Providing each cancer patient with the right treatment remains a challenge. Oncode Accelerator aims to change this by innovating the way we develop cancer treatments, thus ensuring the patient is at the heart of the process.

Dr Joris van der Voet has been awarded a Veni grant of € 250,000 for his research into the working of savings strategies on innovation with municipalities. Van der Voet (Institute of Public Administration) compares Dutch municipalities with those in Spain and the United Kingdom. He explains by answering…

Researchers from the Institute of Public Administration and the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at FGGA are launching a new research programme: Governing Polarized Societies (GPS). The programme will focus on the way in which governments are dealing with the increasing polarisation in society.…

The Olympic Games will start in Brazil on 5 August. You can find out more about this fascinating but complex country in a series of lectures organised by Studium Generale.

Drugs-related violence in Mexico is similar in terms of dynamics and strategy to the IS hybrid war in the West. This is the claim made by Teun Voeten. PhD defence 20 September.

In the academic year 2022-2023 the Social Resilience and Security interdisciplinary programme will offer a new minor for students who are interested in studying interpersonal violence and who are entering the third year of their Bachelor's degree. The announcement went down well with students: the available…

The financial sector, supply chains and ecology. Not necessarily topics you might associate with physics, yet it’s exactly what new professor Diego Garlaschelli is dealing with. The common thread? Complex networks.

Professor Rob de Wijk (International Relations) monitored Donald Trump's recent visit to Europe. We discussed the outcomes of the different summits with the Leiden scholar. ‘This visit delivered exactly what I predicted: nothing!'

The Netherlands has a lot of world-class speed skaters and footballers. Clever statistical analyses could help them perform even better. Leiden University is working on this together with Delft and Amsterdam.

Egyptian temple culture was thought to be declining in the Ptolemaic era, after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. Nothing could be further from the truth, says Egyptologist Carina van den Hoven. Temple culture was very much alive and kicking. PhD defence 16 February.

For the Bachelor Honours Class 'Mass Extinction', students produced podcasts about the past, the present and the future of mass extinctions. What exactly is lost when a species goes extinct? What are the practical consequences? But also: does humanity have the moral duty to protect other species?

On 12 September 2024, the official ceremony opening the academic year 24-25 for students of the European Law master’s programme took place at Leiden Law School, organised by the Europa Institute.

Two years ago, Amanda Henry joined the Faculty of Archaeology’s Archaeological Sciences department. She investigates diet and human evolution, with a specific focus on plant foods. ‘Most of the studies on the prehistoric diet focus on meat and hunting. This just didn’t make sense to me.’

IAt the Criminal Justice Public Lecture on 20 April, Professor of Law and Society Maartje van der Woude spoke about her research into decisions and practice in relation to intra-Schengen border areas and the free movement of persons. The thinking behind the Schengen area is that where the external borders…

On 13 January 2020, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named 95 members ACM Fellows who have demonstrated excellence across many disciplines of computing. Among the new ACM Fellows is Professor Holger Hoos of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, who was specifically selected…

Clothes designer, manager at a multinational or dermatologist: the twenty refugee students who are taking part in the Preparatory Study Year in Leiden (VJL) are burning with ambition. The study year started on Thursday 26 January in festive style.

Worldwide, countries are barely prepared for major borderless crises such as extreme natural disasters or other unexpected calamities that destabilise society, Professor of Political Science, Arjen Boin, warns. In his inaugural address on 23 October he makes some recommendations.

‘The Netherlands’ response to coronavirus is inconsistent.’ These are the words of Leiden political scientist Arjen Boin, an expert in crisis management. Vulnerable groups such as the elderly need more personalised advice. ‘It would be better to cancel bridge tournaments than football games.’

The Dutch universities are conducting a joint campaign to promote open access: free access to academic and scientific publications. Many Leiden researchers support open access. Given that it involves a shift in the financing from the reader to the author, they point out the need for effective agreements…

Before Maria Gabriela Palacio Ludeña became a lecturer International Studies at Leiden University, she was a public administrator in Ecuador. Her whole life she had a desire to teach and eventually she wound up at Leiden University.

Starting as an MP during the Covid-19 pandemic and after the recent ‘role elsewhere’ debacle during the coalition talks for a new Dutch government, alumna Mariëlle is looking forward to making a real contribution in society.

Meet Thomas King, alumnus BA International Studies: ‘I’m currently living in London which is a really amazing experience! I’m a British citizen and I moved to the Netherlands to study BA International Studies back in 2017. I had the best three years ever living in The Hague and studying at Leiden.’

‘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.

Students from eLaw completed a successful work experience programme researching contact tracing apps at Privacy Company in The Hague.

An Institute of Environmental Sciences, ambitious goals for energy, water and CO2 emissions. Leiden University plans to take the lead on sustainability - in research, teaching and raising awareness.

How to reduce aggression when two parties are at odds? PhD research by psychologist Lennart Reddmann's shows that it can help to offer them a peaceful alternative. However, the attacking party benefits the most from such a solution.

