The extension of the Dutch government’s Covid-19 relief measures for businesses has ensured that in the last six months of 2020 the number of bankruptcies was at an all-time low. However, according to the Bijzonder Beheer Barometer (special risk management barometer) an initiative of PwC and the Department…

The threats from North Korea have become so serious that the US and South Korea may feel compelled to respond. Remco Breuker, Leiden Professor of Korean Studies, would like to see a European mediator.

Leiden University announced on 19 March 2020 that there would be no more face-to-face teaching for the rest of this academic year. That was a big decision with big consequences, but students in Leiden are staying positive and trying to make the best of it. Read on to be inspired by how Leiden students…

On 8 May, the memoirs of Jang Jin-sung are appearing worldwide under the title Dear Leader. Jan Jin-sung was a member of the personal circle of the former North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il. Dear Leader provides a radically different perspective on the workings of the regime, as it reveals the moving…

Lecture, Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series

In the beginning of December 2016 PhD candidate Catarina Guzzo Falci was awarded a scholarship for a collections study by Musée du quai Branly. The Musée du quai Branly has implemented this scholarship programme to document its collections.

Willemijn Tuinstra has won the Uitgeverij Verloren/Johan de Witt-award for History 2020 with her Master Thesis 'Conscience & connections. Marcellus Franckheim (1587-1644) and his contacts in the Habsburg World at the eve of the Thirty Years War'.

Studying abroad and going on an exchange is a great way to broaden your horizons and explore new places, cultures, and fields of study. In addition to a full-semester exchange, there are many other possibilities such as a summer school or an internship. For example, LUC student Manju von Rospat went…

On Valentine’s day, the ELS lab @Leiden launched the ELS Atelier, where a group of scholars met to see if they could find their match with a particular empirical method.

What are we referring to when we talk about ‘good work’? And what does it mean to be a good employer? Helen Pluut and Merel Cornax address these questions in a recently published editorial.

On 9 March, the first edition of the PhD preconference day, for and by PhDs, took place at KU Leuven. This day was organised by the VSR, ELS Academy and the KU Leuven.

In 1968 Japan was shocked by student protests and even today, exactly fifty years later, their effects can still be felt. An interdisciplinary group of researchers recently met to discuss them at Leiden University.

Kimia Heidary and Helen Pluut received the Best Paper Award at the Munich Summer Institute for their paper on consumer perceptions and personalized pricing.

As per 1 January 2022, Niek Strohmaier has joined Kifid’s Arbitration Committee.

The 10th Experimental Archaeology Conference of EXARC took place in Leiden, Netherlands, over three days; 20th to the 22nd April 2017, in Leiden University’s Faculty of Archaeology. A conference report was published on the website of EXARC.

On Saturday 13 May, the 11th edition of the International Cultural Festival took place. This festival brings together international students, Dutch students and inhabitants of Leiden for a trip around the world in one day.

A tv crew from Euronews came to Leiden to interview Eugenio Cusumano about his work on migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean. Eugenio is an expert on international relations.

Lecture

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.

To cover up their deportation plans which targeted Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Nazis re-opened schools. In her inaugural lecture, historian Sarah Cramsey demonstrates with examples how care was used ‘as a weapon’ during the Holocaust. She also stresses that care is a unifying cement in society…

Dr. Henk Schulte Nordholt, working at KITLV and LIAS, has been appointed extraordinary professor of Indonesian history for a five-year period.

Markus Davidsen, assistant professor of Religious Studies, is the winner of the 2021 Impact Prize. He is receiving the prize of 1,000 euros for the material he has developed for religious education in secondary schools.

PhD defence

Women behind the front play an important role in a large proportion of Iranian novels, written on the Iran and Iraq-war (1980-1988). But their martyrdom is an uncommon theme. Saeedeh Shahnahpur will give a lecture on this subject on 16 February.

A delegation from Leiden University will be visiting several Japanese universities and research institutions from 18 to 26 November to discuss research and teaching collaborations.

