Pichayapat Naisupap recently joined the Institute for History as PhD candidate. Below, he introduces himself.

While tens of thousands of visitors dance to deafening music, a team of Leiden psychologists are trying to collect data for their research at Lowlands. How do festivalgoers experience a virtual trip? And what role do factors such as too little sleep and whether they have experience with psychedelics…

A beautiful speech by vice-dean Bart de Smit, a mini-lecture on exoplanets and the presentation of three faculty awards. That's how we started the new year at the faculty. Together with colleagues and students, we raised our glasses to a new year full of great collaborations, science and education.

Trail, FGGA’s internship platform will be one-year old in November. In the upcoming weeks, we will be interviewing some FGGA students who went on internships. What did they learn from their internships? And what tasks were assigned to them?

Even with state-of-the-art technology, it is almost impossible to see: a cosmic neutrino. Yet scientists have managed to image this particle with a deep-sea telescope. And that could help to better understand our universe. Leiden particle physicists collaborated on this ambitious project, published…

Life cycle assessment (LCA) reveals the total environmental impact of products or production processes, and EU rules are going to make this even more important.

What developments preceded modern Standard Dutch? PhD candidate Iris Van de Voorde conducted research on ‘pluricentricity’, or the idea that language norms arise in different places and spread outwards from there. PhD defence on 19 April.

Search engines are getting better at answering our questions. And chatbots are increasingly likely to search the internet for relevant sources. ‘Search engines and chatbots will become more closely entwined’, says Professor Suzan Verberne.

When politicians claim they can make major differences with their migration policies, they’re raising false expectations. The opportunities for the government to restrict migration are in fact very limited. And what about the little room they do have? Mark Klaassen’s advice is to make use of those opportunities…

Bringing together chemists and physicists to thoroughly investigate how electrochemical processes work on the smallest scale. That is the goal of the new Advanced Nano-electrochemistry Institute of the Netherlands, or ANION for short. The consortium receives a Gravitation funding of 23.6 million euros…

Het College van Bestuur laat door een postdoc een eenjarig vooronderzoek doen naar het koloniale en slavernijverleden van de Universiteit Leiden.

How can you figure out which points lie on a certain curve? And how many possible curves do you count by a given number of points? These are the kinds of questions Pim Spelier of the Mathematical Institute studied during his PhD research. Spelier received his doctorate with distinction on June 12.

‘I could hardly believe my ears when I heard that we had been awarded the Gravitation grant,’ says Berna Güroğlu, professor of the Neuroscience of Social Relations. This grant is awarded by the state, via NWO, to pioneering scientific top research. In terms of grants, this really is something special,…

Not everything that comes close to a black hole is swallowed by it. Black holes can also hurl material away, and that chance turns out to be considerably bigger than previously thought. Martijn Oei's accidental discovery and his subsequent research on it earned him a cum laude promotion on 12 Decemb…

In her teaching and research, Mosquera primarily seeks the connection between tax law and other disciplines. Her appointment is effective as of 1 November 2021.

Two of the three nominees for the Leiden Education Prize, or best teacher of 2020-2021, work at FGGA: Els de Busser (ISGA) and Ayo Adedokun (LUC). Both lecturers are very honoured with their nomination. The winner will be announced on Monday 6 September during the opening of the academic year.

Nathaniel Martin, Professor of Biological chemistry, wondered what would happen if you take an antibiotic that has been known for 70 years and try to improve it with the latest tools of modern chemistry. Turns out it can become up to a hundred times more potent and prevent the growth of some drug-resistant…

Ever since the first edition of the Science Run, the Leiden Student Running Association Currimus has delivered the winning team or the fastest runner. Now the event is back, the new batch of students must uphold the honour. The board is also forming a team: ‘During the upcoming training session, we…

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…

To underline the urgency: Our faculty faces a significant financial challenge. With a structural reduction of €5 to €6 million in annual income, dark clouds are gathering on the horizon. Added to this are the uncertain consequences of budget cuts from The Hague, including the Balanced Internationalisation…

It matters a lot whether a fatwa is given by a female or male Islamic scholar, discovered doctoral student Nor Ismah.

'It gave our team a big boost to hear that our work was valuable,' says medical chemist Elmer Maurits about the moment they won the Venture Challenge. With their company Iprotics, they want to develop a drug that can better treat patients with autoimmune diseases and blood cancers. 25,000 euros of prize…

Interviewing pupils and brainstorming with judges and lawyers. Students from the Trust in the Rule of Law honours course discovered how pupils at the Edith Stein College school in The Hague see institutions and how the law works in practice.

