From one year to the next, face masks have started to appear in the environment. As the masks are discarded, they end up in the top soil, in sediment layers, and in refuse heaps. In a couple of generations archaeologists will study the layer that has already been labeled the Face Mask Horizon. Current…

Student wellbeing

Autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, is the term for a range of neurodevelopmental conditions or differences which can impact your studies at Leiden University.

AD(H)D stands for Attention Deficit(-Hyperactivity) Disorder, which is a common disorder that can impact your learning at Leiden University.

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Studying is already a lot of work, so on this page you'll find the most sought-after information for second- and third-year students. Do you feel something important is missing? Let us know via the feedback button, and we'll improve it for the next student.

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From 14 to 29 PhD candidates, seven actively involved faculties and, above all, lots of innovative interdisciplinary research, all with data science as the common denominator. The university’s Data Science Research Programme (DSO) has proven so successful that after five years on a start-up grant it…

Buurtlab 070 is a new Leiden University project in which residents, researchers and students from The Hague work together on climate, sustainability and biodiversity solutions. What do they expect of the lab?

Photographing fluorescent flowers, searching for frogs and shooting tropical cucumbers out of trees: this is only a small part of the course Tropical Biodiversity and Field Methods. For this class, master’s students biology traveled to Malaysian Borneo for two weeks to gain experience in fieldwork.…

Three Psychology students will present a poster of their thesis research on Alzheimer’s and dementia at the international conference AAIC Neuroscience Next. ‘I remind myself to recognise - without fear or shame - when I don't know something.’

This Thursday, January 18th 2024, our esteemed colleague Jan Zaanen passed away. Jan was one of our star scientists, larger than life, with an unabashed, boisterous drive for the best of physics at the Institute Lorentz, at the Leiden Institute of Physics and in the full international scientific community.…

The slogan of the Faculty of Archaeology, ‘The Future of the Past starts at Leiden University’, might sound like empty marketing speak. But there is something to it. The past can teach us a lot about climate change and that could make us fear the worst for our future. Archaeologist Gerrit Dusseldorp…

From assistance in the event of natural disasters to peace-keeping missions. As a communication adviser, Leonoor van Poelgeest goes to all those destinations where the Royal Navy are active. Why did she choose this work and how has her Public Administration study helped her?

Leiden students working to solve a sustainability problem at the request of an external party: that is the Sustainability Challenge. During a recent symposium, 28 groups of four to five students unveiled their solutions. The commisioners expressed great enthusiasm.

Almost three years after receiving her honorary doctorate, Dr Graça Machel returned to Leiden University. Over the course of two days she spoke with students, researchers, and other interested persons, about human rights – particularly those of women and children – in a world in which these are continually…

Children who come into contact with the police are not destined to become long-term offenders. This appears from research conducted by Babette van Hazebroek, who defends her dissertation on 30 September 2021.

Why do some smokers quit much more easily than others? Can we think ourself to insomnia? And does playing music together help to calm conflicts? Psychology students investigated these questions and presented their findings during the Psychology Science Day 2023.

There are many tributaries to Rosalin Kuiper’s story and they all lead to the sea. The 28-year-old sailor was one of the five-person Team Malizia in the world’s most prestigious sailing competition: the Ocean Race.

Lecture

When writing a thesis or paper you must make good use of the insights you have gained during your lectures and studies so far. You should also refer to relevant literature and carry out your own research on the topic.

Studentenwelzijn

Debate

An international team of astronomers has discovered a large reservoir of hot gas in the cluster-in-formation around the Spiderweb Galaxy. Based partly on that hot gas, the astronomers predict that the cluster-in-formation will grow into one of the largest objects in the universe. A step closer to discovering…

In the past months all Leiden Archaeology students were asked to partake in the Bystander Intervention & Consent training. These workshops teach people how to recognise and safely intervene in situations they feel the need to act upon. We speak with two students who participated about their experien…

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.

Leiden University will not enter into any new research partnerships with companies in the fossil fuel industry that are not intensively and demonstrably committed to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. Current projects can, however, be completed.

In her inaugural lecture Susanna Linberg will ask how philosophy should respond to global warming.

Developing a digital guest lecture for high school students. Jan Sleutels was immediately enthusiastic when he got asked to do this. The end result? Together with his colleague Maarten Lamers, he created the guest lecture 'Thinking about Artificial Intelligence'.

Translating poetry is notoriously difficult. Translating poetry in such a way that the humorous nature of a poem remains intact is even more difficult, even though it is precisely jokes that can encourage children to read more, notes PhD candidate Alice Morta.

Leiden University is publishing a list giving an overview of its research collaborations with the fossil fuel industry.

PhD candidate Jiangnan Ding explores how you can design a thick slab of rubber in a way that it might act as a mechanical computer bit. This so-called mechanical metamaterial is pushed in a specific way to change its shape. ‘With a very simple material, we might be able to do simple calculations in…

We do it every day but barely give it a thought: chewing our food. But the ‘simple’ process of masticating food may have played a crucial role in the evolution of our jaws, facial muscles and teeth.

Are maps objective or do they convey hidden messages that you would miss at first glance? A map is always a simplification of reality. Mapmakers reduce, distort and select. This allows the reader to be guided literally and figuratively. Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Museum Volkenkunde jointly…

On Friday 3 February, all new incoming exchange students for the Spring semester were invited to attend their own Faculty’s introduction session.

On September 5, at the festive opening of the Faculty Year, a range of new murals will be officially presented in the Van Steenis’ Reuvens Hall. The wall paintings reflect a variety of Dutch soil stratigraphies, from Oss to burial mounds. Aside from being a striking new addition to our Faculty building,…

Microorganisms that temporarily ‘go to sleep’ play an important role in the evolution and survival of a population. Mathematician Shubhamoy Nandan conducted research on the effect of this characteristic called ‘dormancy’ in a novel mathematical model.

A team of Leiden researchers has won the Ammodo Science Award for innovative humanities research on perceptions of cultural heritage.

Hybrid Workshop: In person and online on 26 – 27 January 2023.

In January, Dr Karsten Lambers was appointed as Professor of Digital and Computational Archaeology at Leiden University's Faculty of Archaeology. With his extensive background in both archaeological research and computational sciences, the installation of Professor Lambers further strengthens this discipline…

Always taking the same route to work, going for that one dish in restaurants and going on the same holiday each summer: this may ring a bell for those who don’t like uncertainty. Researchers are now discovering that this aversion affects how we understand the world.

Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing? What kinds of things is he doing and what does his day look like? In each newsletter Jasper gives a peek into his life as dean.

Doing your taxes, Netflixing or driving a car: more and more daily activities are supported by computer applications. It is challenging and expensive to test software thoroughly, leading to errors in most applications. PhD candidate Benjamin Lion made a mathematical framework to deal with this problem.…

Education

How unique is the human capacity for learning and adapting to an environment? In field research – in the rainforest and Artis Zoo – primatologist Karline Janmaat is studying how humans and other primates adapt to their environment in their search for food. She will give her inaugural lecture as Professor…

Twelve weeks of hard work later, the big moment has finally arrived: the third-year students of International Studies are ready to complete the 'Practising International Studies' (PRINS) consultancy programme by pitching their advice. We were invited to attend the presentations on behalf of Free Press…