Leiden University, Netherlands invites online Application for number of Fully Funded PhD Positions at various Departments. We are providing a list of Fully Funded PhD Programs available at Leiden University, Netherlands.
Eligible candidate may Apply as soon as possible.
(01) PhD Positions – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: PhD position Getting All on Board – creating mutual understanding among stakeholders (0.8 – 1.0 fte)
Citizen collectives, such as housing, care and energy cooperatives, are often seen as facilitators of inclusiveness and participation. Yet, they also regularly fail to represent citizens who are not part of the collective (non-participants) and both citizen collectives and government officials often struggle to collaborate properly with each other. As a result, citizen collectives run the risk to not fully realize the democratic potential commonly attributed to them.
This research project operates on the assumption that enhancing the relationship between citizen collectives, local governments, and non-participants, and improving the effectiveness of collectives as intermediaries, requires a deeper understanding of the underlying drivers of their collaborations and interactions. Citizen collectives, local governments, and non-participants often view one another through their own lenses, leading to communication breakdowns where they talk past each other rather than engaging constructively. This separation can perpetuate stereotypes and exacerbate conflicts, further complicated by the inherent power imbalances in public-civil partnerships.
In the PhD project, you will study how to create mutual understanding among citizen collectives, local governments, and non-participants. What factors are driving or hindering mutual understanding among actors and under what conditions? You will apply a mixed-method design (including Q-methodology, focus groups, interviews and observations) to identify citizens’ and government officials perspectives and mechanisms that hinder inclusive and effective collaboration. Part of the project is the development of a serious game as a tool to foster cooperation among citizen collectives, local governments, and non-participants.
Deadline : 15 februari 2026
(02) PhD Positions- Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: PhD position in Statistics (survival analysis)
The Mathematical Institute of Leiden University invites applications for a PhD position in Statistics (survival analysis). This 4-year position is part of a research project on the development of new statistical methods for the dynamic prediction of time-to-event (survival) outcomes in complex longitudinal studies, led by dr. Mirko Signorelli and funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
As PhD student, you will become a member of the DynoSurv research team, and work on the development of new statistical methods and software for dynamic prediction together with the other team members. Specifically, this position will primarily focus on strategies to best deal with complex survival outcomes (e.g., competing risks and interval censoring) and on the development of statistical software in the R programming language.
You will also become a member of the Statistics group at the Mathematical Institute, an active and growing group of researchers in biostatistics, mathematical statistics and computational statistics.
Deadline : 20 March 2026
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(03) PhD Positions – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: PhD Position: Ion transport and synthesis of two-dimensional nanopores and nanoporous membranes
Current separation technology is crucial for many aspects of human life and accounts for ~15% of the world’s energy consumption. Additionally, in the development of next-generation power solutions based on fuel cells and ion batteries, the membrane is an essential component that directly determines device efficiency. While the particle flow through separation columns is directional at the atomistic scale, undirected Brownian motion dominates in state-of-the-art membranes. 2D membranes have the potential to overcome this intrinsic deficiency and shift the paradigm of particle transport from disordered Brownian motion to unidirectional flow. In the project we will develop 2D polymer heterostructure membranes (2DHMs) combined with functionalized graphene. They offer ultimate thinness (leading to shortest diffusion lengths), precision pore geometry/size (resulting in high size-selectivity, even for hydrogen isotopes), and high functionality (fostering chemical/charge selectivity and ionic gating), making them ideal membrane materials to realize selective and unidirectional ion transport. We will combine theory and prediction, chemical design, and on-water/liquid surface synthesis, as well as in-situ ion transport investigations to develop robust 2DHMs. We will synthesize 2DHMs in the form of horizontal and vertical heterostructures, for which reliable structure property correlations will be established. We will take advantage of lattice vibrations, nuclear quantum, and electrochemical effects, and consequently reformulate classical diffusion theory to consider these game changers. As a result, we will achieve innovative 2DHMs for selective proton and ion transport with high permeance, laying the foundations for the next-generation membrane technologies. 2DPolymembrane will unlock the unique opportunities of 2DHMs for innovative energy device integrations (proton/aqueous metal batteries, fuel cells, and reverse osmotic power generators), where the merits of ultrathin precision 2DHMs will result in the highest selectivity and highest particle flow, and thus a fundamental device performance beyond the state-of-art.
