Over the past two centuries, the concept of human dignity has moved from the fringes to the centre of the international legal system. This book is the first single-authored detailed historical, theoretical and legal investigation of human dignity as a normative value, the intellectual sources that shaped…

On 6 March, Jelle Klaas, lawyer for the Public Interest Litigation Project of the Dutch Section of the International Commission of Jurists, delivered a lecture to the students of the Advanced Master’s in European and International Human Rights Law at Leiden Law School.

The Faculty of Humanities is looking for creative students who would like to share their talent for their Live Lunch Friday.

Come to IMAGINARY at Administration and Central Services (Rapenburg 70) and discover the beauty of mathematics. This exhibition is open to the public until 24 March.

The number of self-employed people has risen over the past few years. Professor of Economics Olaf van Vliet explains this development in Dutch online newspaper NU.nl.

The manner and context in which the government supports citizens' initiatives are often more important than the legal framework. In practice, it only creates unnecessary division and there are no solid grounds for it. Esmée Driessen, PhD candidate at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative…

Our educational team has been awarded an ICTO-grant of €12000 for the LACDR for flipping the Biochemistry 2 classroom.

What makes Leiden the best student city in the Netherlands? This was the question students were invited to answer in films about their city. The winner will be announced on 29 June in the Schouwburg in Leiden.

The first biennial symposium Environmental History in the Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries is scheduled for October 25 and 26, 2024. This event aims to facilitate the exchange of recent research, ongoing projects, and key discussions within the realm of environmental history among scholars from…

Vanuatu, a Pacific island state vulnerable to rising sea levels and increasingly violent storms, initiated a resolution to be submitted to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday 29 March 2023.

14 March 2018 a Citizens’ Dialogue about plastic-use in Europe with First-Vice President Frans Timmermans took place in Utrecht. It was one in a series of dialogues organized by the European Commission held throughout Europe. LAPP-student Emily den Boer joined the evening.

Caroline van Eck has been awarded the Descartes-Huygens Prize. She will receive the award in March 2014. The prize includes a period as a guest researcher in France. Van Eck has been awarded the prize for her excellent research and her contribution to French-Dutch collaboration.

During the coronavirus years 2020 and 2021, Dutch citizens became poorer, more anxious, less free and more rebellious. The State gained more power and entered the lives of citizens in all manner of ways to protect their health. Only recently did the State give citizens their freedom back – in part.

Moritz Jesse, associate professor of EU Law, was invited to give a talk about Migration, Asylum, and Integration at the 5th Ruppin International Conference on Immigration and Social Integration.

Media Technology alumna Marianne Bossema has received a doctoral grant for teachers. This grant enables teachers to spend five years doing research that will eventually lead to a PhD graduation. Marianne will do her research on social robotics, under supervision of Leiden University's Rob Saunders.

Every year, the Netherlands Red Cross and Belgian Red Cross-Flanders organise the Frits Kalshoven IHL Competition. This competition aims to provide students with an opportunity to practically engage with IHL, the rules that govern the conduct of war, by attending expert lectures and workshops, engaging…

Like last year, Leiden University is the third Dutch university in the 2016 Shanghai ranking. Leiden is ranked 93rd among the world's 500 best universities.

In SustainaBul, 16 higher education institutions are ranked on sustainability each year. Leiden University has managed to keep its fifth place. A good position, but with room for improvement.

'The EU should not give way under pressure as the war continues,' writes Joris Larik, assistant professor of European law, in an opinion piece that was recently published in Dutch newspaper FD.

‘Discipline and Place’ is a lecture series offered by LeidenGlobal to PhD and Research MA students in the Fall of 2020. It gives students an opportunity to reflect on the broader field of the Social Sciences and the Humanities – including Archaeology and Law – and to position their own research accordingly.…

LUCIS is happy to welcome Christian Müller to Leiden from mid-April to mid-May.

Leiden University has taken seventh place in the UI Green Metric, a global sustainability ranking for universities. Almost 1,000 universities from all over the world participate in the ranking.

Michel Orrit has received an NWO-TTW Open Technology Programme grant. He will use it to image single molecules without the need for fluorescence.

An interdisciplinary photo exhibition about crafts and craftsmanship in different cultures will open at Oude UB on 6 October. At the opening Fridus Steijlen will give an introduction to the Tau Tau puppets that are made in Sulawesi, Indonesia.

After a successful pilot, the Honours Academy is pleased to announce a second International Leiden Leadership Programme (ILLP) starting in 2014 - 2015!

Why do we give students fictional assignments when there is a multitude of real-world problems just waiting to be solved? Leiden University, Leiden University of Applied Sciences and the Municipality of Leiden are joining forces with partners from the public sector in the Learning with the City project,…

More than 80 percent of the EU’s agricultural subsidies go to the production of animals or animal feed. These products are responsible for 84 percent of the EU’s food-related greenhouse gas emissions. That is revealed in a new study by three Leiden researchers published in Nature Food. ‘If we continue…

Almost everywhere in the world where the post exists, the beadle is a ‘master of ceremonies’ who only makes his appearance on special occasions. In Leiden the beadle does much more. He is indispensable at dissertation defences and orations. He directs ceremonies and is a master at calming nerves.

