Fifteen knowledge institutions and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science have signed the covenant for Open Science NL. Leiden University has also joined the covenant, via the Universities of the Netherlands. This marks the start of the Dutch Research Council’s and brings the transition to open…

Bringing the community together, doing up the community centre or researching how to make gardens greener. Students now have a base in Leiden-Noord where they can work with local residents and partner organisations to make the city a better place to live. It was the official opening of ‘Learning with…

A celebration was held in the Tabú restaurant: Mark Rutgers, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, was presented with the first copy of LEAP, a journal where Humanities master’s students can prepare for an academic career by publishing articles themselves.

Marleen Hogendoorn (36) studied Dutch Language and Culture at Leiden University and is now editor-in-chief of the feminist monthly OPZIJ.

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.

Betty de Jonge is a household name in our faculty. As the person behind AskBetty, she knew how to answer every question about Office. Starting this month, she has officially retired.

Wat gebeurt er op het schoolplein? Sensoren op kleding openbaren pijnlijke patronen

Have faith in others, embrace conflict and differences, take your time: these are just a few of the tips that emerged during a Leiden symposium on interdisciplinary collaboration on 1 February. A second session will take place on Thursday 14 March.

What are the origins of the Islamic Empire? And what was daily life like there? Two new Ted Ed animations answer these questions in simple language. Arabists Petra Sijpesteijn and Birte Kristiansen explain what the process of developing the videos was like.

Particularly during this time of social distancing and remote learning, it is important to carry on meeting new people – even if you don’t always feel like it after another day staring at your screen, says Wessel van Dam. In his role as assessor at the Honours Academy, Wessel represents the interests…

On Things That Talk, a website founded and developed by Fresco Sam-Sin, students and researchers describe objects from today and from long ago. By now, more than a hundred objects have been covered. Willemijn Waal, Emma Verweij and Frank van den Boom contributed to the content.

Luckily we’ve been able to meet up on campus again for a few months now after two years of mainly online teaching. Alongside the inconvenience, enforced digitalisation has brought us valuable innovations and smart tools. The question is: what’s going well and what could we do differently? I’d love to…

Its idyllic setting and white sandy beaches have made the Maldives a hotspot for tourists. This provides an income but is a problem for the fragile natural environment. Students from various universities worked with the local people to make the soil more fertile. How did they go about it?

Leiden University’s digital study environment is being expanded to include the Leiden student portal: a single place where students can find all the information they need to organise their studies.

The new VIS grant has been awarded to four projects from the Faculty of Humanities. In a Virtual International Cooperation Project (VIS), Dutch and foreign students work together remotely on a project that links local issues to an international perspective.

Academic freedom is something to be cherished. The freedom to conduct research, design courses and publish research findings as we see fit is crucial to our work.

Connecting worlds, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. In that respect, a huge amount happened at Leiden University in 2023.

Samen met een groep enthousiaste wetenschappers bezocht ik deze maand verschillende universiteiten en andere kennisinstellingen tijdens een kennismissie in Indonesië.

From choosing the right tools to locking your screen when you go to get a coffee: it’s often the little things that help you work securely. With our campaign ‘Check it: work privacy and security smart’, in the coming month we are focusing on protecting our information and data, including personal data.…

Dick Schoof kan ook wel de buurman van de Haagse faculteit worden genoemd. Vooral vanuit zijn rol bij de NCTV werkte hij veel samen met de Universiteit Leiden en hielp hij onderwijs en onderzoek vooruit, vertelt hoogleraar Terrorisme en Contraterrorisme Edwin Bakker. ‘Voor een kritische vriend was altijd…

A shepherd, but also a comparativist and historian with very broad interests. That is how Professor Philippe Buc describes himself. As of 1 August 2021, he will hold the chair of professor of Medieval History at the university. In an introductory interview, Buc introduces himself, his research and his…

From once controversial scientific works and historical bibles, to personal shopping lists and clothing bills. The 17th-century Bibliotheca Thysiana and the archive of the collector Johannes Thysius exhibit both the intellectual and everyday life as it was three hundred years ago. Now a brand-new digital…

As well as offering students a first-rate education, Leiden University provides a wide range of training for professionals, so they can be lifelong learners. And that is not just of value to participants. ‘As a university, you start a dialogue with society to achieve better knowledge together.’

