Young Academy Leiden
Newsletter - October 2025 |
We are excited to welcome six new members to Young Academy Leiden, and we are grateful for the many contributions our outgoing colleagues have made to our community. With a change in leadership and a busy programme of events and activities ahead, there is much to look forward to! Read on to see what’s happening in our community this month. |
YAL's new academic year
As Rachel Plak’s term as Chair comes to an end, Ahmed Mahfouz will be taking over the role, supported by Anne Urai as vice-chair. This year's theme is slow science. YAL will explore how one can remain creative within academic life, and slow down while the demands of your job are only getting higher.
In this interview, Rachel and Ahmed talk about what the platform has achieved for young academics over the past year and what the plans are for the future.
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Six new members
We’re excited to welcome six new colleagues to Young Academy Leiden: Sheila Varadan, Indira Day, Sara de Wit, Elizabeth Buimer, Lieke Smits, and Martijn Nagtegaal.  Check out their bios and ideas for YAL here.
At the same time, we sadly say goodbye to our outgoing members Julia Cramer, Eiko Fried, Anna Van Duijvenvoord, Cristiana Strava and Andrew Gawthorpe. Thank you for your many contributions to making academia a better place for early career researchers. 🙏
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 Night of Discoveries
Large Language Models: Experience Energy Consumption
During this year's Night of Discoveries, YAL invited participant to generate the required wattage to be able to allow the production of an image using a large language model. Beyond being a fun exhibition where participants to a science fair were unexpectedly challenged to jump on the home-trainer setup, our goal was to raise awareness about the energy consumption that comes with using this technology. Read more here!
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| Things that might interest you: |
The Knowledge Orchard
On 28 November 2025, Leiden University and PLNT Leiden will host “The Knowledge Orchard” - an event aimed at starting up/ enhancing interdisciplinary cooperation between academics at Leiden University, and improving collaboration between Leiden researchers and external partners in research and education. Especially the morning programme could be of interest to Leiden early career researchers who would like to start up or strengthen interdisciplinary work. The morning programme will, among other things, offer sessions on: Possibilities concerning interdisciplinary research grants, possibilities for European collaborations in teaching (Una Europa), getting the most out of inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations and publications, and setting up interdisciplinary teaching programmes. See here for more information and registration.
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Young Academy NL
For international researchers who have just started working in the Netherlands, we’ve developed 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘎𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘋𝘶𝘵𝘤𝘩 𝘈𝘤𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘢: a warm welcome packed with essential information on research funding, science policy, commonly used abbreviations and more. So, whether it’s for that new colleague in your team or for all staff at university Knowledge Transfer Offices, spread the word! Download the free guide using this link.
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Call for Science Communication Projects
This semester, our Science Communication & Society (SCS) master’s students will once again be developing real-life science communication products for researchers at the Faculty of Science. Do you have an idea or challenge they could work on? Students will spend three weeks in December 2025 developing a prototype, with supervision from the SCS department.
Possible products: Popular science articles, an exhibition plan, video explaining a scientific concept (more than just showing the lab), science theatre, plan for a science debate or festival, a science (board/card) game, a series of experiments for children, a children’s book, demonstrations, a popular science lecture, a lesson series, basically any way to communicate science to the (general) public. Out-of-the-box ideas are more than welcome!
Deadline: Submit your idea to infoscs@biology.leidenuniv.nl by 24 October 2025.
Kick-off: 1 December | Final presentations: 18 December
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Survey participation of researchers
This is a survey about the participation of researchers, especially female researchers, from the whole world in the international academic system. It aims to explore problems in "Global Science Equity" - the equitable representation of researchers from all countries and world regions. The aim is to provide hard numbers and get direct insights into phenomena that many researchers know about anecdotally, but which may be put aside as individual experiences instead of being recognized as structural inequities. We hope that collecting these data can help to raise awareness and reach policy-makers in the international academic system, to work towards improvements.
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 YAL's monthly booktips on the Art of Slowing Down
- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals - Oliver Burkeman
- How To Do Nothing - Jenny Odell
- The Undoing Project - Michael Lewis
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Katharina Natter receives IMR Book Review Award
Katharina has been awarded the International Migration Review(IMR) Book Review Award 2025 for her book The Politics of Immigration Beyond Liberal States: Morocco and Tunisia in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press). The award is presented annually by the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) and International Migration Review for an exceptional contribution to the field. Read more here.
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