An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2018, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

The general aim of the project is a description and analysis of the Leiden anatomical collections from a humanities perspective. The project investigates how historical and cultural practices and concerns have shaped anatomical preparations and how exhibitions of the anatomical body have informed cultural…

Here you can find the recordings of previous Florence Nightingale Colloquia.

Leiden has so much to offer in the areas of sport and culture. Irrespective of whether you fancy burning off some calories after a day’s studying or perhaps spending your evenings rehearsing with an amateur drama group, you’re covered.

An incredible quantity of archaeological reports are stored in digital archives. If you want to search for information in them, you have to do this manually. And that is a real chore. Archaeologist Alex Brandsen has now used deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to develop a search engine…

In view of its aim to aim to promote and strengthen teaching and research in European Studies, the Jean Monnet chair ‘Europe and the World' organises a series of seminars. Several interesting speakers will present their research, and both students and staff members will have ample opportunities to engage…

The image of the European Union (EU) as a remote law-making machine is widespread. Quite often journalists and politicians deliberately depict ‘Brussels’ as bureaucratic, even undemocratic, bypassing its citizens. And many of us buy into that image. Nikoleta Yordanova, Anastasia Ershova and Aleksandra…

Many of our staff and students have won prizes over the past year. Others have been awarded a subsidy, or, because of their eminence in their field, they have been appointed member of an academic society or have taken on a position in the community. Reasons enough to be proud of them and to include…

Political scientist Femke Bakker (Leiden University) is going to investigate whether meditation affects political behaviour. Bakker has been awarded a PEACE Grant by the Mind & Life Institute, which enables her to conduct innovative, experimental research. The aim is an answer to the question whether…

The Sport Data Center, a consortium of universities of which Leiden University is leader, is recognised as a Certified Partner of Sportinnovator. This makes the Sport Data Center an important part of the Sportinnovator ecosystem. Sportinnovator is the national programme for sports innovation, initiated…

How many children are born with the help of a surrogate mother in the Netherlands, and which legal obstacles can arise? Through a new interdisciplinary study, researchers at Leiden University are attempting to provide clarity about surrogacy processes.

Data science and statistics are closely linked, says Spinoza laureate and Stochastics professor Aad van der Vaart. We talk with him about the big data hype, genome research and collaboration with other disciplines. ‘Statistics helps wherever data is not perfect.’

Pharmaceutical research should make more use of data science, says Gerard van Westen, postdoctoral fellow at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR). ‘If we want to have better drugs, we should start with data.’

This summer, the Universe is closer than ever. With the online astronomy summer programme Space in Your Living Room!, the Leiden Observatory brings astronauts and Leiden astronomers to the homes of children all across Europe.

We will use Artificial Intelligence to make an intelligent, multilingual search engine for archaeological texts, which will enable new discoveries about the human past.

Leiden University, the LUMC and Janssen have signed a partnership agreement stating that they will collaborate in different areas, including infectious disease prevention, clinical tests, drug production and e-health. By joining forces, the three partners will be able to provide better, more innovative…

Fransje Molenaar, who defended her dissertation at the Institute of Political Science (Leiden University) in September 2017, has been awarded the Jaarprijs Politicologie. Out of 66 entries from Flanders and The Netherlands, her study of party legislation in Latin America made the biggest impression…

It sounds credible: ‘Research has shown that…’, but is it really? Read in the research dossier ‘From data to insight: the importance of sound research methods’ how Leiden University contributes to more reliable social science research.

While humanities once mainly involved books and archives, nowadays we can’t imagine life without AI. Next semester a new faculty-wide course will be introduced, taking you along with this development. University lecturer and course coordinator Yann Ryan tells us more about it.

Leiden University is awarding an honorary doctorate to virologist Marc van Ranst. Van Ranst has been one of the main advisers of the Belgian government during the Covid pandemic. German Arabist Beatrice Gründler will also receive an honorary doctorate for her work in the field of Oriental Manuscript…

America will not be choosing the next President until 8 November. Nonetheless, election fever is already running high. University lecturer and political commentator Kees Boonman explains the phenomenon and shows what Dutch politicians can learn from it.

Nadine Chahine, designer of Arabic typefaces and external PhD candidate at Leiden University, has been named in Fast Company's 2012 ranking as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. ‘I see type as the means to engage in the larger context of culture and society,’ commented Chahine.

