How do you recount historic events if you are not allowed to talk about them? For his dissertation, Taufiq Hanafi tried to find out how a period of mass murder – despite heavy censorship – found a place in Indonesian literature. PhD defence 31 March.

Seven interdisciplinary projects involving Leiden University academics have been awarded up to €27,000 in seed funding. They will work with Una Europa alliance partners to advance topics including academic freedom, AI in the humanities, sustainable mining and maternal health care.

The documentary ‘De Stem van het Kind’ (The Voice of the Child) gives an impressive insight into the work of juvenile court judges. Documentary maker Pieter Fleury, Professor of Children’s Rights Ton Liefaard and juvenile court judge Johan Visser worked together for the past seven years to make the…

After the May elections a new University Council has now taken seat. The university democracy is the result of the long-lived national student protests in 1969. Students from Leiden joined the protests for greater representation, although their actions were less revolutionary than at other universities.…

Psychedelic drugs like magic mushrooms and LSD are embraced by some and seen as lethal by others. Cognitive psychologist Michiel van Elk delved into the world of psychedelic drugs and wrote a surprisingly sober book about them. ‘Without first-hand experience my story wouldn’t be complete.’

Researchers from the Netherlands Cancer Institute, the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and Oncode have created a tracking system that can reveal how often cells have divided. This allowed them to find a yet undiscovered population of immune cells: young memory cells that behave like stem cells.…

Did you know that Leiden University has an active staff association? As a member you can get to know colleagues in an informal setting during activities such as cooking, playing padel, going on a boat trip or doing Christmas shopping. But, say board members Tom Stapper and Jeanine Rosheuvel, it’s fine…

On January 7th Minister van Engelshoven of Education, Culture and Science of The Netherlands announced that the project Island(er)s at the Helm: Co-creating sustainable and inclusive solutions for social adaptation to climate challenges in the (Dutch) Caribbean is one of two projects awarded with funding…

On 25 November, the global 16-day campaign 'Orange the World' against violence against women and girls started. Leiden University will also be paying attention to this campaign. On Friday 9 December, Renate van der Zee and Marieke Liem will give a lecture at the Campus The Hague (Spanish Steps, Wijnhaven)…

A celebration was held in the Tabú restaurant: Mark Rutgers, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, was presented with the first copy of LEAP, a journal where Humanities master’s students can prepare for an academic career by publishing articles themselves.

Bringing together chemists and physicists to thoroughly investigate how electrochemical processes work on the smallest scale. That is the goal of the new Advanced Nano-electrochemistry Institute of the Netherlands, or ANION for short. The consortium receives a Gravitation funding of 23.6 million euros…

With the passing of Henk Jan de Jonge on 16 April 2022, Leiden University has lost one of its most characteristic, learned and devoted professors.

20 November 2024 is World Children's Day. To mark this occasion, the UNICEF Student Team Leiden is organising a lecture on children's rights. We spoke to board members Rewina Teferi Hagos and Tugwell Chadyiwanembwa to find out what motivates them.

What does the University mean for The Hague? And what are researchers and students learning from the city and its residents? The Hague city councillors visited Campus The Hague on 27 September and spoke to administrators and researchers. ‘From Schilderswijk to Benoordenhout: we are a university for…

In September, the Una Europa ELSEA project, Enhancing Scholarship in Eastern Africa, officially started. Now that the project has been running for a couple of months, it’s high time to check in and see how the project is going.

How do digital technologies affect adolescent mental health and resilience? How do we foster a secure online environment? How should we deal with increasing rates of online crimes among adolescents? During the mini-symposium ‘The effect of the online world on adolescents’, presented by the interdisciplinary…

Hydropower plants need not be disastrous for fishermen and nature. For that, we need to place new dams more strategically, but also modify or even remove some existing ones. Valerio Barbarossa and Rafael Schmitt showed that with a computer model of the Asian Mekong basin.

Radhika Gupta has received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council to study how transnational Islamic charitable networks are entangled with Western humanitarianism and neoliberal welfare frameworks.

The secular West is struggling with the rise of AI, but so too is Muslim Southeast Asia. What can we learn from each other?

Last week, third-year students of the Bachelor Security Studies concluded a seven-week intensive programme with a two-day conference. They presented their findings in front of a full lecture hall and in the presence of the client for whom they worked on a complex security issue. Tutor Saskia Postema:…

Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing, what exactly does he do and what does his day look like? In each newsletter, Jasper gives an insight into his life. This time, Jasper writes his column from Singapore.

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.’

Chris Suijker, since 1 July the new director of Real Estate, likes healthy and sustainable university buildings where you ‘get the feeling you’re right at the heart of society’. Her aim is to achieve the same effect with even more buildings.

From receiving our salary to doing our shopping: we are completely dependent on commercial banks for all our payment transactions. But what happens if they collapse? In his inaugural lecture, Professor Bart Joosen calls for a rigorous change: ‘Put payment transactions for private clients under one…

Running, walking or horseback riding: colleagues from the Health, Medical and Neuropsychology unit are each working up a sweat this month to raise money for research on Multiple Sclerosis. How much have they collected so far?

Last November, it was announced that the European Commission has awarded a Jean Monnet Chair to Professor of Tax Law Irma Mosquera Valderrama. She will use the grant to shape the EUTAXGOV project over the next three years.

