In the world of Ancient Greece the interpretation of supernatural signs was a versatile tool to facilitate decision-making. This is the central hypothesis of the PhD dissertation of historian Kim Beerden. Defence on 14 February.

The Executive Board has adopted a new Code of Conduct on Integrity for staff. This new code encompasses all the existing regulations within Leiden University, including in the field of research, behaviour towards students and purchasing. 'This Code of Conduct is a very clear statement,' commented Rector…

The Gravitation programme NETWORKS has been awarded a COFUND grant of 3 million euros. Half of this comes from the European Commission's Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, with industry partners paying the other half. Of the fourteen new PhD candidates, two will join Frank den Hollander's research…

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An impressive 12 researchers from Leiden University have been awarded an 800,000-euro grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This will enable them to develop their own line of research over the next five years.

Jean-Eric Paquet, a Director-General at the European Commission, visited Leiden University on 20 February. He was impressed by the researchers’ drive, the wide range of topics that they research and the strong collaboration with Leiden Bio Science Park.

Every year many Leiden lecturers and students visit an international university for the purposes of research or study. In the coming newsletters a different Leiden scholar will give his or her view from abroad.

Patients who can’t afford medicine. Refugees who need help. Expats who are ill. All alongside research into obesity. Having trained as a doctor, Dennis Mook-Kanamori chose the hard reality of life as a GP together with a job as a researcher at the LUMC.

Dutch households, especially those on middle and high incomes, pay billions of euros more in tax than promised in election manifestos. Companies, on the other hand, generally pay less tax than initially announced. These are the conclusions reached by Wilmar Bolhuis, PhD student at Leiden University.…

Sumerian is a dead language that is not related to any other language. Howeverr, Bram Jagersma managed to compile a grammar of the language, based on inscriptions and clay tablets. Traces of the Sumerian number system can still be seen in our sixty-minute hour. Jagersma received his PhD on 4 Novembe…

It often takes a long time for people with an eating disorder to seek help and receive treatment. eHealth could be a solution, PhD candidate Pieter Rohrbach has discovered.

Academic research on terrorism is getting better all the time. This is the conclusion of university lecturer Bart Schuurman after studying 3,442 articles. He published his study in Terrorism and Political Violence.

Journalists in the Netherlands are unhappy about the handling of their requests under the Dutch Open Government Act (Wet open overheid, Woo). They say these requests take too long, produce too little results, and that communication could be better.

Acute care agencies in the Netherlands are overwhelmed and this causes major problems. Physician-researcher Naomi Minderhout therefore spent the past few years at the Health Campus in The Hague researching how acute care in the Netherlands can be improved at all levels so that it remains accessible…

The new Erfgoed Gezocht/Heritage Quest website means you can play armchair detective and hunt for undiscovered burial mounds in the Veluwe. This will help stop them being destroyed by construction projects. The website is the initiative of the Leiden University Faculty of Archaeology in collaboration…

PhD candidate Magda Pucci studied indigenous music in Brazil. She and her group Mawaca travelled through the Amazon and played with peoples there such as the Paiter Suruí, Kayapó, Ikolen-Gavião and the Huni-Kuin. PhD defence on 19 March.

one or three sessions per week

How is interdisciplinary collaboration faring at Leiden University? And has disciplinarity been completely abandoned? I’d like to reflect on some concerns among colleagues and on our plans for the future.

Role models are key to inspiring the next generation. Fifteen female professors therefore celebrated International Women's Day with girls aged between 12 and 16. Because although the number of women at the (academic) top is increasing, we're not there yet.

On 11 June 2023, the International Insolvency Institute (III) announced its 2023 prizes in International Insolvency Studies during its 23rd Annual Conference in Amsterdam. Raghav Mittal from Leiden University was honoured to be a recipient of the Bronze Medal for his paper on Equity retention in SME…

Chrisandya Sinurat (Sandy), an alumnus of the International Civil and Commercial Law Program from Leiden University, has been awarded the gold medal in the research competition of the International Insolvency Institute’s (III) 2024 Prize in International Insolvency Studies. Sandy was honoured to be…

In October 2019, OSCL organised a Hackathon on the ins and outs of MRI datasharing

An impressive 21 research projects by Leiden researchers have been awarded Veni funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Man is nature's mind-reading champion: we are better able than any other living beings to empathise with others. This comes in part from our story-telling culture, according to Max van Duijn. PhD defence 20 April.

Alumnus Vincent Renken studied Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences in Leiden and is now co-founder of an outdoor escape room company. ‘I asked myself: do you want a standard life or an adventure?’

