The Houthis are attacking ships in the Red Sea. Rerouting via South Africa is expensive, whereas the Arctic route only takes a week. Once a no-go zone, this route might be a more realistic option. Mind the nuclear submarines, though…

The interplay between literature and law is what Frans-Willem Korsten wants to address as a brand-new professor of Literature, Culture and Law. That means doing research, but certainly also teaching. 'The Hague is of crucial importance for the humanities.'

Future technologies will drastically influence our daily lives. To what extent will that benefit us? The Brave New World future congress on 2 and 3 November in Leiden will reveal a range of different scenarios, some optimistic and some worrying.

It is partly thanks to Leiden professor Michel Orrit that we are today able to study individual molecules. He just missed winning a Nobel Prize, but is today the recipient of another important scientific award: NWO’s prestigious Spinoza Prize.

Software development is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a sociologist. Three years ago, John Boy began developing his software package Textnets. Because of Corona, he was less able to concentrate on writing scientific research and also setting up the online courses…

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.

Former archaeology student Ivo Verheijen made a unique discovery in Schöningen in Germany: the almost complete skeleton of an extinct Eurasian straight-tusked elephant. The remains show that our ancestors enjoyed the odd elephant steak. But they weren’t the only ones…

The research group headed by Leiden chemist Marc Koper has discovered a catalyst that minimizes the production of chlorine gas during salt water electrolysis. The invention can enable the direct production of hydrogen from seawater. The article has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical…

Western civil servants openly struggle with their government’s policies on the war in Gaza. During a meeting at Campus The Hague, three former civil servants told their stories.

Viktorija Kostadinova, from Macedonia and currently a second-year PhD student at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, has just returned after two and a half months at the University of Michigan: ‘It was a truly rewarding experience.’

Ijeoma Uchegbu is Professor of Pharmacy at University College London (UCL). As a female scientist of colour, she was initially reluctant to play an active role in the university’s diversity policy. Until, that is, she had a radical change of heart: ‘I knew it; I had to become an evangelist.'

In the search for new medicines against diseases such as cancer, a Leiden team has developed a new workflow. This approach combines artificial intelligence (AI) with molecular modelling and is suitable for finding unknown and innovative drug structures, the researchers proved.

On 26 November historian Jan Grabowski and sociologist Barbara Engelking will both give the Cleveringa Lecture. They wrote a book about the Holocaust in Poland and were taken to court for defamation.

How big is the universe? How do stars form and evolve? And does life exist elsewhere in the Universe? These main questions in astronomy are the themes of the new exhibition Above & Beyond, which was created in honour of the hundredth anniversary of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The exhibition…

Leiden Professor of Museums, Collections and Society, Pieter ter Keurs, conducts research into the provenance of museum collections. This is important for the return of heritage. But Ter Keurs is interested in why people collect at all.

Yousef Yousef (39), a successful entrepreneur in the water-quality industry, recently joined the Advisory Board at Leiden Law School. Read the interview about his career.

We continue to work from home as much as possible. How are the staff members of the Institute for History doing? Mike Schmidli shares his experience below.

During the past year online meetings and lectures have become a firm feature of university life. One of the highlights of the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics’ online activities has been the online seminar series ‘Language policy and practices in the Global North and South’ organised by guest…

Diplomatica addresses the broad range of work being done across the social sciences and the humanities that takes diplomacy as its focus of investigation. The journal explores and investigates diplomacy as an extension of social interests, forces, and environments.

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.’

Inspiration from outside and best practices from inside the University. These were the most important ingredients of the symposium on inclusivity organised by the Diversity Office at Leiden University on 22 November.

For the first time, astronomers have managed to take a photo of a supermassive black hole and its shadow. They used the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a worldwide network of eight radio telescopes that together form a virtual telescope the size of the earth. The news was presented in six press conferences…

German-American Mia Müller (26) has been working at the European Parliament for three years now as Press Officer at The Greens/EFA Group. She is a bit nervous about her 'first' elections.

In June 2024 the Faculty of Archaeology welcomed a new Assistant Professor. Dr Alejandra Roche Recinos, originally from Guatemala, will strengthen the Faculty’s expertise on the archaeology of Central America. ‘I want to explore the lesser known archaeology of Southern Guatemala.’

Not all sustainable business models have the impact they claim, Leiden researcher Levon Amatuni revealed. Car sharing and phone reuse, for example, have a smaller positive effect than previously thought. Amatuni advises people to ‘pay attention to actual changes in their consumption behaviour rather…

Welcome to the 2024-2025 academic year! I hope this finds you feeling refreshed following an enjoyable and restful summer holiday season. As we start the autumn semester, I want to look back briefly by highlighting 10 significant milestones at LUCSoR from this past year (some of which I referenced in…

Conference

Lecture

Lecture

Lecture, Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series

Lecture

Climate change is made up, the secret services murdered Pim Fortuyn and JFK, and the moon landing was a fake show. Conspiracy theories are of all times, providing sensation and entertainment, but also unrest and fear. The corona pandemic is new fuel for conspiracy theorists who set fire to 5G masts,…

Lecture, Research Seminar

Lecture, Lunch Research Seminar

Lecture

Lecture

VVI Research Meetings 2023-2024

Conference, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars

Workshop

Author: Andrew F. Cooper

Robert Ietswaart does research into gene regulation at the famous Harvard Medical School in Boston. He developed an algorithm to better predict whether a candidate medicine is going to produce side effects. He studied mathematics and physics in Leiden, and gained his PhD in computational biology in…

Peter Slort is the highly driven portfolio holder for Diversity with the Dutch National Police. Since November 2016 he has been spreading the importance of diversity throughout the police organisation.

Her specialist field is molecular astrophysics, and she is the most quoted scholar in her field. In this, the year of astronomy, she is the ideal person to give the Dies lecture at the university with the world's oldest astronomy institute; it goes without saying that the lecture will be on the newest…