With its Green Deal The European Union has set itself much-needed ambitious climate goals. But the energy crisis and geopolitical tensions are making these difficult to achieve. Seven researchers from the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities (LDE) alliance have written a white paper offering solutions.

2,240 plant extracts from 1,299 different plant species of Dutch origin. That’s the collection of the Dutch Extract Library, which has recently been transferred to the Institute of Biology Leiden. To plant biologist and contact person for this library Pingtao Ding this is a true treasury. ‘To bring…

The Dutch asylum application centre in Ter Apel is overburdened, an issue that is currently a prominent feature in the Dutch media. In podcast De Verbranders, PhD students Neske Baerwaldt and Wiebe Ruijtenberg engage in dialogue, and use different angles to examine themes related to migration, borders…

Assignments, work groups, deadlines and the first exams in sight! The Get Started campaign of Leiden University Libraries aims to help new students to find their way in the library. We can use the help of teachers for this campaign.

From March 1, Alenka Prinčič will be the new Head of the Centre for Digital Scholarship (CDS) at Leiden University Libraries. Her expertise in the areas of Research Support, Research Infrastructures and Open Publishing as well as her longstanding experience as a manager are excellent starting points…

Human Rights organisation Amnesty International recently set up a walk that passes by important locations in Leiden in relation to human rights. The Kamerlingh Onnes Building, home to Leiden Law School, has been included in the route.

Leiden University Libraries has been elected to the Executive Committee of the IIIF Consortium. The term of office is two years starting from January 2022.

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) in partnership with Elsevier hosted a series of online seminars on the challenges involved in achieving reproducibility in research. The seminars aimed to identify best practices that can help to overcome central challenges around reproducibility, and to convey several…

Join this lecture from professor Daniel Aldrich at the Spanish Steps in Wijnhaven on Wednesday 3 November. Dr. Sanneke Kuipers, associate professor in Crisis Governance, will be the moderator of the lecture and she and professor Aldrich give us a preview of the event.

With a recently published major research project and an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, the struggle for independence in Indonesia has been thrusted back into the spotlight. Leiden University is devoting attention to this topic as well. History students Sander van der Horst and Melle van Maanen joined…

On Friday 11 March (16.00 hrs.) Minister Dijkgraaf (Education, Culture and Science) will give a speech at Leiden University entitled ‘When knowledge becomes critical’. In the speech, he will address several critical challenges in science and society. The livestream will be open to all.

Early 2022, the UKB consortium renewed a number of 'read and publish' contracts with major publishers.

Ominous witches, gruesome monsters, and hideous freaks: from Saturday 15 June, Kunsthal Rotterdam will be putting the spotlight on the shady depths of human imagination in the exhibition Hello darkness, my old friend. Seventy works on paper from the collection of the Leiden University Libraries confront…

The theme of the Opening of the Academy Year on 4 September was sustainability and how the university could take the lead as a change agent. How is it going about this and what else can it do? There was also room for a critical note.

Arts and culture

Workshop

On Thursday, May 16, Leiden University Libraries is organizing a workshop on early photography of the Middle East. In the workshop, curator Maartje van den Heuvel shows photos of three adventurous Dutch nineteenth-century travel and photography pioneers. They created beautiful photos and photo albums…

Leiden scholars study clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia. But what exactly does the cuneiform script say?

The Epic of Gilgamesh was a lifelong inspiration to artist Harry van Kruiningen. This tale from Mesopotamia about the adventures of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk, and his friend Enkidu is one of the oldest surviving epics in world literature. Despite its almost 4,000 year age, it still captures…

Leiden University recently named a new building for Egyptologist Herta Mohr. But who was she?

Leiden scholars succeeded in making Arabic accessible to Western academic communities as early as the sixteenth century. But how did they approach this problem?

In de rubriek ‘Onderwijsheden’ delen Psychologiedocenten hun belangrijkste inzichten over college geven. Deze maand: Anouk van der Weiden ontwikkelde met een team collega’s en studenten een lespakket kritisch lezen, toepassen en schrijven. ‘Studenten denken: wie ben ík om kritiek te geven op een gepubliceerd…

How did the mythical kings of ancient Persia live? In this podcast, we delve into the Shahnameh, also known as the Book of Kings.

Persian stories with beautiful miniatures, letters on papyrus from Egyptian traders and medicinal manuscripts translated from Greek and edited in Arabic. Studium Generale organizes a lecture series on the world-famous manuscripts from the Middle East collection of Leiden University Libraries (UBL).…

Modern Arabic titles in the catalogue of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) can now also be consulted in original Arabic script. Taking away the need to transliterate titles, has made searching for Arabic source materials in the catalogue much easier and more efficient for users.

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Several of the most important manuscript collections in the Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Special Collections, comprising 443 extremely rare and often unique volumes, have been made available in Open Access via Digital Collections. The available manuscript collections include the private collections…

Symposium & Workshop

The Middle East has a rich literary tradition, which is steadily gaining a foothold in the West. Modern literary works deal with contemporary issues, such as the legacy of colonialism, the struggles between traditionalism and modernity, the place of women in society and the war in Israel/Palestine.

How do you move 3,000 fragile clay tablets that date back thousands of years? This was the challenge faced by staff from the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO). After years of preparation, the Liagre Böhl collection has been moved on trolleys to its new home.

Virtual presentation

Lecture, Summer School

The perception of the Middle East is riddled with stereotypes that have had dire consequences on its people. What is myth and what is reality? How did these stereotypes come about? What consequences have they had? All of these questions and more are answered within this reading list.