Is private law ready for the challenges of our time?

Is the legitimacy of law and governance of multilevel jurisdictions diminishing? What is the significance of (diminishing) legitimacy for the effectiveness of law? These kinds of questions about the legitimacy of the supranational formation of law, its application, and the policy and governance based…

In the Criminal Justice research programme, (criminal) law researchers and social scientists – many of whom are criminologists – collaborate on various projects. The research programme focuses on the content and form of decisions that could be, should be and are taken in by actors in the criminal justice…

Stefano Pollas master thesis 'Quantum Digital Cooling' has been awarded the Lorentz Master thesis award. The award, 3000 euros and a certificate, has been awarded on 25 November at the Koninklijke Hollandse Maatschappij van Wetenschappen (KHMW) society in Haarlem.

Leiden students organised a Model United Nations (MUN) from 3 to 6 May in The Hague. An MUN simulates the working of the United Nations and is intended to allow students to learn about the practice of international relations. View the photo series.

De vraag is hoe groot de dreiging van het rechts-extremisme is in Nederland? Nikki Sterkenburg spreekt hierover in Trouw en RTL Nieuws.

Reijer Passchier, Assistant Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, recently published a statement entitled 'The AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park Asked the Wrong Questions' in the International Journal of Social Quality.

Five Leiden astronomers tell about science in the podcast Astronomy et al. This podcast was set up by Ricardo Garcia Soto in September 2016 and is focused on anyone who is interested in science.

The Van Vollenhoven Institute is organising a year-long public lecture series entitled 'Reconsidering the Socio-Legal Gaze'. The lecture series aims to spark critical debates about the visions of justice and positions of power that inform Law and Society scholarship at Leiden and beyond.

If male budgerigars can successfully open a puzzle box with food, they become more attractive to females. Biologist Carel ten Cate and Chinese colleagues published experimental evidence for this in a paper in Science on 11 January. Various Dutch and international media wrote about the paper.

Episode 5 of BOLDcast, the podcast of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for BOLD Cities, discusses the evolution of libraries from simple lending points for books to places where people can come together and brush up on their digital skills. The guests in this episode are Frank Huysmans, associate professor…

In maart 2024 is het wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar de versterking van de verantwoordelijkheid van gecontroleerde entiteiten zelf rondom de accountantscontrole en de jaarverslaggeving uitgebracht. Dit boek bevat de uitwerking van een onderzoek voor het ministerie van Financiën opgesteld door de Afdeling…

The Faculty of Archaeology was honored by a visit by the Ambassador the Republic of Cyprus. Ambassador Frances-Galatia Lanitou Williams had heard of the Faculty's research projects that currently take place in Cyprus and wanted to learn more about the archaeological activities.

Plants not only sense when they are touched, but they can also adapt to it. For example, by strengthening or defending themselves. But how do plants do this? The Green TE (Green Tissue Engineering) consortium has been granted a Gravitation grant of almost 23 million euros to investigate exactly this…

Vera Meester has won the annual Physics Image Award 2016, with her photo of 'smiling' colloids. The Volkskrant published the picture as Image of the Week.

On Thursday 16 September 2021, the Opening Ceremony of the LL.M. European Law took place in person at Leiden Law School.

On Wednesday 16 June 2021, Karim Khan was sworn in at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Experts say this is no easy time to join the ICC.

Moldavia is going through a governmental crisis. Antoaneta Dimitrova was asked to clarify the events on the Dutch radio programme ‘Bureau Buitenland’. She commented on the current political relations but also issued a warning: ‘Panic is rising, there is a real danger of conflict in the country.’

Amazing discoveries by Jean Jacques Hublin of Early modern Humans in Morocco.

Leiden Law School has awarded two students from the Van Vollenhoven Institute’s Master in Law and Society prizes for best thesis.

LUCSoR alumnus Bas van Rijn was awarded the Fritz Stolz-Preis on 7 June 2024 for his PhD Dissertation “The Experimental Culture of Afterlife Research: Attempts by Spiritual Animal Magnetizers to Prove Life after Death”.

In juli 2024 is het boek 'Evaluatie Wet homologatie onderhands akkoord' uitgebracht. Het boek bevat het rapport van het evaluatieonderzoek van de Wet homologatie onderhands akkoord (WHOA) uitgevoerd door een onderzoeksteam van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen en de Universiteit Leiden in opdracht van…

On the 1st of November 2017, Ingrid Leijten hosted an expert-seminar titled ‘Tailored Provisions, Social Rights Compliance?’ (‘Maatwerk als Mensenrecht?’).

The BLRN members have published extensively in recent years. In addition to the BLRN book series, dissertations of BLRN members published in the E.M. Meijers Institute Series, you will find below a selection of our publications. For a more complete overview of publications of each BLRN member, please…

Impartiality, objectivity, honesty, and accuracy are qualities that generations of scholars have regarded as necessary for the pursuit of scholarly inquiry. Philosophers call them epistemic virtues, because these virtues facilitate the pursuit of epistemic aims such as knowledge and understanding of…

Hordes of photographers, students trying to catch a glimpse and take selfies, and cheering people at the entrance to Wijnhaven. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Prime Minister Mark Rutte were received like true pop stars, in the late afternoon at Leiden University’s Campus The Hague.