Organisation

Leiden University will be conferring three honorary doctorates in its special anniversary year. They will be awarded to Eliot Higgins, truth finder and founder of Bellingcat, Bonnie Honig, expert in feminist theory and legal theory, and Kelly Chibale, professor of organic chemistry, who works on prevention…

The new interdisciplinary bachelor's program in Science for Sustainable Societies starts in the 2025-2026 academic year.

With the addition of over 16,500 new catalogue records, the collection of Johannes Tiberius Bodel Nijenhuis (1797-1872) is now almost entirely searchable online. The private collection of the Leiden map collector laid the foundation for the special collection of maps and atlases of Leiden University.…

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.

ICT, Security

Security

AI has applications in all kinds of fields. Would you like to organise an event on the possibilities of AI in your research field? The Leiden interdisciplinary research programme SAILS offers you experts on content, money and other support.

Campus The Hague users can share their thoughts on the development of the new Spui building. Students, lecturers and other staff are welcome to offer their input. We are still looking for students for our user groups.

Nusantara Capital Authority (OIKN), which is in charge of developing Indonesia’s new capital city entered a Memorandum of Understanding with Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities on 18 March on knowledge sharing and joint research.

Since 1 June, the Faculty of Humanities has gained a position. As knowledge broker, Marlieke Ernst wants to connect researchers: with each other and with the outside world.

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has acquired a rare manuscript map of Suriname. The map from 1830 is almost 2.5 meters long and is highly detailed. It was hand-drawn by Helmuth Hendrik Hiemcke (1808-1858), one of the official surveyors employed by the colonial administration, and shows Suriname in…

The Choose a Language Day was created to make high school students enthusiastic about choosing a linguistic profile and further education. Third-years were able to learn about different language studies at the Faculty of Humanities.

The Rutte IV cabinet will be sworn in soon. A fifth of the prospective ministers and secretaries of state studied in Leiden. Who are they and what did they study?

I recently went to the anniversary celebration of The Meeting Point, and the stories the refugee students told made a huge impression on me. The Meeting Point helps students from different backgrounds feel part of our university community.

Who will represent us on the university’s participation councils? The results of the 2021 university elections have been announced. New representatives will be joining many of the participation bodies at the university – the faculty councils, the employee councils and the University Council.

Six programmes in the Faculty of Humanities have been awarded the designation 'top programme' by the Keuzegids. These are the bachelor’s in German Language and Culture, Greek and Latin Language and Culture, Latin American Studies, Ancient Near East Studies, Religious Studies and Russian Studies.

Organisation

Education

If we continue with our current policies, the Faculty of Humanities will face a financial shortfall in 2024 and subsequent years. The Perspective 2028 Steering Committee, led by Manon van der Heijden, has been established to advise on potential measures that can be taken to improve the financial sit…

In the University elections in April, the eight student seats on the University Council have gone to six parties, and newcomers the Liberal Student Party and the Party for Biomedical Students have each won one seat.

In the new Annual Report 2022 we report on not only research and teaching at Leiden University but also ICT, real estate, personnel, finance, impact and knowledge transfer and more.

Education, Research

Eight university vegetable patches will soon join the display at the Hortus botanicus. The sun shone down on almost 40 enthusiastic students and staff as they started work on the new Community Garden there earlier this month.

The interdisciplinary programme Social Resilience & Security is inviting proposals for seed funding. The programme aims to combine knowledge and expertise from five different faculties to study transgressive behaviours, its dimensions, aetiology, and effects of interventions with a multidisciplinary…

Education

The Winter Week of Digital Skills will take place in the PJ Veth building from 29 January to 2 February. There will be different workshops where you can improve your digital skills, from dealing with AI and ChatGPT to setting up your own podcast. University lecturer Jelena Prokic explains more.