In 2002, together with eleven other prominent European universities, Leiden University was involved in setting up the League of European Research Universities (LERU). Since then, many more institutions have joined the League.

The primary goal of the alliance is to convince national and European governments of the importance of fundamental research and the role that research universities can play in this area. In addition, the LERU aims to exchange expertise between members, for instance in the area of quality assurance, and to facilitate the exchange of staff members and students between member institutions.

The LERU member universities are also important partners in Leiden’s collaborative activities in education and research.

Founded in 1985 and formally constituted by Charter in 1987, the Coimbra Group is an association of long-established European multidisciplinary universities of high international standing.

The Coimbra Group is committed to creating special academic and cultural ties in order to promote, for the benefit of its members, internationalisation, academic collaboration, excellence in learning and research, and service to society. A further aim of the Group is to influence European educational policy and to develop best practice tby exchanging experiences.

The Europaeum was conceived in the early 1990s to give future young scholars and leaders the chance to meet, and to discuss and develop together a real ‘sense of Europe’. The Europaeum was to be the framework within which a group of leading European universities would strive, together, in search of new kinds of pan-European thinking, linking the brightest academic minds and young scholars.

The Europaeum exists to foster collaborative research and teaching, to provide opportunities for scholars, leaders, academics and graduates, to stage conferences, summer schools and colloquia, and to enable leading figures from the worlds of business, politics and culture to take part in transnational and interdisciplinary dialogue with the world of scholarship.

Europaeum programmes include research projects, annual conferences and student summer schools, lectures, joint teaching programmes, public debates, staff mobility schemes, linked scholarship schemes, and a developing knowledge platform.

The European University Association (EUA) represents and supports higher education institutions in 47 countries, providing them with a unique forum to co-operate and keep abreast of the latest trends in higher education and research policies.

Members of the Association are European universities involved in teaching and research, national associations of rectors, and other organisations active in higher education and research.

The EUA plays an essential role in shaping tomorrow’s European higher education and research landscape due to its unique knowledge of the sector and the diversity of its members. The Association’s mandate in the Bologna process,  and its contribution to EU research policy-making and relations with intergovernmental organisations, European institutions and international associations, ensure its capacity to debate issues that are crucial for universities in relation to higher education, research and innovation.

Erasmus Mundus is a co-operation and mobility programme in the field of higher education that aims to enhance the quality of European higher education and to promote dialogue and understanding between people and cultures through co-operation with Third Countries. In addition, it contributes to the development of human resources and the international co-operation capacity of Higher education institutions in Third Countries by increasing mobility between the European Union and these countries.

The Erasmus Mundus programme provides support to higher education institutions that wish to implement joint programmes at postgraduate level or to set up inter-institutional co-operation partnerships between universities from Europe and targeted Third Countries.

Leiden University participates in the following Erasmus Mundus consortia:

Established in 2004, the ALGANT consortium now consists of eight universities on four continents, namely the universities of Bordeaux (France), Chennai (India), Leiden (Netherlands), Milano (Italy), Concordia (Montreal, Canada), Padua (Italy), Paris-Sud (France) and Stellenbosch (South Africa). The consortium offers a two-year world-class integrated master's course and a joint doctorate programme in pure mathematics, with a strong emphasis on Algebra, Geometry and Number Theory. Both programmes have received the Erasmus Mundus seal.

The MIND programme (Erasmus Mundus Master's programme in Industrial Ecology) is a new two-year programme with 120 ECTS, offering a unique Industrial Ecology education for 15 third-country and 10 EU students per edition. Those 25 students can study at two or three universities within the MIND consortium, representing seven universities: University of Graz (programme co-ordinator), Chalmers University of Technology, Delft University of Technology, Leiden University, Asian Institute of Technology, Rochester Institute of Technology and Waseda University.

Leiden University encourages its students to experience a period of study abroad, and to be exposed to other cultures and ideas in the classroom during their studies. In order to accommodate this, the University has established a dense network of partnerships with universities in Europe and beyond.