Is our universe built up out of warm or cold dark matter? The standard model assumes cold dark matter particles, but astronomer Sylvia Ploeckinger is now testing the possibility of a warm counterpart: sterile neutrino’s. For this project, she received an NWO Physics/F grant, a special grant for women…

Sinds september 2010 werken Geerten Waling en Anne Heyer in het NWO project ‘The Promise of Organization’.

In our collective journey to bridge social, economic, and cultural inequality in society, we must al play a part, says Wilco van Dijk. Unfortunately, notes Carolien Rieffe, minority groups are often not included in this 'we.' This became a focal point of discussion during the fifth Psychology Connected…

It has only recently been discovered that single-celled organisms (bacteria and archaea) also have histones—proteins that structure DNA. Now, Leiden PhD candidate Samuel Schwab has found that the histones in these organisms are much more diverse than previously thought. Schwab and his colleagues describe…

Oberon Janszen, alumnus Bestuurskunde, ging na zijn studie als stagiair bij de Inspectie der Rijksfinanciën aan de slag

Psychiatrists in Morocco can't ignore Islam. Driss Moussaoui was one of the first modern psychiatrists in this North African country. He delivered the LUCIS annual lecture on 12 April.

An international team led by Leiden astronomers has, after years of searching and defying the boundaries of a telescope, for the first time directly captured polarised light from an exoplanet. From this light they can deduct that a disk of dust and gas orbits the exoplanet. In this disk moons are possibly…

Leiden chemists recreated the bacterial capsule of meningococcus in the lab. With a few modifications, these capsules can serve as an extra safe and effective vaccine against these notorious bacteria, which can cause, for example, meningitis. PhD candidate Jacopo Enotarpi and his team published the…

The Dutch-Japanese made DESHIMA instrument has passed its first practical tests when measuring the distances and ages of distant galaxies. The core of the instrument is a chip the size of two euro coins that measures 49 shades of far infrared light. The developers of the spectrometer publish the results…

Ever since the first edition of the Science Run, the Leiden Student Running Association Currimus has delivered the winning team or the fastest runner. Now the event is back, the new batch of students must uphold the honour. The board is also forming a team: ‘During the upcoming training session, we…

The thesis “De publieke prijs. Een onderzoek naar de verdeling van publiek geld via prijsvragen” (The public prize. A study of the allocation of public funds by way of competitions) was awarded the faculty Jongbloed prize 2016-2017 on 12 January.

Op 9 juni jl. vond in de rechtenfaculteitskamer van het Leidse Academiegebouw een workshop plaats over tradities en aanpalende concepten, zoals politieke cultuur, spelregels en constitutionele conventies. Tijdens de bijeenkomst presenteerden en bediscussieerden juristen, historici, politicologen en…

The Executive Board has appointed Herman Paul (Institute for History) as Professor of History of the Humanities. He will take up the role from 1 January 2019.

If you could convert CO2 into building blocks for other molecules with the help of electricity, you could make the chemical industry considerably more sustainable. Leiden chemists have unravelled a fundamental part of this process and applied this knowledge in a real device, as they write in Nature…

People already diagnosed with a mental disorder before the COVID-19 pandemic did not show a disproportionate increase in symptoms afterwards. This is one result from the first systematic review of longitudinal studies following their study population from before to during the first eighteen months of…

Over the past few hundreds of years, the world has changed radically. However, cultural stereotypes from the 17th century are still alive and well today, and even academic researchers sometimes use terms coined centuries ago. Why do they do that? Herman Paul, Professor of the History of the Humanities,…

The transition from single cells to multicellular organisms was a key step in evolution. Researchers from Leiden and Amsterdam developed a mathematical model that explains how this transition may have come about. They suspect cooperating cells may correct each other’s mistakes. Publication in eLife…

For the first time ever, Leiden biologists have found that the ‘nose’ of spirochetes – worm-shaped bacteria – have a two-fold symmetry. A remarkable discovery, as the ‘nose’ of every other bacterium has been found to have a six-fold symmetry. First author Alise Muok wrote a popular blog about the findings…

The thesis “Exit Peter Paul? Divergente toezichthoudersaansprakelijkheid in de Europese Unie voor falend financieel toezicht, bezien vanuit het Europeesrechtelijke beginsel van effectieve rechtsbescherming” (Exit Peter Paul? Divergent supervisory liability in the European Union for failing financial…

In the MS Cognitietour, psychologists and neuroscientists from Leiden University discuss the latest scientific knowledge with MS patients and their loved ones. This leads to insights: 'One lady told how much stress she felt from all those caregivers around her bed.'

Joseph Callingham from the Leiden Observatory receives the Louise Webster Prize for outstanding post-doctoral research. The prize is awarded by the Astronomical Society of Australia for Callingham’s search for the most extreme object in the Universe.

‘Critical thinking’ is an expression all academics have heard of: it’s the first learning objective in the Leiden Vision on Teaching and Learning. It’s both a historical topic with roots that reach back a long way and a topical problem too. The question on everyone’s lips is whether critical thinking…

Faculty of Archaeology opened its doors to welcome over 100 archaeology and living archaeology enthusiasts from all over the Netherlands