Working towards resilient communities, transparency in science and connecting with the employment market – these are the three key themes being addressed by the departments of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Dutch universities. On 11 February, they presented a joint sector plan to Marcelis Boereboom,…

Are you an assistant professor, associate professor or full professor at one of our 6 participating Dutch universities (see below) and interested in spending some research time in Cairo working in the inspiring and stimulating environment of NVIC? We participate in the NWIB Visiting Professors Programme…

Why do we give students fictional assignments when there is a multitude of real-world problems just waiting to be solved? Leiden University, Leiden University of Applied Sciences and the Municipality of Leiden are joining forces with partners from the public sector in the Learning with the City project,…

Governance of the internet is chaotic, says Professor Jan Aart Scholte. Can we learn from this relatively new form of governance?

With its FestivOWL theme, Orientation Week Leiden (OWL) promises to be one big festival for new international students in Leiden.

Aisha Hassan came to the Netherlands when she was two months old. Her mother had fled Somalia and made a new home here. Aisha doesn't remember much about that time, but her mother’s stories about Somalia ignited a lifelong interest in developing countries. ‘Her stories have always fascinated me.’

The notion of North Koreans as brainwashed and unable to think critically about their heritage and what it means to be North Korean is pervasive. More so, it is untrue, argues Christopher Green: ‘North Koreans, like any other people are diverse in their opinions and self-understanding.’ PhD defence…

The Municipality of The Hague called on researchers to come up with a proposal for an innovative research project on problems big cities face such as energy transition. Four of the five projects that have been granted funding come from researchers from Leiden University.

The energy transition ranks high on the European policy agenda, but what does it take to get there? René Kleijn researches how we can extract, use and reuse raw materials in a responsible way. Since 1 March, he has been appointed professor of Resilient resource supply.

Connecting space to society and gaining problem-solving experience: that’s the goal of LDE Space & Society, a new honours programme for bachelor’s students in Leiden, Delft and Rotterdam. What does the programme look like? And what do students hope to learn? We visited a kick-off session full of exc…

A tax on CO2 emissions from products entering the EU offers unprecedented opportunities in the fight against global warming. That is the conclusion of research on which Leiden environmental scientist Hauke Ward collaborated. ‘A new world is opening up,’ Ward says. ‘But success hinges on how we involve…

In the Netherlands, when we talk about the United Nations, the conversation is almost always about the member states from the northern hemisphere. But the most interesting players come from the ‘Global South’, Professor Alanna O'Malley and her team argue in a podcast.

Katarzyna Cwiertka, Leiden Professor of Modern Japan Studies, was already the recipient of a VENI and a VIDI grant. Now she has also been granted a VICI, worth 1.5 million euro, for her research project Garbage Matters: A Comparative History of Waste in East Asia. ‘I want to do something that hasn’t…

Working together, sharing information, communicating and having the same goals. At the official opening on 30 November, biologist Koos Biesmeijer compared Beehive, Leiden University's new student centre in The Hague, with the activities in a real beehive.

Humans have influenced nature since as early as the Ice Age, and over the past century man’s impact has become even greater with our many new technologies and a growing world population. Leiden researchers study this impact and how we can keep it within reasonable limits so that nature can be preserved.…

Who determines what is wrong with children and how they develop? Educator and sociologist Annemieke van Drenth wrote a book about this that will be released on 10 June. In it, she uses the history of the school for ‘idiotic children’ in The Hague to investigate how special children were identified in…

Leiden has the most highly regarded China Studies programme in Europe. But how did this knowledge find its way specifically to Leiden? For his PhD research Koos Kuiper delved into the unique history of the start of this unique programme.

Professor Nira Wickramasinghe will research forgotten lineages with an NWO Open Competition grant, in particular the afterlife of Dutch slavery in the Indian Ocean World.

The NWIB Visiting Professors Programme offers assistant professors, associate professors and full professors at participating universities (see below) a unique opportunity to work undisturbed in an inspiring and stimulating environment. This programme enables you to stay at one of the five Netherlands…

Three decades ago, cyber-diplomacy did not exist. The interest in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a vector of change in international relations was limited to a few mostly technical organisations, and a restricted number of states.

The New Scientist magazine has selected two young Leiden scientists for its Top 25 Young Talents in the Netherlands and Flanders: historian Karwan Fatah-Black and neuropsychologist Mariska Kret. Who will be the winner? You can vote for one of them!

'After my BA International Studies I decided to do the MA International Relations, and that proved to be a good choice,' Mats Radeck (23, Trier, Germany) says. He is in the last phase of the MA, working on his thesis on

The association agreement between the EU and Ukraine is highly important for peace in Ukraine, and it is therefore essential that Europe weathers these difficult times. These were the words of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on 27 November during his Europe Lecture at Leiden University.

Mirjam van Reisen favours big data built up from local inputs in developing countries and suitable for local use. The new Professor of Computing for Society at Leiden's Faculty of Science connects data science with development sociology. Inaugural lecture 10 March.