In high school, Tim van Erven read about an artificially intelligent algorithm that could solve mazes. From that moment on, he was sold: ‘There’s something magical about algorithms. With a list of fixed rules you can make them learn the most diverse things.’ This year, he won a Vidi grant, which he…

A star does not just appear in the sky overnight. Its creation takes tens of thousands of years. Twenty years ago, astronomers took a picture of a star in its birth phase. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) could now capture that same star in much greater detail. This does not only provide beautiful…

Spatial technology such as virtual reality can help patients who have difficulty with spatial cognition, for instance if they keep on losing their way. In her inaugural lecture, neuropsychologist Ineke van der Ham will talk about the importance of avatars, the patient experience and room for innovat…

Leiden social and organisational psychologist Carsten de Dreu has been awarded a Spinoza Prize, the top science prize in the Netherlands. We talked to him about his passion for group processes, Leiden University and his dreams for the future. ‘A Spinoza opens up a world of possibilities.'

The logistics and organisation of LUC’s introduction week 2020 were put under the spotlight this year in light of the restrictions which remain in place with respect to COVID-19. In the face of adversity, LUC rose to the challenge and met the learning curve with patience, dedication and resilience.

Students from ‘StudentinzetopSchool’ help schoolchildren and gain valuable teaching experience at the same time. In an online visit on 13 April, Queen Máxima spoke to pupils, students and teaching staff. She also spoke to participants from Leiden. ‘Teaching is wonderful, but it’s complex too.’

Antibiotic resistance is a common problem among patients. The European Project TIPAT trains pharmacologists, microbiologists and immunologists of six universities in interdisciplinary thinking. The ultimate goal is to develop better treatment guidelines to combat resistance. Coen van Hasselt of the…

It was a soggy Friday, but the visitors to the Master's Open Day were made of sterner stuff. Bachelor's students from all around the world defied the rain and wind to take a look at Leiden and The Hague to find out more about master's programmes and to get to know the cities themselves.

She narrowly defied bureaucracy and spent days angling for cod. In the North Sea, marine biologist Inge van der Knaap discovered that noise significantly disturbs fish behaviour. ‘There is now a lot of attention for underwater noise.’

A special type of mirror to reflect X-rays has more possible applications than space research. Targeted radiation therapy for cancer, for example. Next to his full-time job, physicist David Girou mapped out the possibilities. He will receive his PhD on 14 June.

Professor Tom Lubensky from the University of Pennsylvania is visiting Leiden University as the 64th Lorentz Professor at the department of Theoretical Physics. He is a pioneer in the field of theoretical soft matter physics and winner of the prestigious Buckley Condensed Matter Prize. We spoke with…

Exploring the minds of our primate cousins in the wild, using under-exploited observations of their travel paths. A large set of observations of the travel paths of wild primates provides new opportunities for in-depth insights in the evolution of the mental abilities that primates, including ourselves,…

Adults who were abused or mistreated as a child and consequently suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can benefit greatly from cognitive behavioural therapy. This is the conclusion of a study of 149 patients. Researcher and PhD candidate Chris Hoeboer is hopeful about the results and the…

Minou van der Werf advocates applying insights from social psychology to financial behaviour. Even small practical interventions can help people to make sensible financial choices, Van der Werf discovered as a result of her field studies. PhD defence 10 December.

Besides physics, the sleep of PhD students also benefits from Vitaly Fedoseev's PhD research. He will receive his doctorate on July 7 for his work on optomechanics within quantum mechanics. And also on a setup that eliminated the need for PhD students to push a button every hour for 72 hours.

How did the Arabs manage to maintain an empire based on Islamic principles for three hundred years? Arab expert Petra Sijpesteijn and her team will be examining this question over the coming five years, focusing on the correspondence of ordinary people. The research is being funded by an ERC Consolidator…

As a woman, working in Japan and Korea can be pretty tough, Yorum Beekman discovered. It prompted her to pursue a PhD on the subject: ‘I thought: hey, that’s interesting!’

Many mosaic stones and potsherds have been excavated, and a Byzantine synagogue is revealing its history layer by layer. The excavations at Horvat Kur are a field school for a young generation of researchers.

A passion for video games, visuals and science: it almost seems impossible to bring all of this together. Yet, scientific animator Vera Williams found that dream combination at NeCEN's microscopy lab. 'An image or animation can help clarify the content of complex research.'

What do the cloth trade and slavery have to do with each other? Quite a lot, as it turns out, as by history student Sjoerd Ramackers demonstrated in his bachelor’s thesis. He reveals that cloth merchant Daniel van Eijs was closely associated with four plantations in Berbice, a former Dutch colony on…

After almost 18 months of following lectures alone in their rooms, many students are going back to face-to-face classes for the first time. And the same is true for the lecturers. How do people feel about it? We went to Leiden Law School to find out. ‘For a whole year, I’ve been watching lectures in…

Antoaneta Dimitrova, Hoogleraar Comparative Governance, analyseerde als coördinator van het drie jaar durende internationale onderzoeksproject EU-Strat de relatie tussen de EU en de landen van het Oostelijk Partnerschap en deelde haar expertise over dit onderwerp in een artikel in Trouw.

On 1 August, Egbert Fortuin has been appointed Professor of Russian Language and Linguistics. After a five-year term as vice-dean of the Faculty Board, he is eager to fully devote himself to the study programme. His appointment can therefore be summarised in three words: 'I am back'.

