Last year, Dr. Henk van Steenbergen received a Grass Shoot grant to completely redevelop the research master's course 'Experimentation I: Programming Psychological Experiments'. The revised course was taught for first time last block and has just come to an end. Time for a brief recap.

If you could design your own education, how would you do it? That is what the students of the Bachelor Honours Class 'Rebuilding Education' asked themselves. The students were divided into five groups in which they designed workshops to improve education. They presented their workshops in December in…

For hundreds of years, children in Ancient Egypt learned to read using The Satire of the Trades, a text in which a father gives advice to his son through descriptions of different professions. PhD candidate Judith Jurjens investigated how this worked in practice.

Do you recall all those drugs that were hastily proposed as potential treatments for COVID-19? In the event of a future pandemic, the goal is to offer an effective treatment more quickly and efficiently. To achieve this, a team led by Coen van Hasselt is developing a platform that can speed up the process…

Packages of DNA strands containing silver, measuring just two or three nanometres in size. Leiden physicists Donny de Bruin and Dirk Bouwmeester create these packages, which can enter living cells on their own. They then activate the silver with light, causing the cells to break down. This could, in…

Archaeology is also digging with computers. This digital quest to find out how we humans lived in the past is what Karsten Lambers likes doing most. He is the first Professor of Digital and Computational Archaeology in the country. ‘A dream come true.’

Hoping to learn something about the human brain, Leiden researchers are creating a setup to shoot single photons, particles of light, into someone’s eye. ‘The eye is a passageway to the brain.’

We catched up with Annette Righolt, Honours College coordinator at FGGA, about a grant, a new course and the new year.

An online ceremony, no party and then no signature in the Sweat Room: during the pandemic, many graduation traditions could not take place. Now anyone who graduated in corona time may still come and sign their name.

In mid-March 2020, the global coronavirus outbreak changed everything in the Netherlands. Staying at home as much as possible and the 1.5 metre rule became the standard. One year on, we reflect on the past year with four Leiden Law School ‘insiders’. What kind of year did they have? And what are their…

What is the mission of our Faculty? How do we view diversity and inclusion? And how do we think about the growth of our Faculty in the broadest sense of the word? These themes were the focus of the first brainstorming session for the new faculty strategy. Some 65 staff and students from all levels of…

Leiden's cultural anthropologist Anouk de Koning is receiving a Vici research grant for her project ‘Prototyping Welfare in Europe: Experiments in State and Society’ to study welfare experiments in four countries and to examine what they tell us about the futures of European welfare states.

It is the fifth year in a row that the Faculty of Archaeology is placed in the top ten of archaeological institutes worldwide. The QS World University Rankings by Subject looks at criteria like academic reputation and citation ratios. Dean Jan Kolen is pleased with this news: 'In recent years, the Faculty…

Professor of Fungal Genetics and Biotechnology Arthur Ram explains how fungi can help us be more sustainable.

On Wednesday 8 March, the 'Meet & Mix: ‘Speed dating with Traineeships’ event took place in Wijnhaven. Trainees, employees and HR advisers from different organisations got together with students from the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs to talk doing a traineeship.

The decolonisation war in Indonesia was violent partly because the Dutch military operated on the conviction that ‘an uprising had to be forcibly suppressed.’ This what historian Christiaan Harinck from the KITLV discovered in his PhD research.

Lecture, Faculty Lecture

Career and apply for jobs

The Schoof cabinet has presented its budget. As expected, higher education is facing severe cuts. In the coming period, the Executive Board will regularly (see updates below) look at the consequences of what it deems an irresponsible policy.

After a turbulent Covid year, the well-being of our students and staff has the highest priority. How can we prevent physical and mental health problems? This was the key question at the Opening of the Academic Year in Pieterskerk in Leiden on 6 September.

From a ship that has been designed to tell you what maintenance it needs and when, to an intelligent journey planner for global goods transport. The three universities in Zuid-Holland are abuzz with AI research in the field of ports and maritime. Three researchers explain. Part two in a series of five…

Course and exam enrolment

On this webpage, you can find more information about the international experiences you can explore during your studies at FGGA. You are most likely visiting this webpage because you are interested in learning more about the possibilities of experiencing the world, expanding your horizon and gaining…

Welcome to Leiden University

2021 was an eventful year once again for the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA). Hybrid, working from home, online education, on-campus education, face masks, self-tests, keeping distance, quarantine and the coronavirus. Words that have now become a standard part of our vocabulary when…

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Lecture

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.

