The walls of Paul van der Velde’s study at the International Institute for Asian Studies are full of neat rows of post-it notes. As organiser in chief, he is right in the middle of the upcoming ICAS 11, the 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars, which is returning to where it was first held…

The Olympic Games will start in Brazil on 5 August. You can find out more about this fascinating but complex country in a series of lectures organised by Studium Generale.

For the Bachelor Honours Class 'Mass Extinction', students produced podcasts about the past, the present and the future of mass extinctions. What exactly is lost when a species goes extinct? What are the practical consequences? But also: does humanity have the moral duty to protect other species?

From 24 to 28 June the 7th edition of Leiden University’s annual Frontiers of Children’s Rights Summer School took place in Leiden and The Hague.

The new privacy laws make it more difficult to combat human trafficking: under-age victims are often not registered. In her lecture, Cleveringa Professor Corinne Dettmeijer called on everyone to be on the alert. 'We don't want to live in a society where people are treated as throw-away objects.'

A shadow cabinet has just been formed. This one consists of students from all the Dutch universities. They will be keeping politicians on their toes in the coming year, and want to show that progress cannot be made without academic research and teaching. Master’s student Zeineb Romdhane is Minister…

The Leiden archaeologist Wil Roebroeks has been awarded the Spinoza prize for his original observations about early hominins and the development of human society, NWO (Netherlands organisation for Scientific Research) announced on Monday 4 June.

Hans Slabbekoorn, researcher at the Institute of Biology Leiden, is from the 16th to the 26th of July on board of the Pelagia, the Dutch national sea research vessel, which is currently on a collaborative mission for the National Initiative Changing Oceans (NICO). Slabbekoorn will study the effects…

A festival that combines music and science, and a digital 'time machine' for science history: four Leiden projects that focus on science communication have been awarded a subsidy in the context of the National Science Agenda.

It was more than two years in the making, but despite the delays, giving up was not an option. In May, eighteen staff members of LUCAS and the Faculty of Archaeology visited NIMAR.

Governance of the internet is chaotic, says Professor Jan Aart Scholte. Can we learn from this relatively new form of governance?

In Montreal, the 34th Meeting of Parties on the Montreal Protocol (MOP), dealing with ozone layer damage, just ended. This protocol is ratified by all countries in the world and is very successful. Shiming Yang, a university lecturer and member of the Leiden University Global Transformations and Government…

Professor Pieter ter Keurs has spent his entire career studying collecting. Now, he is retiring. ‘I hope the focus on collections will carry on.’

How can business strategies help us solve social problems? This was researched by students of the Master Honours Class 'Social Innovation in Action' over the past twenty weeks. During the final seminar of the class they presented their creative enterprises to tackle child poverty in Leiden. ‘It’s not…

Erik de Maaker wrote a monograph on how Garo, an indigenous community of the extended eastern Himalayas, experience and negotiate such disparities. The book shows how relatedness is reinterpreted as religious practices change, and communally held land ends up being privately controlled. Erik de Maaker…

The research profile area Interaction between Legal Systems has a multidisciplinary approach and aims to inspire innovative research. Out of all the proposals put forward, three winning projects have been selected for the forthcoming research period 2016-2020.

During the 2019 Reuvensdagen, PhD candidate Femke Lippok was awarded the prestigious W.A. van Es-prize for her research master’s thesis The Pyre and the Grave, written in 2017. The jury lauded Femke for her pioneering work and making use of big data analysis, while adding an admirably expansive and…

This year four research trainee projects were approved by the faculty to be carried out at the Institute for History this semester.

On Sunday, April 23, 2023, Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey, Special Chair for Central European Studies, gave a special lecture alongside the Practicum Musicae Orkest at the Cultuurhuis de Paulus in Oegstgeest.

The skateboarding world was highly enthusiastic about the participation of skaters in the Olympic Games in 2021, although there was also a lot of opposition. Researcher Sander Hölsgens observes that the discussion has now abated and that the Games have had positive effects for skateboarders and citi…

Acute stress seems to have a surprisingly positive effect on our health. Researcher Erin Faught received an NWO veni grant to find out why that is and how we can use that knowledge to our advantage. For her lab research, she uses a remarkable small animal to learn more about our own stress levels.

On 1 May, Casper de Jonge will be appointed Professor of Greek Language and Literature. ‘Greek literature did not come from Athens alone: authors from Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor also wrote in Greek.’

Bachelor’s students Dana Huisman, Marleen Kop, Sam Wichers Schreur and Adriënne de Zoeten were granted the Speckmann Award for their Fieldwork NL report ‘Samen Verder: een project gefocust op vrouwen, taal en integratie'. Alumna Shirley van der Maarel received the Master's Speckmann award for her innovative…

Tingting Hui started her PhD project at LUCAS in September 2015. Her promotors will be Ernst van Alphen and Yasco Horsman from the Literary Studies department.

Nine talented Leiden researchers have been awarded a Vidi subsidy by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Vidis are intended for researchers with several years of research experience who want to set up or expand their own line of research.

