The state, and specifically the idea of nationality, is almost all-determining in social life in the Netherlands. It determines how people identify, how we interact with each other, and what (in)equality in society looks like. However, ultimately, the idea that we can divide people into different nationalities…

Knowing whether or not a treatment is working just by wearing your watch? Data scientist Ahnjili ZhuParris has identified a lot of opportunities for the use of machine learning in clinical research to monitor test subjects at home.

Leiden University has secured an impressive 12 European exchange grants. This is good news for students, lecturers and researchers from home and abroad.

On Thursday 11 January 2018, Xiang Li will defend her doctoral thesis: “Collective Labour Rights and Collective Labour Relations of China”. The defence will take place at 11:15 hrs at the Academy Building of Leiden University, Rapenburg 73. The supervisors are Professor Guus Heerma van Voss and Professor…

On 7 July 2020 medical lecturer Luuk Willems received his SKO certificate (Senior Teaching Qualification) and may now officially call himself a senior lecturer. The course has meant that he now has clear ideas about what he wants to achieve in his teaching. ‘I want to strengthen my role as a coach and…

Optimised antibiotic combinations can combat bacteria more effectively while also slowing the development of resistance. Scientists from five European countries are joining forces to identify such combinations and provide tools for others to do the same. The project is led by Professor Coen van Hasselt…

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.

On Friday 16 February 2024, Rudolf E. de Jong passed away unexpectedly in Cairo. Since 2012, he was the director of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC), which he skillfully managed for 12 years. He was laid to rest in Amsterdam on 27 February. Rudolf was 65.

We are saddened by the news of the unexpected passing of prof.dr. Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld on 28 July 2021.

Alumna Janine Ubink is a Professor of Law, Governance and Development at Leiden University. She researches legal pluralism in various areas of Africa and calls herself a ‘tropical lawyer’. She says, ‘It doesn't really exist, but I am one.’

On Thursday 26 January 2017 Anouk Bosma will defend her doctoral thesis ‘Targeting recidivism: An evaluation study into the functioning and effectiveness of a prison-based treatment program’. The defence will start at 15.00 hrs, at the Academy Building of Leiden University, Rapenburg 73. Supervisor…

Hugo de Groot, one of history’s most famous legal scholars, was already studying arts and law in Leiden at the age of 11. How did his career take off from that point and who inspired him?

Does medicine make patients feel better or worse? We are getting better at predicting this from people’s DNA profiles, says Professor Jesse Swen. ‘It never fails to fascinate me how one DNA base pair can have such a huge effect on treatment with medication and the outcome.’

What exactly does it mean when your doctor says you have a ‘good chance’ of survival? Leiden researchers discovered that there is a big difference in how people interpret such probability phrases. And that can be a problem, warns lead researcher Sanne Willems in her blog post.

On 1 February 2018, at 16.15 hrs, Nathalie-Sharon Koster will defend her doctoral thesis ‘Crime victims and the police’ at the Academy Building of Leiden University. The doctoral research was supervised by Professor J.P. van der Leun and M.J.J. Kunst.

‘It became very clear that Brazilian legislative policy was frail, obsolete and unreliable,’ says Felipe de Paula. He will defend his dissertation on the limits and possibilities of legislative policy in Brazil on Tuesday 27 March 2018.

Comparing individual health data with group data allows doctors to give personalised advice and patients to learn from one another's experiences. Wessel Kraaij, Professor of Applied Data Analytics, shows how personal data can have a valuable predictive function. Inaugural lecture 24 February.

From ‘challenges’ at ministries to reflection sessions where students coach each other. Students, study advisers and other employees shared their best practices regarding labour market preparation at the Employability Working Conference on 24 January.

What if seriously ill patients do not want to hear their diagnosis? Does a clinician always need to provide a patient with all available information? Communication researcher Liesbeth van Vliet, medical anthropologist Annemarie Samuels and research intern Fiona Brosig will put these questions on open…

Dr. Mikihiro Moriyama was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1960. He first came to Leiden for a year in 1988, and then stayed from 1992 to 1995 and was back again in June 2003 for his PhD. 'I’d never heard of the Sweat Room until I heard about it at a Leiden alumni meeting in Jakarta. When I visited Leiden in…

Islamic primary schools contribute to the integration of Muslims in Dutch society, concludes Marietje Beemsterboer in her PhD dissertation. The schools offer children a sense of belonging and prepare them for Dutch society.

How can you figure out which points lie on a certain curve? And how many possible curves do you count by a given number of points? These are the kinds of questions Pim Spelier of the Mathematical Institute studied during his PhD research. Spelier received his doctorate with distinction on June 12.

As Professor of Translational Neuro-oncology, Marike Broekman researches how brain tumour treatment can be improved. She will discuss this in her inaugural lecture along with her work as a neurosurgeon and the importance of a positive workplace culture.

Over 20,000 students, lecturers, administrators, support staff and many others protested on 25 November against the plans to make billions of cuts to higher education. Students and staff from Leiden University also travelled to The Hague to voice their objections to the disastrous plans.