In addition to cholesterol and high blood pressure as risk factors for atherosclerosis, we may need to address our own immune system to prevent a heart attack or stroke. Marie Depuydt revealed which cells exactly reside in the atherosclerotic plaque that narrows an artery. The presence of a diverse…

Ten years, it is so hard to believe that it is already ten years ago that Leiden University College was officially opened on a sunny Wednesday in 2010 in The Hague. A day of achievement, joy, and dreams for the future. It seems so much shorter and yet so much has been developed and built, so many happy…

Where is the dividing line between man and machines? What makes us wiser than robots? How do you know if a film on internet is real? These are the questions that will be addressed at the Brave New World conference on 8 and 9 November.

Did you know that PhD candidates are also alumni of your alma mater? High time to put a PhD alumna and her research in the spotlight. Besides, this month our UNICEF Chair in Children’s Rights is celebrating its tenth anniversary.

In donut-shaped buildings, particle accelerators take super-detailed X-ray images. Yet those images are not good enough to learn how to drive on hydrogen for example. Mathematics PhD student Allard Hendriksen has developed an algorithm that improves the images without having to learn from data from…

With his dance routine and YouTube clips, he even manages to make grammar fun. His infectious enthusiasm and innovative teaching methods have won Thijs Porck, a lecturer in Old and Middle English, a nomination for the LUS Teaching Prize.

The Institute for History has a new academic director. Professor of Early Modern History Jeroen Duindam will take on this role from 1 September. ‘You can only do this job properly if you make time for it.’

The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972 made a big impression on Nicole Hoevertsz. I’m going to be there one day, the eight-year-old Nicole decided. Her passion for sport and her perseverance brought her further than the once so introvert Aruban had dared to hope. Her appointment…

For a brief period Leiden University was the hub of the world of linguistics. The 48th annual conference of the Societas Linguistica Europaea was held here at the start of September. Almost 600 linguists came from all corners of the world to the city of discoveries to attend this prestigious event.

All first-year bachelor’s students at Leiden University are assigned to a tutor group, with a student as mentor and a lecturer as tutor. This extra contact is essential during the corona pandemic. The first groups have now met up. We spoke to two mentors from Leiden Law School.

For many high school students, mathematical formulas are nothing more than abracadabra. Didactic and mathematics teacher Peter Kop wants to change this. For his PhD research, he devised a new series of lessons full of drawing assignments that learn students to assign more meaning to the formulas. Kop:…

It is a familiar phenomenon: you ask the assistant on your phone to call your mother, but it calls a friend instead. Tom Kouwenhoven, PhD student in the SAILS programme, investigates how humans and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can better communicate with each other, so that these kinds of situations…

In the midterm elections in the United States on 6 November, the Democrats won the majority in the House of Representatives, thus regaining control of the House over the Republicans. But the Republicans expanded their majority in the Senate. Three of our researchers, experts on US politics, share their…

Bringing together institutes and research groups, how do you do that? The Faculty of Science set up a joint research theme and financed three PhD positions. After four years, the profiling programme Endocannabinoids expires. ‘It really brought us together, and the collaborations remain.’

Every summer, Leiden University is the setting of dozens of summer schools in which professionals and students can receive extra training on a specific topic within a short space of time. We took a look at a summer programme on extremism. ‘A recruiter for al-Qaeda said that I could change the world.…

Hemin Hawezy, a political & international government adviser, has started as a dual PhD candidate at Leiden University. Bram Klievink and Toon Kerkhoff are supervising his research on the organisation of digitalisation in government; a good example of transdisciplinary collaboration.

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.

The walls of Paul van der Velde’s study at the International Institute for Asian Studies are full of neat rows of post-it notes. As organiser in chief, he is right in the middle of the upcoming ICAS 11, the 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars, which is returning to where it was first held…

The clever young people at the National ThinkTank who tackle an urgent societal problem each year include two Leiden alumni this autumn: Jiao Harmsen and Jort van Dalen. They will spend at least four months getting to grips with the topic of ‘education’.

A word from our director

September 2022 marks the tenth anniversary of International Studies bachelor's programme. Some (former) staff members tell us what they think makes the Faculty of Humanities' largest programme so special.

Stilzitten doet alumnus Bart Jansen niet graag. Zo geeft hij les in onder meer Nederland, Maleisië en Curaçao, houdt hij zich naast het recht ook graag bezig met kunst en mystiek en vindt hij naar eigen zeggen ‘alles wat fout gaat’ wel interessant aan de rechtsfilosofie. ‘Ik ben gek op veelzijdige mensen;…

In the depots of the Faculty of Archaeology, many artifacts, accumulated after decades of fieldwork across the world, are stored. A new project, the Leiden Inventory Depot (LID), aims to unlock this wealth of information to the outside world. Our Master’s students Sam Botan and Rishika Dhumal are currently…

The Sustainable City Lab The Hague will be a hub that connects organisations in The Hague that work on sustainability with the research and teaching at Leiden University. ‘We’re going to set to work on complex sustainability challenges in our own backyard,’ says project leader Eefje Cuppen.

The Schengen Agreement has resulted in systematic border controls between EU Member States largely ceasing to apply. Solutions for the associated security risks are often sought in information technology. Tim Dekkers investigated how such technology is applied in this context and will defend his PhD…

Studying law and then working in sales … Dion Latten loves Leiden and he loves law, but what he loves most is working for BMW. Currently Legal Counsel at BMW, he’ll soon be joining the sales team. ‘Don’t be swayed by the fear of making the wrong choices.’

Communication is the transmission of information. All day long we are busy explaining and making things clear to each other, but exactly how we do that varies from language to language. Associate Professor Jenneke van der Wal delved into African Bantu languages for a Vidi project.