The Humanities Faculty bachelor’s degree programmes in History, and Greek and Latin language and culture were rated by students as the best. The master’s programmes in Classics and Ancient Civilisations, Dutch Studies and North American Studies also received the highest scores. These were the results…

Last July saw the start of the new master programme Cosmopolis Advanced, an initiative of the Institute for History at Leiden University in partnership with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta. The Cosmopolis Advanced programma, led by prof.dr. Jos Gommans and coordinator dr. Lennart Bes, provides…

Dr. Gabrielle van den Berg received a prestigious VICI grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for her project

Will Leiden be the first city to have wall poems in sign language? It will, if sign language researcher Victoria Nyst has her way. She recently started a crowdfunding campaign together with the Leiden Language Museum and the TEGEN-BEELD Foundation.

Dr. Corey Williams (Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Global Christianity) has received a Collaborative International Research Grant from the American Academy of Religion. This initiative is intended to support generative research collaborations between and among scholars located in different…

Spirits play a important role in post-colonial and minority literature as a means of processing black pages from history, according to literary scientist Chia-Sui Lee. PhD defence 11 January.

A study in the Behavioral Biology group of Carel ten Cate at the IBL showed that experience-dependent and -independent preferences influence song learning in zebra finches.

On February 2nd, 2018, Professor Sven P. Vleeming of Trier University was presented with a ‘Festschrift’ to celebrate his retirement last summer. The book was presented to him, in the presence of friends and colleagues from the Netherlands and abroad, by the editors: his former Leiden colleagues Koen…

Florian Schneider has earned the title of Leiden University Lecturer of the Year. Sinologist Schneider was nominated by his students and crowned winner of the LUS Teaching Prize at the opening of the academic year by the board of the Leiden University Student Platform (LUS).

On Saturday 11 May 2019, the BA South and Southeast Asian Studies programme held an Alumni Event for former students. All current students and staff were also invited. Several alumni were invited to talk about their study and career during two panel sessions. An inspiring afternoon!

The South African poet and author Antjie Krog gave the 37th Albert Verwey Lecture in the Great Auditorium in the Academy Building on 18 November. Inspired by Verwey’s poem ‘De zegger van verzen’, Krog’s lecture was a polyphonic and multilingual love letter to poetry.

On 8 December, Leiden University Press will present a new international series on Persian poetry and literature. The series will be edited by Asghar Seyed Gohrab (Middle Eastern Studies).

On Thursday July 1, our alumna Lise Stork will defend her PhD thesis at Leiden University. It is about using AI to make sense of handwritten natural history archives.

Leiden University offers one full Leiden University Excellence Scholarship (LExS) to an African candidate interested in the two-year Research Master African Studies programme (ResMA AS); thus non-EEA/non-EFTA* applicants. LExS is a prestigious scholarship and includes a fee waiver up until the statutory…

Biologists Michelle Spierings and Ryan Bogaars will both join the Dutch Final of the FameLab Competition on April 21st in Museum Boerhaave, Leiden.

On Monday 23 November, Ms Simonetta Cook, member of the Cabinet of the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, addressed master's students following the LLM European Law Programme. She shared valuable insights on what it is like working for the European Council, in addition to some of her…

On the second floor of the Sylvius Laboratory, new labs are being built for researchers of the Faculties of Social and Behavioural Sciences and Humanities. After a successful tender construction has recently started.

On February 28th of this year Dr. Andrzej Tadeusz Antczak died of cancer after a long battle. Until his retirement in 2023 Andrzej was attached to the Faculty of Archaeology as an Associate Professor in Caribbean Archaeology. From 2017 until 2020 he was the Head of the Department of World Archaeology,…

What holds people together and what makes them willing to fit within larger political structures? Our project examines this question in the practices of dynastic rulership in Eurasia ca. 1300-1800.

What is Leiden University doing to make its buildings future-proof and independent of fossil energy?

Political scientist Claire Vergerio (Leiden University) has made it to the final stage of the selection process for Central European University’s annual European Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Social Sciences and Humanities. As the 2019 Casimir Prize winner, Vergerio was nominated by the Faculty…

How can rare and expensive materials be used more efficiently to produce cleaner and cheaper fuel? Under the guidance of Marc Koper, Professor of Catalysis and Surface Chemistry, international teams of scientists have published 3 articles in Nature Communications.

‘AI can’t do half as much as people think,’ says computer scientist and psychologist Roy de Kleijn. He tries to teach robots seemingly easy things, and keeps on discovering how smart human intelligence really is. Three things that computers are no way near doing.

Hwæt! You've heard of the adventures of the mighty Beowulf. You've heard of the brave folk standing beside him, and the awe-inspiring foes standing against him. But where their legend still lives, their tale ended long ago... Let us begin a new saga, let us find new heroes, weave a new story - by the…

Seminar

On November 8, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) named Wessel Kraaij as one of the 2017 Distinguished Members. ACM Distinguished Members have made a significant contribution to the field of computing, computer science or information technology. This year, worldwide 43 scientists received…