From 11 to 17 September, Leiden will be all about art and science. What can the combination of these two domains do for us? And how can cooperation between them be strengthened? Several public events and a brand new symposium for specialists should answer these questions.

Lotje Zuur sometimes has to perform disfiguring operations. As a head and neck surgeon, she removes parts of the mouth, throat or face of people with cancer. Now a promising treatment may make such operations unnecessary. What would this mean for patients? This is what her inaugural speech on 19 September…

Two Leiden Science researchers received an NWO-XS grant for their research. Both projects are highly promising, but also high-risk. Macrophages that trap bacteria and data storage made from 2D materials convinced the board of their potential.

Leiden Law School is organising a summer conference on Law and Artificial Intelligence as part of the interfaculty and interdisciplinary research programme on Artificial Intelligence (SAILS) at Leiden University.

Call for Participation for the online workshop Interrogating Speculative Futures: A workshop on the politics of imagining a future with(out) chronic illness on 19 and 20 July 2021.

Leiden professor of Cellular Immunology of Parasitic Infections Maria Yazdanbakhsh receives the prestigious NWO Spinoza Prize this year. This, in many ways, border-crossing scientist contributes with her research to more effective vaccines against parasitic infections and better medication for inflammatory…

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Lots of employees celebrated special successes in 2023. Here’s a list of all those scholarships, awards and honours.

Ten years later, a group of veterans still struggle daily with the effects of their deployment to Afghanistan. Sanne van der Wal, a PhD candidate at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), conducted research into the effects of PTSD.

People who move most in the afternoon and evening are less insulin resistant than people who move mainly in the morning or spread throughout the day. This makes them at lower risk of type 2 diabetes. These are the results that researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have published…

On Tuesday 12 January 2021, the annual Meijers prizes and thesis prizes were awarded at the online New Year’s event broadcast from the Old Observatory.

In June the Final Festival took place, the closing event of the 'Social Science Lab'. New participants of Honours College Science and Society presented their solution for a current social problem.

Psychology teacher of the year is Marc Molendijk. The Master Thesis Awards are for Kim Houwaart and Linda Bomm. Hans van Lennep wins the PhD Publication Prize; Nina Komrij wins the PhD Wild Card: Societal Impact. The Support & Management staff Prize is for the whole Psychology Institute Office and Remond…

Carel Stolker, former Rector Magnificus and President of the Executive Board of Leiden University, has been made an Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau for his services to the city and University. Mayor Henri Lenferink awarded the royal honour to Stolker at the University’s Dies Natalis on 8 February…

A delegation from the University of Edinburgh recently visited Leiden University to deepen their collaboration. What makes Edinburgh such an attractive partner?

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, Hadassah Drukarch and Bart Custers from eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies, explore together with Pranav Khanna, eLaw alumnus, the influence of automation on human–robot interaction and responsibility in surgery innovation.

About one and a half million people worldwide die each year from tuberculosis. For thirty years, therapy with antibiotics has been the same, while it takes far too long and can lead to resistant pathogens. Leiden researchers from four institutes are now joining forces to develop more effective and efficient…

Care robots, medical treatments, deepfakes and self-driving cars all with the aid of artificial intelligence (AI). The BrAInpower exhibition at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave shows spectacular applications of AI and explains how it can make such huge leaps. Bas Haring, Professor of Public Understanding of Science,…

Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing, what exactly does he do and what does his day look like? In each newsletter, Jasper gives an insight into his life.

How do we tackle financial stress among students? Policymakers and students came up with a plan. The outcome has been a report that the university can use to help answer the question. Vera Hilgevoord organised the brainstorm session with students and has compiled their ideas.

In het Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum wordt gewerkt aan de ontwikkeling van een nieuw malariavaccin dat effectiever is dan de huidige vaccins.

In the academic year 2021-2022 the Social Resilience and Security interdisciplinary programme will offer two courses for interested students who are entering the third year of their Bachelor's degree. You can sign up for these courses in your elective (minor) space. The courses are available to students…

Three lecturers from Leiden University have been awarded a 100,000-euro Comenius Teaching Fellowship within the scope of the Senior Fellows programme. The grant will enable them and their project teams to carry out their own teaching innovation project.

Leiden University has recently received various petitions from students and staff concerning our ties with Israeli universities. We have also held extensive discussions with the University Council in response to questions raised on the subject. We think it important that our partners and research projects…

In a recent mega-analysis, researchers from Leiden University aimed to clarify the contradictory findings of research into social anxiety disorder. They found that to obtain reliable research results having the largest possible sample size is important. Publication in NeuroImage:Clinical.

Fiffy the chimpanzee had rapidly developed cataracts in both eyes that made her as good as blind. Eye doctors at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have now managed to replace the lenses in both her eyes. As far as we know, Fiffy, who is thought to be between 30 and 40 years old, is the first…

The student navigator 'Find your way' helps students find their way around the university. Student advisers can also be found on the roadmap. JanPieter, student advisor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), explains what a student advisor does.

It is with great sadness that we share the news that on Friday, May 3rd 2024, Carla Risseeuw, Professor emerita of CADS, passed away. Carla Irene Risseeuw retired as Professor of Intercultural Gender Studies from CADS in 2009 after a long and productive career.

During the Bachelor Honours Class ‘The world is quantum’, students from various disciplines learned about the rules of nature on the smallest scale: quantum mechanics. What opportunities and dangers do they see for their field of study?

PhD-student Maia has received multiple awards regarding her research on the impact of tobacco on the respiratory health of past Dutch populations.

Using mathematics to help children with bone cancer. It sounds a little strange, but for statistician Marta Fiocco, it's just her job. She gets a substantial grant from KiKa for it. With that money, she is going to study the effect of chemotherapy adjustments.

For months, students dedicated themselves to a more sustainable world alongside their studies, as part of the LDE Sustainability Honours Programme. What solutions did they come up with for the challenges posed by organisations like Naturalis and ClimateMatters?

Leiden University's Kiem grants aim to help develop new interdisciplinary and interfaculty collaborations and encounters. In the first round, a Kiem grant was awarded to a group of researchers from the Faculty of Archaeology, the Faculty of Social Sciences, and the LUMC for the organisation of a symposium…

How do you detect people at high risk of heart attacks and strokes? And how can we improve the treatment of atherosclerosis? These are the questions that keep LACDR researcher Marie Depuydt busy. She is investigating the immune cells that contribute to the worsening of atherosclerosis. ‘It's a challenging…

Two research groups involving Leiden University have been awarded a major European grant, the ERC Synergy Grant. This for research on the development of membranes that can clean water and purify medical drugs and research on the biological clock in certain bacteria.

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Piercing through the skull with an ice pick, administering electric shocks without an anaesthetic, or applying leeches to the uterus: these may seem like medieval methods of torture, but they are in fact therapies used in medicine. Willem van der Does writes about all of them in his new book. ‘Physicians…

Did you also read a lot this summer? We made some real headway on our bookshelves. After all, nothing beats reading a beautiful or thrilling book outside. In this reading list, you'll find our favourite books for the summer of 2022. If you have any suggestions, let us know via Twitter, Facebook or I…

For more than 35 years they helped put American Studies on the map: Joke Kardux and Eduard van de Bilt. This spring, the couple retired. A farewell interview.

Writing a book on the recent history of Leiden University in corona times. For educational and policy historian Pieter Slaman (34), this has meant working in the attic of his parents’ house while they looked after his daughter, along with numerous online conversations and very few, if any, visits to…