If it were up to Ursula von der Leyen, a positive opinion on Ukraine's application for membership would be forthcoming this Friday, 17 June.

Mirjam Sombroek, Aart Hendriks and Martine de Vries (LUMC) will work on mapping the ethical and legal aspects of gene therapy. The aim is to establish a best practice of how society can best deal with these therapies. For example with guidelines on how to regulate, reimburse and make these therapies…

On 29 April, doctoral researcher Sophie Vériter will join the annual Ralf Dahrendorf Memorial Lecture at St Antony’s College, Oxford University as a discussant.

At the end of 2019, Leiden law student Aoife Fleming was elected UN Youth Representative for Sustainable Development. What impact is the corona crisis having on international climate negotiations?

The Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition is the world’s largest moot court competition. The Competition is a simulation of a fictional dispute between countries before the International Court of Justice. This year more than 570 law schools from across the world participated.

Denmark, Poland and Germany are a few of the countries that have closed their borders, entirely or certain sections, in response to the continued advancement of coronavirus. Normally, this is only possible when there is a threat to public order or national security.

The Dutch government will be unable to make wearing face masks mandatory in public spaces in the short term, according to three constitutional and administrative law experts in NRC newspaper, including Wim Voermans.

All Leiden alumni, students and anyone else who might be interested is welcome to attend the online Cleveringa Meeting in Leiden on Wednesday 25 November entitled 'The Corrosion of International Relations'.

The article deals with an issue that will be at the heart of the World Health Assembly to be held in May, namely the concept of ‘deep prevention’ and the importance of its integration in the Global Pandemic Treaty - which has been recently proposed by the European Council and currently endorsed by more…

The Dutch Data Protection Authority is concerned about the way in which businesses in the hospitality sector are registering contact details of customers.

Understandably, coronavirus is often viewed from a medical perspective. However, researchers in the social sciences and humanities possess a great deal of expertise that could improve our understanding of the virus outbreak and its impact on society. A new portal is consolidating this knowledge.

The UK has recently been facing racist violence outbreaks. Tahir Abbas, Professor of Radicalisation Studies, discusses this in an article on Hyphen.

In September 2023, we started transforming a under-utilised outdoor space into a greener and more biodiverse garden in which all students and staff of the Schouwburgstraat can relax and enjoy.

In the Criminal Justice research programme, legal experts, criminal law experts and social scientists – many of whom are criminologists – collaborate on various projects. The research programme focuses on the content and form of decisions that are, can and may be taken in the criminal justice chain…

Alternative demonstrations were held in Leiden and The Hague on Thursday 14 November after the national protest in Utrecht was cancelled. Leiden University supports these protests, which were organised by WOinActie. Read our live blog of the demonstrations.

How were Spanish commanders fighting in the Low Countries between 1567 and 1577 portrayed in Spanish and Dutch narrative sources during the Eighty Years War?

The Institute CADS adheres to and teaches an approach to research ethics and integrity that emphasizes the processual nature of informed consent, situational ethics, and the indispensability of continually updating the ethical tradition in international anthropology in all the work of its researchers…

What do Byzantine fashion, mosaics, fortifications and menas ampullae have in common? Find out the answer at the second edition of a mini exhibition on Byzantine archaeology in the Van Steenis building.

On Friday 21 May, the Europa Institute held an online roundtable on the European Union’s coronavirus relief fund NextGenerationEU. The roundtable was organised in the context of the Leiden Law Exchanges (LLX). Their aim is to facilitate an exchange of ideas on current legal issues between academics,…

A research team from Radboud University and Leiden University, led by senior researchers Prof. Masja van Meeteren (RU/UL), Dr Paul Mutsaers (RU) and Prof. Maartje van der Woude (UL), will examine what national and international research has really found about ethnic profiling by the police.

The number of life sentences in the Netherlands is rising sharply. This is a clear response to the serious drugs violence and brutal attacks on our rule of law. However, criminal justice experts do not believe that this will deter future offenders from carrying out liquidations.

Many children have an unhealthy diet and do not get enough exercise. Sanne de Vries wants to help everyone get a healthy start in life.

Last week Russia and Ukraine met for the first time since the outbreak of the war. The talks took place in Belarus.

The Open Day of Leiden University, on the 8th of this month, was a success again: 483 prospective students came to find out what Leiden has to offer. The Institute of Biology Leiden was also present.

The more people are vaccinated, the more society can slowly reopen. Technological developments, like the Covid passport and other apps, can play a role in this. Artificial Intelligence could help greatly in developing the vaccine passport and the Covid-19 exposure notification app, Anne Meuwese and…

In a joint letter, the Leiden student associations have appeal to students to practise 1.5m distancing and to only meet others if they are fit and well. They urge them to observe the corona rules to prevent a local spike.

Tommaso Ciarli and Ismael Rafols received the Atlas Award from Elsevier for their research on research priorities and societal demands.