Four PhD researchers of Leiden University have been selected to participate in the Europaeum Scholars Program 2022-2023. Two of them, Lena Riecke and Sophie Vértiter, are doing their research at ISGA. Time for a introduction.

Three speakers, three fascinating science stories and a well-filled lecture hall. The Niko Tinbergen Lecture had a successful restart on 10 December 2019.

The monthly ILS Lunch Seminars unite the several Institutes situated within Leiden Law School. On Thursday 15 February 2018 from 12:00 hrs until 13:00 hrs in KOG B0.41, the next edition of the ILS Lunch Seminars will take place.

On Thursday 16 November, Dirk Broekhuijsen will defend his doctoral thesis entitled ‘A multilateral tax treaty: designing an instrument to modernise international tax law’. The defence will take place at 15.00 hrs at the Academy Building of Leiden University. The supervisors are Professor F.A. Engelen…

Niloufar Rahim, from Afghanistan, fled to the Netherlands with her family. She studied medicine in Leiden and now shares her knowledge with students of medicine in Afghanistan.

International courts and tribunals depend on state funding, creating a potential risk of undue state interference in judicial processes. In her doctoral thesis, Maria Manolecsu explores mechanisms that safeguard judicial independence, ensuring that courts can adjudicate without external pressure or…

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded 400.000 euros in funding to Lotte van Dillen, associate professor at the unit of Social, Economic and Organizational Psychology. With this grant, Lotte van Dillen will investigate how daily distractions influence our dietary consumption habits and glucose…

This collaborative study examines the major challenges facing migrant groups and the implications of deep social exclusion for policy and practice.

Computer scientist Tessa Verhoef received a Best Paper Award during the ‘ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility’. The paper emphasised the need for interdisciplinary research in sign language processing. The authors state that linguists and computer scientists should collaborate with…

Ariadne Schmidt will be appointed professor by special appointment of the Magdalena Moons chair at Leiden University. From 1 September 2018 she will carry out academic research and teach on the cultural history of the city, in particular of Leiden.

When discussing enslavement, attention often focuses on Africans forcibly shipped to South America. Researcher Timo McGregor's new Veni research sheds light on a lesser-known method, whereby indigenous populations were enslaved through the households of colonisers.

Alice Twemlow has recently been interviewed for Design Exhibition Scotland.

Dr. Philippe van Gruisen, Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at Leiden University, is shortlisted for the Els Witte Prize 2019 for the best doctoral dissertation of the Netherlands and Flanders.

Special amplifying agents can make MRI scanners and NMR techniques hundreds of times more sensitive. Leiden physicists have now found a method to test their efficiency. More sensitive MRI scans could for example improve our understanding of cystic fibrosis or Parkinson’s disease. Publication in PCCP…

Geneticist Hans Clevers will give the first Niko Tinbergen lecture new style on 10 December, which is all about stem cells. The young Leiden professors Ariane Briegel and Susana Chuva de Sousa Lopes talk about bacterial noses and the cultivation of egg cells in the lab in short introductory lectures…

The flavour of foodstuffs can be predicted by measuring the dynamic of their chemical components. Researchers, including Thomas Hankemeijer, will receive a grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for research in this area. They will work with DSM and Unilever.

From 1 September 2014, Glen Newey takes up the post of Professor of Practical Philosophy in Leiden University’s Institute for Philosophy.

On 10 June 2022, a conference on topical issues in Dutch subsidy law was held at the Old Observatory building of Leiden University. With almost 90 enthusiastic participants, it was a huge success!

CADS alumna Ruth Erica has won the Glazen Globe with her book The Tree with the White Leaves. This is a biennial prize for the best geography-related youth or children's book.

Op dinsdag 3 november is Ilektra Antonaki cum laude gepromoveerd op haar proefschrift over kapitaalbewegingen binnen de Europese Unie.

Wouter Halfwerk and colleagues from Panama and the US published a paper on multisensory communication in Science. The authors provide compelling data on the consequences of multisensory perception on signal evolution in tropical frogs.

Musicologist Dinko Fabris has been appointed professor at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA). He started on 1 September. 'I’m looking forward to making a connection with society.'

Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936) is known as an Islamologist, author of the book Mecca, administrator in the Dutch East Indies for the Dutch government and professor in Leiden. Wim van den Doel published a biography of Snouck Hurgronje in 2021. Recently, the translation of the biography in Bahasa…

Danique Reidsma, student Economics, Policy and Management (EBM) at Leiden University, recently gave a presentation at a symposium of the Dutch Association of Social Security (NGSZ) in The Hague. She presented her own research around the question of whether eHealth can help to keep health care expenditure…

On 8 July, the Young Researchers Group of the European Banking Institute organised the 11th edition of the EBI YRG Virtual Workshop Session. Barbora Budinská presented her research on judicial review of national law applied by the ECB in banking supervision

On 13 April, an expert meeting to discuss the doctoral thesis of Eduardo Arenas Catalán was held at Leiden Law School. The discussion, chaired by Aart Hendriks, Professor of Health Law at Leiden Law School, included the contributions from Javier Couso Salas, Professor at Universidad Diego Portales and…