By Royal Decree, Mirjam Sombroek van Doorm was appointed as a member of the Health Council of the Netherlands as of 1 January 2024. She has joined the standing committee for Ethics and Law as well as the temporary Brain Injury through Sports Committee. The Health Council of the Netherlands is an independent…

Although the official start of the academic year has to wait for another fortnight, Leiden University College The Hague (LUC) welcomed the Class of 2024 to the Anna van Bueren campus this week. The new cohort of 204 incoming students will spend the next three years studying different majors and minors…

The past years Wouter Kool has been active as Privacy Officer at the Faculty of Archaeology. This was part of his position as Information Manager. Recently, however, he doubled his responsibilities when taking over the Information Manager position at the FGGA as well. He remains only human though, so…

On August 18, 2022, Henk Bodewitz, distinguished Indologist and emeritus professor of Sanskrit at Leiden University, passed away in his hometown of Utrecht.

What do gender identity and digital technology have to do with each other? Together they are the subject of research at Leiden University. Researchers Tessa Verhoef and Eduard Fosch-Villaronga of the faculties of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and Law will investigate the interaction between artificial…

Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing, what exactly does he do and what does his day look like? In each newsletter, Jasper gives an insight into his life.

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On January 1st Jasper Knoester started as our new dean. How is he finding it? What kinds of things is he doing and what does his day look like? In each newsletter Jasper gives a peek into his life as dean.

Paul Behrens and his team have won the Frontiers Planet Prize of half a million euros for their research into the effects of switching to a plant-based diet.

Too expensive groceries, diseases suddenly breaking out: from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, hundreds of people documented the world around them in chronicles. A significant number of these texts have been digitised in recent years. Professor of Early Modern Dutch History and project leader…

On September 5, at the festive opening of the Faculty Year, a range of new murals will be officially presented in the Van Steenis’ Reuvens Hall. The wall paintings reflect a variety of Dutch soil stratigraphies, from Oss to burial mounds. Aside from being a striking new addition to our Faculty building,…

Take a walk through any city, and you are likely to come across a brightly coloured mural. Although these paintings often seem to serve solely as a backdrop for Instagram snapshots, art history professor Minna Valjakka says there are rich traditions and intricate histories that uncover more critical…

No less than four Leiden research teams have been awarded a grant by NWO. On 27 July NWO honoured 21 applications in the Open Competition ENW-XL. NWO awards the grants to consortia in the exact and natural sciences who are doing unconnected fundamental research that is 'driven by curiosity'.

In her inaugural lecture Susanna Linberg will ask how philosophy should respond to global warming.

In the past months all Leiden Archaeology students were asked to partake in the Bystander Intervention & Consent training. These workshops teach people how to recognise and safely intervene in situations they feel the need to act upon. We speak with two students who participated about their experien…

During her study of Latin America, Tineke Floor laid the intercultural foundation that has served her well in her career. Floor currently works as Director Europe at African Parks, an NGO that promotes nature conservation in Africa. How does she look back on her studies? And why the leap to another…

On Friday 10 December 2021, the Center for Law and Digital Technologies (eLaw) of the Leiden Law School, hosted its annual Research Colloquium exploring the theme 'Law Gone Digital'. The event gathered presentations by eLaw PhD candidates and professors on a wide range of topics at the interface of…

The war in Ukraine has lasted almost two weeks now. What does Putin expect to achieve with his invasion and how big is the chance that the West will get involved? We phoned André Gerrits, professor and expert on Russia.

Professor Nira Wickramasinghe has won the American Historical Association John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History for her book Slave in a Palanquin. Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka' (Columbia University Press: New York 2020).

Leiden researchers Max van Duijn (Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science) and Vasilika Kosta (Leiden Law School, Europa Institute) will join The Young Academy (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) KNAW)).

With this podcast series 'Introduction to Security Studies', you will get to know more about the bachelor's programme Security Studies at Leiden University in The Hague and life as a student in The Hague.

Almost 3,000 students from the Faculty of Humanities completed the National Student Survey (NSE) in the spring of 2022. With a response rate of 38%, the Faculty scored slightly above the national average.

Understanding what our buildings and cities are made of is an important step in making them more sustainable. Industrial ecologist Tomer Fishman (CML) has received an ERC Starting Grant to map the construction materials used in buildings in the Global South. 'Without the data, you can't formulate po…

An international team of astronomers has discovered a large reservoir of hot gas in the cluster-in-formation around the Spiderweb Galaxy. Based partly on that hot gas, the astronomers predict that the cluster-in-formation will grow into one of the largest objects in the universe. A step closer to discovering…

Pandemics, terrorist attacks, environmental disasters... These are real threats, which we cannot ignore. In fact: we need to prepare better for the large-scale crises of the future. Preferably in a way that suits our lifestyle and respects our social values. Over the next ten years, an interdisciplinary…

The new open access book The Science of Citizen Science bundles insights into science that is conducted together with citizens, to promote this growing form of science.