External PhD candidate Liselore Tissen (Leiden University/Delft University of Technology) has been blogging on the Faces of Science website since March about her daily work as a researcher. ‘Academia is anything but stuffy.’

Theoretical research does not always give us the right solution to a problem in society. This message, loud and clear, is delivered during the final presentations of the Master Honours Class 'Social Innovation in Action'.

A more efficient solar panel sounds great. But what if these new panels consume more toxic materials, or their production consumes a lot of energy? Leiden environmental scientists, together with colleagues from the Fraunhofer ISE, address this multifaceted question in a new publication in the prestigious…

Leiden University is under fire: it is allegedly doing too little to tackle antisemitism. Rector Hester Bijl responds to this accusation and to a video from 2014 on social media in which extreme remarks are made. ‘We can be short about such comments: they are unacceptable. The university is and always…

Happy students and proud families, friends and lecturers; on 13 July the first fifteen refugee students graduated from the Preparatory Year for teaching in Leiden. They started a programme in September at a Dutch university of applied sciences or an academic university. 'This is just the start!'

Dr Ionica Smeets, one of the well-known ‘Maths girls’, has been appointed part-time Professor of Science Communication at Leiden University with effect from 1 July. Over the coming five years she will carry out research on science communication, how the subject is taught and how to raise students’ enthusiasm…

It all started with demonstrations protesting about the death of George Floyd from police brutality in Minneapolis, but the Black Lives Matter protest is spreading like wildfire across the whole of the US. Every day, thousands of people are taking to the streets. We asked American Studies expert Sara…

Dr. Mikihiro Moriyama was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1960. He first came to Leiden for a year in 1988, and then stayed from 1992 to 1995 and was back again in June 2003 for his PhD. 'I’d never heard of the Sweat Room until I heard about it at a Leiden alumni meeting in Jakarta. When I visited Leiden in…

The state should prepare 'lifers' better for returning to society, for example by giving them some control over their own lives. This is the finding of Marieke Liem in her book 'After Life Imprisonment', published on 19 August.

How does a farmer decide if his cow is a prize winner? An anthropologist studying these farmers should not only look at the farmers themselves, but should in particular learn how they see the world. This is what Cristina Grasseni, the new Professor of Anthropology contends. Inaugural address on 30 O…

The person who cried out at Dam Square on Remembrance Day in 2010. For Michiel van der Wolf this marked the rise of a new phenomenon: that of ‘confused people’. Because since that Remembrance Day, the number of reports of ‘confused people’ in the Netherlands has increased rapidly in the statistics.…

It's a no-brainer: of the candidates that you can vote for on 23 May, 14 studied at Leiden University. We asked four of them about their motivation and ambitions. In this article we interview Samira Rafaela, alumna of Public Administration, and Caspar Rutten, who is studying Law.

It would be better for students and organisations if internships lasted longer than two months and could be part-time. This was one of the suggestions at Leiden University Meets/Needs Employers on 27 June 2017.

During the Faculty of Science New Year's reception, Daniël Rozen was named Discoverer of the year 2015. Nienke van der Marel and Koen van der Maaden both won the prize for the best dissertation and Jeroen van Smeden was named Best Teacher of 2015.

If you want to talk about inclusion, you have to bring up the subject of race. This is what Kamna Patel said at Leiden University’s annual Diversity Symposium on 22 January. She is Vice-Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at University College London. We spoke to her beforehand.

The buildings are closed and all classes have moved online: these are strange times for students at our university. And for international students, it is even more complicated. They are here without their friends and family, and had to decide whether to stay here or return home. Three of them share…

Would you like to organise a session during the biggest multidisciplinary event in Europe - the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) conference - to be held in Leiden from 13 to 16 July 2022? If so, send us your proposal! Archaeologist Corinne Hofman is one of the driving forces behind the conference and…

Maartje van den Heuvel, researcher and curator of photography at Leiden University, will be giving a tutorial next semester to master students of Film & Photographic Studies. A great opportunity for them to work with an exceptional collection from the Leiden University Library. Van den Heuvel explains…

Naomi Ellemers, Professor of Social Psychology of Organisations, is one of the four winners of the Spinoza Prize for 2010. ‘This is absolutely fantastic – something that as a researcher you hardly dare to dream of!’

Hermelijn Smits is Professor of Host-commensal Interactions and Immune Modulation. In this role she is increasing our current understanding of the way in which microbes and parasites shape our immune system to protect us from respiratory infections and chronic inflammatory diseases. In her inaugural…

Young researchers met this month for the fifth Science Communication Summer School. ‘This is the first time some participants get to meet other researchers who also enjoy science communication. It’s great to see’, says Julia Cramer, one of the coordinators.

To mark its 75th anniversary, the Netherlands War Graves Foundation is publishing a portrait of a war victim every week this year. On 24 January the drawing of Irawan Soejono, a Leiden student and Indonesian resistance member, was unveiled at the Groenesteeg cemetery in Leiden, the place where Soejono…