Deadline : 5 January 2026
(04) PhD Positions – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: PhD on moduli of curves and abelian varieties
Applications are invited for a 4-year PhD position at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Leiden, as part of the ERC project Enumerative and Arithmetic Geometry of Logarithmic Curves.
Moduli spaces of curves and abelian varieties play a central role in algebraic and arithmetic geometry, and can be studied from a variety of perspectives (modular curves, Shimura varieties, moduli spaces of flat structures, …). This project brings together a number of these approaches with applications to problems in enumerative geometry (specifically log Gromov-Witten theory; counting curves with tangency conditions) and in arithmetic geometry (understanding rational points on abelian surfaces).
There are a number of promising directions for a PhD candidate within this project; exactly what you will be working on depends on your background and interests, as well as the progress which has already been made when you join the project.
You will be joining an active and growing group around enumerative and log geometry, within a larger group in Leiden specialising in algebra, geometry and number theory. We run a lot of local reading groups, as well as taking part in national and international algebraic geometry seminars. There are many opportunities for collaboration, and our students generally attend plenty of national and international schools and workshops.
Deadline : 4 January 2026
(05) PhD Positions – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: PhD position, project LangPro: ‘Societies and Guilds in the Language Industry’
This PhD project will examine how language professionals supported each other by uniting in guilds, societies, and associations in early modern North-West Europe. To this end, the PhD candidate will study early modern archives of guilds and associations related to the language industry in the Low Countries, France, Germany, and England, between 1550 and 1650. Studying the organisations that were related to the language sector is imperative for our understanding of the functioning of this professional domain: to what extent and how did guilds in the language sector verify and guarantee the levels of language proficiency of their members? In what types of conflict did guilds in the language sector mediate? What schooling did they offer?
This PhD project will yield new insights into the differences between various regions in North-West Europe regarding the forms of institutional support that was available to language professionals, the professions to which these organisations catered (e.g. language teachers, secretaries, etc.), and their functioning. It will thus yield crucial insights into the social functioning of the early modern language sector, as well as into the functioning of the guild system itself. Besides working on this individual research project, the PhD candidate will also collaborate with other team members in the LangPro project to build a database on early modern language professionals.
Deadline : 15 February 2026
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(06) PhD Positions- Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: PhD position, project: LangPro Women in the Early Modern Language Sector
The LangPro project examines the notion of the language sector in early modern North-West Europe: that part of early modern societies and economies which relied primarily on language skills. The early modern period saw a swift increase in occupational opportunities for men and women who possessed language skills such as reading, writing, and text editing in one or more languages. However, since language professionals have never been studied as a separate category in the early modern workforce, the possibilities that existed for linguistically skilled individuals remain a big unknown. LangPro’s central research question is: What professional, financial, and social opportunities did the early modern language sector offer to men and women in the Low Countries, France, the German lands, and England, between 1550 and 1650? Laying the groundwork for a new research domain on the history of the language sector, the project team will develop a prosopographical database that makes it possible to gain insight into the characteristics of professionals in the past whose core business was language and the nature of the sector that employed them.
Deadline : 15 February 2026
(07) PhD Positions – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: PhD on New K-theoretic invariants in quantum theory
The proposed research revolves around the following key objectives:
- Finding analytic expressions for families of numerical Hamiltonians that model magnetic topological semimetals.
- Classifying such Hamiltonians in terms of invariants of operator algebras, such as K-theory and cyclic homology; and
- Developing a mathematical method for passing from numerical Berry curvature to robust topological invariants in a large class of cases.
To achieve these objectives, the PhD candidate will combine the analytical tools from the theory of operator algebras and noncommutative geometry (Arici, Mesland) with the study of data obtained from simulations of tight-binding Hamiltonians (Aguilera). The project aims to develop mathematical tools that will further elucidate the intricate aspects of topology in quantum matter.