New housing in old labs and striking architecture for University buildings and high-tech companies, not to mention waterside parks. An exhibition in Oude UB shows the radical changes that are in store for the Leiden Bio Science Park over the coming years.

It is important for social animals to be able to recognise one another quickly. Humans are able to recognise each other immediately from their faces. Faces are also important for chimpanzees, but a new study by neuropsychologist Mariska Kret in PLOS ONE shows that the animals' buttocks also play a…

On January 25th, artist Jonas Staal will defend his dissertation which explores the development of propaganda art from the 20th to the 21st century.

Collaboration within Europe is currently at a low ebb. This is threatening to undermine our freedom and the rights that are anchored in the European legal order, says Piet Hein Donner, Vice-President of the Council of State and Cleveringa professor at Leiden University for 2015. His lecture on 26 November…

Alumnus Sam van Raalte followed his passion into freelance journalism.

Professor Simon Portegies Zwart and doctor Jeroen Bédorf had the honour to write for the IEEE Software magazine.

Arriving at a new workplace has never been as easy as it was in the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo. I’m very grateful for the nice colleagues who helped me in the first few days to settle down in Egypt and start to work in the office. Although I spent the last 3 years on site as a field archaeologist…

PhD defence

PhD defence

Wednesday 18 January 2017, a university-wide meeting was organized on the upcoming alterations with regard to the role and tasks of Study Program Committees (Opleidingscommissies; OCs) within Leiden University.

The EL CID introduction week has come to a close. This was the week when first-year students got to know one another, the city and their study programme better. See the week in photos.

Complex Structures Made Simple - Continuous Flow Production of Core Cross-Linked Polymeric Micelles for Paclitaxel Pro-Drug-Delivery

This speech from the throne was a little less woolly than last year's, you might think. Gerard Breeman and Arco Timmermans know that for sure. Breeman and Timmermans from the Institute of Public Administration have been analysing the speech from the throne for years. Just like Tuesday 15 September 2020.…

The Ministry of Health seems to be going full steam ahead in the search for a track-and-trace app to contain the coronavirus crisis. The apps are being developed with irresponsible haste, according to Valerie Frissen, Professor of Digital Technologies and Social Change.

On Tuesday 23 January the Creative Intelligence Lab and Media Technology MSc program welcome Ziv Epstein from the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI to Leiden. He will give the public keynote to close off our 7th annual Social Technologies Symposium, entitled "The Art and Science of Social Scrying:…

Apply now for the fourth LUCIS Summer School on Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim world, which will take place from Tuesday 23 August until Friday 2 September 2022 in Leiden. The deadline for applications is Friday 27 June 2022.

Dr Moritz Jesse, Associate Professor of European Law at the Europa Institute Leiden, was sharing his thoughts on the transition from asylum seeker to refugee from a perspective of immigrant integration in Prague.

Researchers from the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and from universities in the Netherlands have used high-tech imaging to uncover the details of a rare Mexican codex dating from before the colonisation of America.

'What do people do with snake venom?' That's the question 11-year-old Joep asked in Dutch TV show Willem Wever. Leiden Professor of Evolutionary developmental zoology and snake venom expert Michael Richardson answers the question in his laboratory.

A team of astronomers led by Dutch scientists have directly imaged a giant planet orbiting at a large distance around a sun-like star. Why this planet is so massive, and how it got to be there, is still a mystery. The researchers will publish their findings in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The 'language analysis interview' on the basis of which the Immigration and Naturalisation Department attempts to determine where an asylum-seeker without any documents comes from, does not meet the criteria of reliability and validity. Joachim Detailleur, student of Arabic, substantiates this statement…

Apply now for the LUCIS Summer School on Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim world, which will take place from Tuesday 15 August until Friday 25 August 2017 in Leiden. The deadline for applications is Friday 16 June 2017.

Nearly all university buildings at the Leiden Bio Science Park will be open and operating again as of Wednesday 24 May. Last night a team worked hard to restore the power to the buildings in phases and this was successful. Students and staff can work and study there again.

A recent study in Ecological Economics, led by Leiden environmental scientist Bertram de Boer, states that the European Union could lower its environmental footprint by carefully selecting the countries from which it imports goods. The publication was picked up by Science for Environment Policy, a news…

The Sixteenth International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN XVI) will be held in Leiden, The Netherlands on September 5-9, 2020. Leiden University and the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) are proud to host the 30th anniversary of PPSN.