Ever since the coronavirus crisis began, people have been arguing about the legal justification for measures. The problem: far-reaching measures such as an obligation to wear face masks, get tested, or school closures violate the Constitution. The Cabinet had the difficult task of weighing fundamental…

The more people are vaccinated, the more society can slowly reopen. Technological developments, like the Covid passport and other apps, can play a role in this. Artificial Intelligence could help greatly in developing the vaccine passport and the Covid-19 exposure notification app, Anne Meuwese and…

Scientists at the LUMC are working hard on potential virus inhibitors, antiviral screening and a treatment for COVID-19. SteunLeiden.nl has started a crowdfunding campaign for this research, under the hashtag #wakeuptocorona. Professor of Virology Eric Snijder explains why this is desperately needed…

Three cholera epidemics struck 19th-century Leiden. Today’s corona epidemic prompted Martijn Storms, curator of maps and atlases at the Leiden University Libraries, to scour the library for maps about these past epidemics.

The LUMC, Leiden University and The Hague University of Applied Sciences want to help health professionals support behaviour change in the population. Such change would help people live healthier lives and reduce their risk of disease. The Municipality of The Hague is supporting this educational project…

Our motto is Praesidium Libertatis, or ‘bastion of liberty’. How did it come into existence, and in what way is Leiden University staying true to its meaning? Five questions about our motto.

What do you do when you’re suddenly given access to a whole lot of data but don’t know how to organise and analyse it? Maritime historians in the Faculty of Humanities joined forces with vocational college (MBO) students to build a database. ‘We’re so compatible with each other.’

The relationship between academia and democracy is a complicated one. Should policy makers listen to scientists or to citizens? That is the dilemma Valérie Pattyn and Johan Christensen will discuss with a panel of experts during the academic conference EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF).

Leiden archaeologists appealed for help from volunteers to search for archaeological remains on satellite images of Utrechtse Heuvelrug, a national park close to Utrecht. The outbreak of the corona virus made the project a resounding success: in a single month, all 300,971 maps had been examined. 'That's…

Aron is a second-year student of Korean Studies. He was in Seoul as part of the stay-abroad portion of the program when Leiden University took measures due to the coronavirus. He and his fellow students decided to let the last flight back to the Netherlands pass to stay in South Korea.

The changes that humans are making to the landscape are beneficial for mosquitoes that spread diseases such as Zika, chikungunya and dengue. This is what biologist Maarten Schrama and his colleagues write in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. ‘If we know in which living environments mosquitoes thrive…

The coronavirus outbreak raises fundamental questions about the politics and narratives of crisis, as well as about our “ordinary” everyday lives and sociality. Irene Moretti and Annemarie Samuels introduce a collection of blogposts of Leiden Anthropologists reflecting on the pandemic and offer a set…

The corona crisis relates to not only the medical field but also the field of the social sciences and humanities. SSH Beraad, a consultation body that aims to improve the position of the social sciences and humanities in the Netherlands, has launched a website bringing together experts in the social…

Whether a microbe is beneficial or harmful to a plant can now be predicted with high accuracy thanks to bacLIFE. This bioinformatic tool with an intuitive interface makes it much easier to unlock the secrets of bacterial genomes. A group of Leiden biologists presented it in Nature Communications.

Over the past year, many students and staff members of Leiden Law School have been lauded for their extraordinary achievements. For instance: a grant received, an award won, or an appointment by a special committee. We have combined all these achievements in our Honours Gallery 2022:

In an essay Professors Jan Willem Erisman (Leiden University), Chris Backes (Utrecht University) and Wim de Vries (Wageningen University) suggest amending nitrogen policy in the Netherlands. They call for a shift from a deposition to an emissions policy, with sectors responsible for reducing their own…

Publication by: Vanessa Frodermann, Janine van Duijn, Gijs van Puijvelde, Peter van Santbrink, Max Lagraauw, Margreet de Vries, Paul Quax, Ilze Bot, Amanda Foks, Saskia de Jager and Johan Kuiper. Journal of Internal Medicine. 2016;279:592-605.

Together with a group of researchers from TU Delft and Erasmus University, Leiden University have received a seed grant for conducting a project “Perceived Risk of Terrorism and its Implications for (Counter-Terrorism) Communication Strategies”.

The DARE research seminar took place on May 16, 2019 in the Kamerlingh Onnes Building. DARE stands for Dutch Academy of Research in Entrepreneurship (http://www.dare-research.nl) and its members are Dutch researchers in the area of entrepreneurship. Once or twice a year DARE organizes a research seminar…

On Tuesday 16 April 2019 study association JSV Liberi and the Department of Child Law welcomed alumni of the master’s programme Jeugdrecht to a careers afternoon and alumni evening.

Like last year, the percentage of female professors at Leiden University is 31.2 per cent in the Women Professors Monitor 2023. This puts Leiden University above the national average of 27.6 per cent.