About 90 per cent of Austronesian and Papuan languages are under threat of soon becoming extinct. Marian Klamer is the only professor in the world who researches both these language groups. She records languages before they disappear and sheds new light on the history of Indonesia. Inaugural lecture…

What developments preceded modern Standard Dutch? PhD candidate Iris Van de Voorde conducted research on ‘pluricentricity’, or the idea that language norms arise in different places and spread outwards from there. PhD defence on 19 April.

Bart Barendregt receives a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros from the NWO for his research project 'One between the Zeros, an Anthropology of Artificial Intelligence in Islam'.

As a student, Thijs Brocades Zaalberg was primarily interested in diplomacy surrounding conflicts. Through research on peace operations and subsequently the fight against guerrillas, he became increasingly involved with the most violent aspects of colonial warfare. Per 1 September 2024 he is appointed…

One person can already make a difference, and if all students and academics were eco-friendly, the world would be a much more sustainable place. Plastic Soup Surfer Merijn Tinga opened the academic year in Leiden with this message.

Nadine Akkerman has received a subsidy of two million euros from the European Research Council (ERC) for research into 16th and 17th century English manuscripts. Akkerman: ‘Working with handwritten texts and unravelling their mysteries is one of my passions, and it’s especially rewarding when this work…

The team from Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) came out on top at the international online Moot Court organised by Leiden University and law firm Baker McKenzie.

At one time, the railway from Kimberley to Kambove in Southern Africa symbolised prosperity and progress. Today, the exhausted mining towns along its route are marked by decay and pollution. Professor Jan-Bart Gewald has been awarded an NWO L grant to investigate the long-term global consequences.

In donut-shaped buildings, particle accelerators take super-detailed X-ray images. Yet those images are not good enough to learn how to drive on hydrogen for example. Mathematics PhD student Allard Hendriksen has developed an algorithm that improves the images without having to learn from data from…

Rich countries are getting richer because of environmentally polluting (construction) investments from the past, largely at the expense of poor countries. This was shown by long-term economic and environmental data. 'The gap between poor and rich countries is widening.' Scientists from the Leiden Institute…

Organised in four separate sessions throughout the day, and broadcast live online to guests and families who could not join, a total of 260 students received their Bachelor’s Diploma of International Studies on 28 August 2020 at the graduation ceremony in the historic Pieterskerk in Leiden.

How you think about yourself is important for the choices you make. Adolescents are faced with choosing a study programme that will determine their future, while their self-image is still under development. Tough choice? Research by psychologist Laura van der Aar has shown that taking a training course…

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.

In June 2024 the Faculty of Archaeology welcomed a new Assistant Professor. Dr Alejandra Roche Recinos, originally from Guatemala, will strengthen the Faculty’s expertise on the archaeology of Central America. ‘I want to explore the lesser known archaeology of Southern Guatemala.’

A fully corona proof graduation at Campus The Hague and the first class of graduates for the Bachelor Security Studies. It was a day to be remembered for 36 students and their families.

On November 21, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena gives the Ehrenfest Colloquium. Maldacena is known worldwide as the inventor of AdS/CFT correspondence, which might be key to a theory of quantum gravity. Maldacena is winner of the prestigious Dirac Prize and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental…

Partly thanks to Roy de Winter, ship design and engineering company C-Job Naval Architects now develops optimal ships in a short time. The master's student Computer Science from Leiden developed the CEGO algorithm, which eliminates the classic design cycle and makes people in the maritime optimization…

Assistant professor at LUC The Hague, Dr. David Ehrhardt has recently been awarded a Comenius Teaching Fellowship. Winning the Fellowship means that he has been awarded a bursary of fifty thousand euro in order to implement and develop an educational project within LUC.

Dr Bleda Düring deemed it was time for an archaeological approach on the imperialisation of Assyria. ‘While there are lot of archaeological studies of Assyrian sites, they are not really trying to address this broader picture of imperialism and how this imperialisation actually worked.’ These imperialisation…

On 1 August, Egbert Fortuin has been appointed Professor of Russian Language and Linguistics. After a five-year term as vice-dean of the Faculty Board, he is eager to fully devote himself to the study programme. His appointment can therefore be summarised in three words: 'I am back'.

How much energy and greenhouse gas emissions can Dutch homes save? Xining Yang uses Leiden as an example and shows with his research how enormous the impact can be. At least, if we work harder on becoming more sustainable. Based on the models he developed, Yang will receive his doctorate on 28 June.

How do you deal with bullying? How can you motivate young people? At the NeurolabNL symposium a multidisciplinary research team launched an interactive book for teachers and youth workers. This digital book offers the latest insights and plenty of useful tips and advice. Children’s Ombudsman Margrite…

Lecture, Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series

Conference, Roundtable

VVI Research Meetings 2023-2024

PhD defence

Lecture

Lecture, CHiLL series

Lecture, CHiLL series

Inaugural lecture

Inaugural lecture

Myths abound about the Pilgrims, the group of religious refugees from England who set sail for America in 1620. Did they really live in peace with the indigenous peoples of America? In an international conference, historians from Leiden will seek to draw attention to the more negative effects of the…

Lecture

Conference

Lecture, Material Culture Talk

Exhibition

Conference

Arts and culture, A Tale in Two Tongues: The added value of multilingualism

Lecture, LUCL Colloquium - Series '24/'25

Conference, Book launch

Lecture, Research Seminar Medieval and Early Modern History

Lecture

City walk

PhD defence

Lecture, Sociolinguistics & Discourse Studies Series

City walk

City walk