As of 1 January 2020 Daan Weggemans has succeeded Ruth Prins as programme director of the bachelor Security Studies. We asked him several questions about himself and his new position.

Three Dutch research institutes - including the Leiden University’s KITLV - will conduct a follow-up study on the use of violence during the Dutch East Indies war of decolonisation (1945 – 1950). The government has designated 4.1 million Euros for this study.

Professor of Media Law and Information Society Tarlach McGonagle is concerned about the increase in online disinformation and hate speech. He argues that human rights should guide new policies for the online world. McGonagle will give his inaugural lecture on 9 May.

Andrew DJ Shield (History) and Ann Marie Wilson (Leiden University College) have been awarded a seed grant for their project, “Transnational Gay/Lesbian Activism since the 1960s.” Granted: €3000.

Today, the Dutch Advisory Board on public access and government information (ACOI) issued its opinion on how the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) makes documents on Covid policy accessible to the public.

Thanks to Ian Cook’s ‘Who Made My Clothes?’ MOOC, thousands of students have researched where their clothes come from. How does this geographer from the University of Exeter manage to inspire such enthusiasm in his students? He and his student Zahra Ali will explain all during the Education Festival…

PhD candidates in medicine, Wouter Jan Geelhoed and Nan van Geloven, are the winners of the Leiden preliminary round of FameLab. They are through to the final on 22 April.

On Saturday 11 May 2019, the BA South and Southeast Asian Studies programme held an Alumni Event for former students. All current students and staff were also invited. Several alumni were invited to talk about their study and career during two panel sessions. An inspiring afternoon!

By spreading fake news via TV spots and Twitter with the use of Social Bots, Pascal professor Heike Trautmann is investigating the characteristics of fake news. She is calling on Leiden researchers to cooperate in the project.

The Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport is to appeal against a recent court ruling on the Public Access to Government Information Act (Wet openbaarheid van bestuur, WOB). The court ruled that the way in which the Ministry handles WOB requests was not in accordance with the law.

Government and public bodies in the Netherlands increasingly make use of complex data that has been collected on citizens. But the connections between all this data are nontransparent and the algorithms government services use to process the data are difficult to verify. This is a recipe for persistent…

Earlier this year, Spain passed a law that legalises euthanasia and assisted suicide. Spain is now the fourth country in Europe with such a law. Its introduction, however, is not plain sailing.

The first Online Career Week took place last week, from 11 to 15 May. Instead of the Campus The Hague and Humanities Career Event, the Career Services of 3 faculties organised this alternative. Almost 400 students signed up!

On 16 April, an edition of Zembla, the Dutch documentary programme produced by BNNVARA, investigated the connection between Thierry Baudet, leader of Dutch political party Forum for Democracy and the Kremlin. Ben de Jong, visiting lecturer at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, was interviewed…

I am a Lecturer in Contemporary Military History and Security Studies, teaching in both the History and International Relations programmes here at Leiden. I grew up in Yorkshire, England and was interested in history and international politics from a young age. In 2003 I went to the University of Cambridge…

On March 16th, students from all over the world visited Leiden's Humanities Faculty to explore their options during the Master's Open Day. 'Leiden is a beautiful city, I feel like I could definitely study here.'

Dr. Joris Larik, Assistant Professor at LUC The Hague, has been selected for a fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) in Amsterdam. During his fellowship, Larik will conduct research on a fundamental question: Was Brexit worth it when it comes to striking trade deals around…

AI is playing an increasingly important role in our lives, but that is not without danger. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga at eLaw warns that AI does not pay enough attention to the LGBTQ community.

Nieuwscheckers, the fact-checking initiative at Leiden University, will check the claims made by politicians during the European elections. Lots of individuals and organisations supported their crowdfunding campaign. ‘During the elections, it’s hugely important that the emphasis is on facts, and that…

On 28 December 2019, Dutch newspaper Trouw published an essay by Constant Hijzen, Assistant Professor Intelligence Studies at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs and the Institute for History. In the essay, he discusses two books on a new genre of espionage: the authors provide access into…

Recently, Carlotta Rigotti participated in the ViolenceStop project, a collaboration between Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) and the Central University “Marta Abreu” of Las Villas (Cuba).

‘People talk at the coffee machine about what’s on the front page of De Telegraaf.’ Kamran Ullah took office as deputy editor-in-chief of De Telegraaf on 1 January this year. Ullah began studying Public Administration at Leiden in 2002.

PhD defence

The aim of this project is to study the influence of Longinus’s treatise ‘On the sublime’ on practice and theory of architecture and theatre in seventeenth-century Paris and Amsterdam.