The Academy for Professionals project started in November. The project will focus on further developing existing and new educational programmes for professionals. ‘This is part of taking valorisation seriously.’

Peter Scholten is one of the four professors that were officially appointed as Leiden-Delft-Erasmus professor last week. Apart from his appointment at the Erasmus University, he has now also been appointed at FGGA. We asked Scholten five questions about his double appointment and the collaboration between…

The world is currently beset by many problems. The armed conflict and continuing violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories is resulting in numerous casualties. This is giving rise to many emotions and reactions worldwide, and also greatly affecting our own university community. We have seen…

In the academic year 2022-2023 the Social Resilience and Security interdisciplinary programme will offer a new minor for students who are interested in studying interpersonal violence and who are entering the third year of their Bachelor's degree. The announcement went down well with students: the available…

Chemist Tobias Bauer discovered ways to improve drugs by encapsulating them. Packages with iron nanoparticles, for example, can stimulate immune cells. Bauer will receive his PhD on 9 June.

Our annual strategic conference was held this year on 15 and 16 June in Soesterberg, and has now become a tradition at our university.

The Faculty of Science has gained an extra 30,000 square metres: Thursday 25 January marked the completion of the new Gorlaeus Building. In this second phase of the project, the Gorlaeus Building has acquired a new main entrance on Rosalind Franklinplein with a striking facade. The new space will be…

How unique is the human capacity for learning and adapting to an environment? In field research – in the rainforest and Artis Zoo – primatologist Karline Janmaat is studying how humans and other primates adapt to their environment in their search for food. She will give her inaugural lecture as Professor…

PhD candidate Jiangnan Ding explores how you can design a thick slab of rubber in a way that it might act as a mechanical computer bit. This so-called mechanical metamaterial is pushed in a specific way to change its shape. ‘With a very simple material, we might be able to do simple calculations in…

On Friday 3 February, all new incoming exchange students for the Spring semester were invited to attend their own Faculty’s introduction session.

In addition to his Film and Literature Studies, Bob van Oosterhout is a bassoonist with several orchestras. He is going to Milan with the student choir and orchestra ‘Collegium Musicum’.

The 289 students who recently moved into the tower on Kolffpad at the Leiden Bio Science Park are sitting pretty. A self-contained unit in the middle of the campus yet surrounded by green, with a launderette, games room and study area on the ground floor, and, coming soon, a branch of Coffee Star.

Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing, what exactly does he do and what does his day look like? In each newsletter, Jasper gives an insight into his life.

Researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have developed an AI model that accurately predicts the risk of endometrial cancer recurrence.

New Online Platform Launched to Support Global Children's Rights Legislative Reform

The Third International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding is set to take place between 19 and 21 June at the Wijnhaven building in The Hague. During the conference, over 400 participants from across the globe will come together to discuss the relationship between the environment and armed co…

Explosions at people’s homes, gangland killings and online threats: if you follow the news, it may seem as though threat levels in the Netherlands are rising. But is that really true? Researchers from Leiden University investigated this and have presented their results in the Dreigingsmonitor (Threat…

The underwater world around present-day Indonesia has changed greatly in recent centuries as a result of human activity. University lecturer Johannes Müller has been awarded an NWO XS grant to map the history of the Indonesian ecosystems.

In een goedgevuld Teldersauditorium vond op maandag 24 juni het symposium ‘Het Erfgoed van Meijers: 70 jaar waardering en inspiratie’ plaats. Vanuit verschillende perspectieven werd gereflecteerd op de omvangrijke nalatenschap van de Leidse hoogleraar Eduard Maurits Meijers, die precies zeventig jaar…

The Leiden municipality wants to make the city centre climate-proof and combat heat stress by greening it. But they want to do this in a way that does justice to the city’s heritage. Researcher Fenna IJtsma delves into historical greenery to offer inspiration.

Is polder rice a feasible circular alternative for cows on peatland? A pilot experiment started this week. On May 22nd, researchers from Leiden University and Wageningen University & Research (WUR) planted roughly 3,000 rice plants on the Polderlab near Leiden. The researchers want to test rice as a…

Leiden University has recently received various petitions from students and staff concerning our ties with Israeli universities. We have also held extensive discussions with the University Council in response to questions raised on the subject. We think it important that our partners and research projects…

Research

A banker who puts making money second and makes a profit nonetheless. A farmer who stops ploughing and using insecticides but still has a good harvest. A new white paper by Leiden-Delft-Erasmus and Naturalis Biodiversity Center shows how the meeting of disciplines provides solutions to climate change…