Deadline : 5 January 2026
(08) PhD Positions – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: PhD Candidate in Efficient AI for traffic management and decision support systems
We invite applications for a fully-funded PhD position in the emerging intersection of artificial intelligence, traffic management, and decision support systems. The successful candidate will explore the application of foundation models, such as large language models (LLMs), to support and enhance real-time decision-making in road traffic management.
The project aims to bridge the gap between recent advances in AI and machine learning, in particular, multimodal and instruction-tuned foundation models, and the complex operational challenges faced by traffic operators, municipalities, and mobility service providers. This includes the integration of symbolic reasoning, predictive analytics, and reinforcement learning within the context of intelligent traffic control systems.
This PhD is a joint project between Leiden University and Technolution, and a part of a larger research programme in collaboration with a number of partners in both science and industry. The specific focus of the research done is to be determined in collaboration with the co-supervisors: prof. Rob V. van Nieuwpoort (Leiden University) and Tijs van Bakel (Researcher at Technolution).
Deadline : 18 December 2025
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(09) PhD Positions – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: PhD Candidate on Formal Methods for Safe AI
The PhD student will be embedded in the Theory cluster at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, supervised by Dr. Emily Yu and Prof. Marcello Bonsangue at the Veritas lab. The successful candidate will conduct original and novel research developing verification, synthesis, and machine learning methods that ensure that digital, physical, probabilistic systems interacting with deep learning and neural network are formally guaranteed to be safe, publish and present scientific articles in top formal methods, AI/ML venues, contribute to educational activities as a (head) teaching assistant and finally write a PhD thesis detailing the outcome of the research activities.
Deadline : 21 January 2026
(10) PhD Positions – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: PhD position in Animate matter
The PhD project is part of the Dutch national consortium on “Emergence at all Scales” (EAAS), which is the national flag-carrier of the NWA route 2 game changer Dutch Institute for Emergent Phenomena (d-iep.org). EAAS combines 8 Dutch and 1 Ukrainian university as well as Statistics Netherlands (CBS) in an interdisciplinary and collaborative endeavour aimed at understanding emergent phenomena across scales, combining multiple fields including physics, mathematics, astronomy, history & philosophy of science, and social science. Its approach to societal engagement throughout the project’s 5-year lifetime is equally interdisciplinary, with a wide variety of activities ranging from art/science programmes, large scale science festivals, citizen science and educational initiatives at various levels. EAAS is hiring a total of 20 PhD/postdoc scientists to join the team, and our project/group leaders share the ambition of gender parity in hires across EAAS.
If selected for this position you are expected to participate in the various scientific activities, meetings and workshops of the EAAS consortium, to form interdisciplinary collaborations across fields and geographical locations within the Netherlands, and to acquire skills by active participation in science communication activities, interacting with public audiences and taking part in a pilot programme where experience can be acquired in high school science teaching.
The ideal candidate for this position has a background in experimental physics and is committed to conducting independent and original scientific research. The results of this research will be reported in scientific publications and communicated through conference presentations. PhD students are furthermore expected to contribute 10% of their time to teaching activities, such as supervision of exercise classes and research projects of BSc and MSc students.
Deadline : 31 December 2025
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About Leiden University, Netherlands –Official Website
Leiden University (abbreviated as LEI; Dutch: Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. It was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange as the first university in the Netherlands.
During the Dutch Golden Age scholars from around Europe were attracted to the Dutch Republic for its climate of intellectual tolerance. Individuals such as René Descartes, Rembrandt, Christiaan Huygens, Hugo Grotius, Benedictus Spinoza, and later Baron d’Holbach were active in Leiden and environs.
The university has seven academic faculties and over fifty subject departments, housing more than forty national and international research institutes. Its historical primary campus consists of several buildings spread over Leiden, while a second campus located in The Hague houses a liberal arts college (Leiden University College The Hague) and several of its faculties. It is a member of the Coimbra Group, the Europaeum, and a founding member of the League of European Research Universities.
The university has produced twenty-six Spinoza Prize Laureates and sixteen Nobel Laureates. Members of the Dutch royal family such as Queen Juliana, Queen Beatrix, and King Willem-Alexander are alumni, and ten prime ministers of the Netherlands including Mark Rutte. US President John Quincy Adams also studied at the university.
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