Misinformation spreads easily and fast. It gets presented as news, whereas actual news gets dismissed as fake. Conflicting streams of information allows all sides to cherry-pick whatever is most comfortable, boosting degrees of confidence and confusing the deliberation of both politicians and voters.…

At the Humanities Hub, researchers can immerse themselves in the world of Digital Humanities, while students get the opportunity to develop their digital and media skills within the field of the humanities. The lab spaces of LUCDH, the Faculty of Humanities, and Journalism and New Media provide modern…

The SAILS conference The Future of AI is Here (and Guess What … it’s Human) brought together researchers and policy makers to discuss the important issues in the area of artificial intelligence (AI). Where are the opportunities and what are the dangers?

Alumnus Peter Burger – along with his colleague Alexander Pleijter – is the face of fact-checking in the Netherlands. ‘My degree led straight to this.’

The African Studies Centre Leiden presented the last book by its renowned colleague Prof. Stephen Ellis (1953-2015), This Present Darkness: A history of Nigerian organised crime, on 9 June. The book was published posthumously. Former colleagues and friends paid tribute to Ellis, who was regarded as…

At the Annie Romein-Verschoor Lecture on 8 March, former Minister of Education Jet Bussemaker expressed her surprise at the commotion again raised by the theme of the economic independence of women, within and outside politics.

On Friday 9 December, Renate van der Zee and professor Marieke Liem held a lecture on 'Visible and invisible violence against women' at the Campus The Hague.

What actually goes into the development of a massive open online course, a MOOC? University lecturer Tijmen Pronk developed the course 'Introduction to Comparative Linguistics of Indo-European Languages' independently. He talks about his motivation and experiences.

Kira Nijland follows the master programme Policy in Practice and is since October the student member of the Institute Board of Cultural Anthropology. She previously gained board experience at study associations Itiwana and WDO. Now she would like to get to know the university structures from behind…

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.

The winner of the Africa Thesis Award 2023 is Rachel Dubale, a graduate from the Research Master in African Studies at Leiden University, with her thesis “They think we can eat the condominium”. Chronicles of Economic, Social and Political Practices in Addis Ababa’s Condominiums.

It is always a pleasure when a young academic can reach out to the broader public and discuss his/her research's societal relevance and impact. Our own Vincent Walstra has been doing very well on disseminating his work and featuring in various media. This is a list of his recent publications and int…

Nienke Weijermars studied Public Administration at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs. While doing her bachelor’s, she enrolled in the minor in Journalism and New Media, followed by an internship at Dutch local newspaper Leidsch Dagblad: 'At Leidsch Dagblad, they really had time to teach me…

On 7 May students from the Leiden Leadership Programme (LLP) and the International Leiden Leadership Programme (ILLP) gathered with an interdisciplinary panel to have a discussion about Intercultural Leadership.

Seven prominent North Korean exiles will shed new light on the dictatorial state in a conference hosted by Leiden University on 17 and 18 September. All of the speakers once held high-ranking positions in the regime and now reveal its inner workings.

Cultural Anthropologist dr. Anouk de Koning has been awarded the Urban Citizen Fellowship to carry out research about democratisation of local democracy in Amsterdam.

Every year on or around International Women’s Day on 8 March, Leiden University holds its Annie Romein-Verschoor Lecture. This year’s lecture will be given by Sylvana Simons, MP and leader and parliamentary chair of the BIJ1 party. What does International Women’s Day mean to her and which challenges…

The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel exports the technology of occupation around the world, Antony Lowenstein, Verso Books, 2023

Three novelists have won the first Leiden University Peter van Straaten Psychology Prizes: Esther Gerritsen, Yvonne Keuls, and Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. This is a prize for Dutch writers whose novels shed light on psychological problems and disorders. The prizes will be awarded on January 16.

What makes people in the Netherlands join radical and far-right groups? PhD candidate Nikki Sterkenburg followed several activists. ‘Some feel it is their duty to defend the Dutch nation.’ PhD defence on 19 May.

When you want to analyse big quantities of archaeological data, you run into the issue that searching through excavation reports is extremely time-consuming. If only there existed a search engine specifically focused on querying these reports… But wait, work on an archaeological search engine focused…

Strengthening nature and at the same time investing in future-proof agriculture. That is the task of the Minister for Nature and Nitrogen, Christianne van der Wal. It is also the lifework of Leiden professor Jan Willem Erisman. He has been researching nitrogen for his entire career and has shown that…

Chad-born youngsters in Paris come into contact with youngsters actually in Chad via Facebook: it would be difficult to find a better way to demonstrate the possibilities social media offer for people scattered across the world by war. Mirjam de Bruijn has been awarded a Vici grant for a study of the…

Fear and hatred of Muslims are rising rapidly to the surface in the United Kingdom, Assistant Professor Tahir Abbas writes in his new book. British politicians and journalists play an insidious role in this, he says.