In the course of 2020 the Faculty of Archaeology was bolstered by some new staff members. Due to the coronavirus situation, sadly, this went for a large part unnoticed. In a series of interviews we are catching up, giving the floor to our new colleagues. We give the floor to Dr Martin Berger, who joined…

Rogier Creemers is a lecturer in Modern Chinese Studies. While he looks for challenges in his lectures, in his free time he much prefers to go back to basics and work with his hands.

For a long time, even many researchers thought that guide dogs were a relatively modern invention. An accidental encounter with archival material showed university lecturer Krista Milne that guide dogs helped their blind owners as far back as the Middle Ages. Milne now has received an NWO XS grant to…

Assistant professor Markus Davidsen has received the Comenius grant, with which he wishes to improve secondary education on religion. In this interview, he will tell more about the content of his project and its aims.

Many people have fled to the Netherlands since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, including students. But even before this war, students with refugee backgrounds were eager to study at Leiden University. How does the University help young people from various backgrounds find their way around the Dutch…

Members of LUCAS work in various buildings on the Witte Singel-Doelencomplex. The board and the secretariat are housed on the first floor of the P.N. van Eyckhof 3 (building 1165).

This year marks a special occasion because it was just ten years ago that the Georgian language was taught for the first time at Leiden University. It is even more exciting that its first professor, Ramaz Kurdadze, will return to Leiden this year to teach students interested in the language. Kurdadze…

The short film El Último Consejo (The Last Council), directed by alumna Itandehui Jansen, has won the Emerging Talent Award at the ImagineNative Film & Media Arts Festival in Toronto.

Assistant Professor Christopher Green was interviewed on ABC Australia about the recent COVID-19 outbreak in North Korea. Green says that the statistics the isolated country has given are ‘essentially nonsense’.

Lecture

Inaugural lecture

Lecture

This year, an NWO PhD in the Humanities grant went to Mink van IJzendoorn, enabling him to investigate the disappearance of amphorae. ‘We take means of packaging and shipment for granted, but they are deeply ingrained in our daily lives; they are crucial.’

In his VIDI project “Turning Over a New Leaf: Manuscript Innovation in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance” (2010-2015) Erik Kwakkel and his team studied how books and reading developed under influence of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, a period in which Europe went through a variety of cultural and intellectual…

Scientific methods and techniques have been employed in archaeological research since the very birth of the discipline. It is impossible to imagine modern archaeology without this expertise in archaeological sciences. These archaeological sciences take centre stage in the new temporal exhibition at…

Two months ago, history student Willemijn contracted coronavirus. At the time she was taking a course given by lecturer Rens Tacoma. What can you do if you’re even too ill to follow online lectures? And how are lecturers dealing with the growing number of sick students? ‘We have to work it out toget…

In the PhD project of Teuntje Vosters, which started in January 2016, she analyses the history of NGOs and their influence over time. The research question of her project is: to what extend and in what circumstances were NGOs successful in influencing European refugee policy between since 1900?

PhD defence

The greatest threat to the North Korean regime is not the outside world but its own developing private market and the growing frictions at the top. This was the argument put forward by North Korean exile Jang Jin-sung in his lecture in Leiden on 18 September 2014.

Since the disaster in Japan, professors, staff and students of the department of Japanese Language and Culture at Leiden University have regularly been contacted by the media asking for their opinion about the events taking place there. Ivo Smits and Kasia Cwiertka, Professors of Japanese, give their…

As a student, university lecturer Berthe Jansen fell under the spell of the Van Manen collection: a collection full of Tibetan writings and objects. A €1.5 million grant now makes it possible to take a really close look at it. 'There is still so much to do and discover.'

‘Silence in the corridor please’ are not the words you expect to hear on an open day attended by 5,000 students. From 12 studios in Leiden and The Hague, presentations are given during the Online Master’s Open Days telling students all about their future master’s programme.