial and minority literature as a means of processing black pages from history, according to literary scientist Chia-Sui Lee. PhD defence 11 January.

A research team from Radboud University and Leiden University, led by senior researchers Prof. Masja van Meeteren (RU/UL), Dr Paul Mutsaers (RU) and Prof. Maartje van der Woude (UL), will examine what national and international research has really found about ethnic profiling by the police.

Assistant professor Stephanie Noach has won the Dissertation Prize of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation. She is receiving this prestigious prize for her research on darkness in contemporary art from Latin America and the Caribbean.

A safe place to discuss burning social issues such as racism with each other. The student workspace Space to Talk About Race and the Afro Student Association both meet this need and also organise many other activities. Three board members explain why this is necessary.

Social resilience and security has never been more important. Over the last 2 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a considerable disturbance to our personal and social lives. As a result, the general population reports more stress, loneliness and decreased quality of life. At the same time, there…

In 2021 many of our students and staff won fantastic prizes and were awarded important research grants. This is our traditional review of these successes as the end of one year marks the beginning of another.

Conference

A pop-up exhibition ‘All the Einsteins’ will open at Rijsmuseum Boerhaave on 29 May 2019. This is the first time that the museum will present its entire collection of handwritten letters and documents by Einstein. The exhibition marks, among others, the publication of the first photo of a black hole…

Friso Selten recently started a PhD position that is part of the SAILS program. This PhD project is a collaboration between FGGA, LIACS, and eLaw, and is supervised by Bram Klievink (FGGA), Joost Broekens (LIACS), and Francien Deschene (eLaw). In the project Friso will investigate the influence of artificial…

An international congress, lectures and a new book series and magazine. It’s a hot topic at the moment that attracts broad public interest. Researchers, from historians to legal experts, are bringing together their expertise in the Leiden Slavery Studies Association.

Besides being a linguist, George Saad is also a photography fanatic. He shares his most beautiful and telling pictures, shot during his field research in Eastern Indonesia.

Buying chocolates as a sign of love, getting the best deals on Black Friday and putting on a spooky costume for Halloween. In recent years, these holidays and traditions have taken off in the Netherlands, even though they originated on the other side of the ocean. Why are we so excited about American…

What moral concerns do people have when they encounter the financial sector in their everyday life? Erik Bähre's ERC consolidator project 'Moralising Misfortune: A comparative anthropology of commercial insurance’ aims to find out. In collaboration with Brechtje Boeke, five short documentaries from…

For the first time, scientists have traced back a high-energy neutrino to its source in space. It was produced by a so-called blazar—a supermassive black hole. Researchers from neutrino detector IceCube report this in Science. ‘This is a milestone for neutrino science,’ says physicist Dorothea Samtleben…

Abstract sounds that draw visitors upstairs, an 'escape womb' and a Christmas game that gets you thinking about the limits of creating our own happiness. Master's students of Media Technology created a special exhibition on the theme of 'self', in the Old School art centre in the Pieterskerkhof in…

Most of us know that Venice, Genoa, and Florence were major Mediterranean powers during the Renaissance. But did you know that in terms of trade and sea power, Barcelona was probably more powerful than two of these three?

On Friday 3 February, Minister Bruins Slot of the Interior and Kingdom Relations appointed Fatma Çapkurt, of the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law, to the Dutch State Committee on the Rule of Law. Chaired by Henk Kummeling, Rector Magnificus of Utrecht University, this State Committee…

On 1 December 2023, Fatma Çapkurt was appointed as deputy chair of the State Committee on the Rule of Law.

Sasha Lubotsky, professor of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, and Ineke Sluiter, professor of Classical languages and culture, have been appointed members of the Academia Europaea.