Annetje Ottow, president of the Executive Board of Leiden University, has been the new chair of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus (LDE) strategic alliance for just two months. What does she want to achieve during her two-year chairmanship?

Herman Spaink knows of many substances that may help combat tuberculosis. Lab space to study them safely is very limited in Leiden. A brand-new lab at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia will soon provide a solution. About time, says Spaink, ‘The disease is on the rise and is becoming less sensitive…

Researchers and clinicians at Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) are about to begin a milestone clinical study. It will be the first time a stem cell gene therapy developed in the Netherlands is used in a clinic. The therapy will be used to treat children with SCID, a rare disorder where children…

A lot of municipalities work with a points system to encourage construction projects to take biodiversity and creating green areas into account. But this way of working also benefits local neighbourhoods and residents, master's student Marije Sesink discovered. She based her study on The Hague.

A place where people enjoy working and studying—that’s at the core of the strategic plan of our faculty, and a lot of effort is being put into achieving this goal. Elice Schöne, Head of HR, is involved in the Leadership, Recognition and Rewards programme. What does it entail, and how does it affect…

Florian Herrendorf has won the Fruin Prize 2023. His thesis was chosen out of 11 nominees as the best master's thesis in history studies.

Attention to the colonial past may be increasing, but many aspects of it are still underexposed. Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, in collaboration with, among others, Leiden researchers Anne-Marieke van der Wal-Rémy and Alicia Schrikker, therefore created a 'canon of the Dutch underexposed past', which…

Music venue Paradiso, the Keizersgracht Church and the Artis Zoo’s aquarium: these buildings all owe their design to architects Gerlof Bartholomeus Salm and Abraham Salm. Remco van der Kuijp researched the place of father and son in architectural history. PhD defence on 25 March.

‘A tax crusader’... that’s how Ferd Grapperhaus, former Professor of Tax Law at Leiden University and father of the former Minister of Justice and Security, described himself. In his biography of Grapperhaus, Assistant Professor Rens Pieterse explains that he saw tax as a contribution to society.

Last Thursday the Dutch House of Representatives held a debate on children being put into care when the childcare benefits scandal (toeslagenaffaire) had caused problems for their families. Four Leiden University academics were asked by the House to produce a fact sheet for this debate, bringing together…

Horses were first domesticated in South-West Russia, is the conclusion drawn by an international team of researchers writing in the well-respected journal Nature. Their conclusion resolves a longstanding archaeological question. But, surprisingly enough, this domestication did not contribute to the…

What effect did the lockdown have on young people? Leiden researchers started a study of this in the first year of the covid pandemic. They discovered an impact on the development of the brain areas involved in social behaviour. The researchers published their discovery in Scientific Reports at Nat…

From interview training and competence tests to internships and contact with alumni. At Leiden University there are many ways for our students to prepare for the job market, but the support available is often too fragmented and hard to find. How can we best prepare our students for a job market that…

That Tessa Schiethart finished her bachelor's degree in International Studies with a thesis on Indonesian women's reasons for veiling was a coincidence. Or so she thought. Six years later, her book Seeing and Being Seen, in which she writes about her life with a wine stain and vision loss, is in the…

Inspired by a gift she received at a conference abroad, Laura Kamsma, coordinator of the FGGA International Office, went looking for new promotional goodies to hand out to the representatives of international exchange programmes at Leiden University - Campus The Hague. The gifts had to meet three requirements:…

We all know smoking is bad for our health. But we might not have known that the cigarette filters that litter our streets also impact the environment. Esther Kentin is a lecturer at Leiden Law School. She is raising awareness of the University’s cigarette butt problem.

What does it mean to be the ‘perfect student’? This is the focus of the Perspectify exhibition, which was opened on 16 November by President of the Executive Board Annetje Ottow.

Wat kun je als burger doen wanneer de overheid je persoonsgegevens gebruikt en daarmee besluiten neemt waar je het niet mee eens bent? Fatma Çapkurt promoveerde op een onderzoek hiernaar. Burgers moeten verwerking van hun gegevens beter kunnen beoordelen.

Turning beer waste into a useful, sustainable product. That was the mission of students from Leiden at the international BISC-E event. The biology students challenged themselves and won third place in the Dutch finals of this competition. For this, they used the simple formula: Grain + fungus = coas…

Following the retirement of Roswitha Manning, a vacancy arose at Faculty of Archaeology for the role of Research Policy Advisor. We found one in the person of Jimmy Mans, a well known face for longer-serving Faculty staff. In this interview we reconnect with Jimmy, who calls himself ‘a homegrown Leiden…

On 30 April, Prime Minister Mark Rutte was presented with the manifesto of the NWO Youth Challenge, which contains advice for policymakers, scientists and administrators on the empowerment of youth in the time of coronavirus. The manifesto is based on research questions submitted to the science community…

The new Humanities Hub in the Huizinga Building was officially opened on Tuesday 3 December. In the different labs, researchers presented the options for using digital technologies in humanities research.

Dutch and Flemish partners, including Leiden University, are joining forces as the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) in the fight against the spread of fake news, and have received the support of the European Commission.

‘Space Antenna LISA will open an unprecedented window on the Universe,’ says astronomer Elena Maria Rossi. The mission will be the first one to detect Gravitational Waves from space. These can tell us more about the beginning of our Universe and the formation of black holes. With an NWO grant of twelve…