Hydropower plants need not be disastrous for fishermen and nature. For that, we need to place new dams more strategically, but also modify or even remove some existing ones. Valerio Barbarossa and Rafael Schmitt showed that with a computer model of the Asian Mekong basin.

The soya sauce in our kitchen cabinets is not a recent acquisition. This sauce is an important element in a long history of exchange between Asia and Europe. This is what Anne Gerritsen claims in her inaugural lecture for the Kikkoman Chair on Friday 12 December.

Theft, prostitution, fortune-telling or murder. Historian Manon van der Heijden and a group of students are researching court records from The Hague from 1600 to 1800. They are tracing crimes and offenders and shedding new light on The Hague’s Gevangenpoort (or Prison Gate). Among their many discoveries…

Dutch children’s picture books are full of animals, but mainly mammals are portrayed. Especially pets and exotic animals are popular. A large part of the Dutch fauna is less visible, but biologist Michiel Hooykaas of Leiden University sees plenty of opportunities for a more biodiverse book world.

Master’s students in the Honours Class ‘Leiden, City of Refugees?’ were asked to contemplate the concept of ‘the other’ from both an academic and an artistic perspective. The result was the exhibition ‘The Invitation’ which was presented at Stadsbauhaus on 4 June.

Leiden art historian Juliette Roding spent her sabbatical in Denmark, researching a 17th century court artist. She not only learned more about the artist, she also got to know present-day Denmark.

On 7 and 8 November 2024, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), the Institute of Security & Global Affairs at Leiden University, and The Netherlands’ National Coordinator for Security and Counter Terrorism (NCTV) partnered to host a ‘Blue-Sky’ Terrorist Exploitation of Artificial…

A team of Leiden astronomers has managed to calculate the first 100 million years of the history of the Oort cloud in its entirety. Until now, only parts of the history had been studied separately. The cloud, with roughly 100 billion comet-like objects, forms an enormous shell at the edge of our solar…

Each year Dutch women’s magazine VIVA draws up a list of creative and enterprising women. This year our alumna and Professor of Law and Society Maartje van der Woude has been nominated. The award ceremony is on 15 November.

How can we best tell the current generations about some of the darkest parts of our past? To answer this question, researchers from Leiden are working with the Gedeeld Verleden, Gezamenlijke Toekomst foundation on public programmes about the Dutch history of slavery.

The Dutch universities are conducting a joint campaign to promote open access: free access to academic and scientific publications. Many Leiden researchers support open access. Given that it involves a shift in the financing from the reader to the author, they point out the need for effective agreements…

How do you engage students in times of corona? Sara Brandellero, co-chair of the study programmes for Latin American studies, created assignments that require a wide-ranging set of skills. And the results were beautiful.

Linguists Alwin Kloekhorst and Alexander Lubotsky from Leiden University made a great discovery this summer. They deciphered a few dozen inscriptions on pot shards found in Daskyleion (North-West Turkey) as Phrygian and Lydian, and thus proved the presence of the Phrygians and Lydians in that area.

People can be easily mislead with graphs. But they don’t necessarily stay misled, the research shows.

The nominees for the Prof. Dr. J.Th.J. van den Berg-prijs 2022 and the IRO Thesis Prize 2022. Who wrote the best bachelor thesis in Political Science?

Joris van den Tol spent three months doing archival research in Albany in the USA. Read on how he experienced his stay.

Animal species that are dear to us in the Netherlands often spend a large part or all of their lifecycle in other parts of the world. But their habitats worldwide are under increasing pressure, are often inadequately protected and much poorer than the global average. ‘If we truly care about these animals,…

The field of leadership suffers from ‘adjectivism’, says Professor Ben Kuipers. He immediately caveats this by saying that he too is going furnish the word leadership with an adjective: ‘Public’. But the goal here is to view leadership in a different light in his new role as Professor of Public Lead…

On 22 November, Tom Buitelaar, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, presents his new book ‘Assisting International Justice’. Five questions to Buitelaar about the book and the book presentation.

You’re about to start your minor at Leiden University. Make sure you are well prepared and get your studies off to a good start.

Before Maria Gabriela Palacio Ludeña became a lecturer International Studies at Leiden University, she was a public administrator in Ecuador. Her whole life she had a desire to teach and eventually she wound up at Leiden University.

How did Fustat develop between 640 and 750 to become the capital of Egypt? At the time Egypt was a province of the Islamic empire - the caliphate - that had been started by the prophet Muhammad. Original sources used by Arabist Jelle Bruning give new insights into the city. PhD defence on 2 April.

Annetje Ottow, president of the Executive Board of Leiden University, has been the new chair of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus (LDE) strategic alliance for just two months. What does she want to achieve during her two-year chairmanship?

Did Francisco de Valdés indeed spare Leiden because his beloved Magdalena Moons had family living here? Historian Raymond Fagel gave a lecture on 24 September on the siege of Leiden, looking at the many myths that still exist.

Over hundreds of thousands of years, our region witnessed the comings and goings of various types of hominin. This depended on the temperature as ice ages alternated with warmer periods. In ‘De eerste mensen in de Lage Landen’ (‘The First Humans in the Low Countries’) Leiden archaeologists Yannick Raczynski-Henk…