The clever young people at the National ThinkTank who tackle an urgent societal problem each year include two Leiden alumni this autumn: Jiao Harmsen and Jort van Dalen. They will spend at least four months getting to grips with the topic of ‘education’.

No less than six Leiden projects received a grant for quantum research from the national growth programme Quantum Delta NL and the NWO. After all, in order to boost quantum technology not only industry is needed, but also science. Research towards new sensors, faster algorithms and quantum materials,…

Why do vulnerable groups fail to make use of benefits that they are entitled to? This is what Max ten Velde researched in his Master’s in Management of the Public Sector thesis, which has been nominated for the Netherlands Court of Audit’s thesis prize.

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…

Suddenly getting lost, failing to recognise family members, or forgetting words and names are well-known symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Psychologists have now discovered that the disease also manifests in more subtle ways: through the rhythm of finger tapping.

Dr Robert Heinsch and his team of IHL Clinic researchers at the Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum on International Humanitarian Law have won a prestigious Erasmus+ grant for cooperation partnerships in higher education in cooperation with the IHL Clinics at Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany) and Roma Tre University…

After three years of courses, exercises, debating and reflecting, Honours College students received their certificate during a festive ceremony. Even more than with the certificate as such, attendees were pleased with the way Honours enables students to deal with an increasingly complex world.

On Saturday 16 April, secondary school pupils will once again have a chance to sink their teeth into the hardest language-related questions during the final of the Linguistics Olympiad. Professor Sasha Lubotsky and PhD student Cid Swanenvleugel are both former Olympiad winners. Now they are involved…

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:…

And the construction has started! Students of the Leiden Science study associations ceremoniously hammered down the first poles of the new Gorlaeus on Tuesday morning. By doing so, they initiated the second phase of the construction of the second part of the new building.

We know we should do it, and we often want to, but… Why is it so hard to live a healthier life? Professor of Behavioural Interventions in Population Health Marieke Adriaanse explains.

Is it a prehistoric mammoth tooth or just an ordinary pebble? It was National Finds Day at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities on Saturday 17 June, and Leiden University was one of the collaborating partners.

Peter Stevenhagen delivered daily lectures at the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering in Lahore, in collaboration with ICTP, a well-known UNESCO institute in Trieste. The aim is to enhance it he knowledge of students from low- and middle-income countries. ‘By teaching here, I can truly…

When an international cartel is exposed, the parties involved often face punishment by more than one authority for the same behaviour. There is very little international coordination in the actions of these authorities. Pieter Huizing claims that this can, and must, change. PhD defence on 10 March 2…

“You want to be a great leader? Start by figuring out who you are.” On February 2nd, Elanor Boekholt-O’Sullivan, the first female three-star general of the Netherlands, addressed the students of the Leiden Leadership Programme in an inspirational seminar about leadership and authenticity. “Hearing this…

In March 2021, Prof. dr. Jan Aart Scholte, Professor Global Transformations and Governance Challenges at Leiden University, co-edited with Dr. Blayne Haggart and Dr. Natasha Tusikov the volume Power and Authority in Internet Governance.

Professor Judi Mesman interviewed 40 people of colour in leadership positions. What can we learn from them?

Debates about the ‘end’ of the Roman era, how, when, and even if it ended, are still very much alive and raging. However, what happened after the (long) late antique period is a lesser-known and lesser-studied subject. The post-Roman past needs, however, as much energetic investigation and discussion.…

Prison and student life are worlds apart. But in the Learning Behind Bars project, Leiden criminology students get the chance to study inside prison walls with people incarcerated there.

Donororganen zijn er nooit genoeg. De organen die wel beschikbaar zijn, moeten vliegensvlug getransplanteerd worden. De geneeskunde zet daarom volop in op het langer goedhouden van organen. Marlon de Haan (24) onderzoekt hoe je nieren buiten het lichaam in leven kunt houden.