People already diagnosed with a mental disorder before the COVID-19 pandemic did not show a disproportionate increase in symptoms afterwards. This is one result from the first systematic review of longitudinal studies following their study population from before to during the first eighteen months of…

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.

Workshops, tours, talks, music, an AI photobooth, interviews, a special poem and the launch of the LUF Children’s Fund. Alumni celebrated their alma mater’s 450th birthday in style on Saturday at the massively oversubscribed Dies Natalis Festival.

Today, ESA’s Gaia mission releases its new treasure trove of data about our home galaxy. Astronomers, led by the Leiden astronomer Anthony Brown, describe strange ‘starquakes’, stellar DNA, asymmetric motions and other fascinating insights in this most detailed Milky Way survey to date.

The University of St Andrews and Leiden University, with the support of a network grant from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, will be hosting a workshop series in 2022 about Ocean Governance. Academics, policy makers, and practitioners are invited to contribute via working papers. Deadline abstract:…

Sharing his passion for sustainability with students—that’s what Thijs Bosker enjoys most about his work. As an environmental scientist, he conducts ecotoxicological research, but next to this he loves teaching. ‘Everyone can make a difference in their own way.’

In December 2023, Louise van der Vlugt was announced as Co-Winner of the 'Best Thesis in Jewish Studies' Award. She sat down to answer some questions about her prize-winning BA Thesis.

Our banking, DigiD and sensitive medical data: what if our entire digital infrastructure can no longer be trusted? Jelle Don has this question permanently in mind as he goes about his research. And that is no bad thing because without new digital security measures, our society will be extremely vuln…

Professor Beatrice de Graaf held the 53rd Huizinga Lecture on Thursday 12 December. In front of a a sold-out Stadsgehoorzaal, she spoke about how history can be used in times of crisis to give meaning to the situation.

At a work meal HR Policy Adviser Petra Boerlage and Associate Professor Robert Stein got talking about the ‘worlds’ of academic and support staff: are they really that different, they wondered. And wouldn’t it be good if staff knew more about each other? The two put their money where their mouths are…

Getting out and exercising rather than slobbing on the sofa, breathing in fresh air instead of cigarette smoke and grabbing healthy snacks instead of junk food. In a new interdisciplinary Medical Delta programme, researchers are going to investigate how to help people live healthier lives. What are…

The availability of natural resources, the energy transition, the importance of circularity and our dependence on China. This and more is what Professor of Industrial Ecology René Kleijn's inaugural lecture is about.

Hiring academics is more than just tallying up publications, says academic director and history professor Jeroen Duindam. He and his colleagues have come up with tips and guidelines for interview committees that align with the new system of recognition and rewards.

Ships are still emitting too much nitrogen oxide. Till now it has been impossible to measure this at sea, but that is set to change. Solomiia Kurchaba combined satellite data and developed algorithms to identify which ships are emitting too much. Kurchaba received her PhD on 11 June.

Online services are stored on servers in data centres. Remko Fermin researched methods to make the memory in data centres more energy efficient.

Education, Organisation

Hydrogen can help to solve the climate problem. At least, if we start producing it in the right, clean way. Leiden researchers mapped out the global environmental impact of hydrogen production and looked ahead to 2050. They published their work in Energy & Environmental Science.

What makes people in the Netherlands join radical and far-right groups? PhD candidate Nikki Sterkenburg followed several activists. ‘Some feel it is their duty to defend the Dutch nation.’ PhD defence on 19 May.

Leiden University is seeking bids from developers for housing in Nieuw Rhijngeest-Zuid, the Oegstgeest part of the Leiden Bio Science Park.

In the 60s and 70s, Black Power groups were also active in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This is what PhD candidate Debby Esmeé de Vlugt has discovered.

A boost to self-confidence and clarifying; this is how participants experience the new-style Annual Interview. The approximately 40 interviews conducted, used 360-degree feedback and an updated Result & Development form. Hanneke Hulst: 'I hope other units also dare to take the leap.'

Young researchers met this month for the fifth Science Communication Summer School. ‘This is the first time some participants get to meet other researchers who also enjoy science communication. It’s great to see’, says Julia Cramer, one of the coordinators.

Anyone who has taken a walk through the centre of Leiden before might have come across him, an attentive group of tourists gathered around. After studying history, Koen van Toen, or Koen Marijt, started his own business. He now organises historical walks, among other things.

Roderick Bouman is collection manager of the Leiden Hortus botanicus. He keeps track of which plants there are in the garden, where they come from and makes sure visitors can find the right information about them. ‘We are like a regular museum,’ says Bouman. ‘Except that our objects are alive. That…

Alumna Louwien Eising is headteacher of Carmel College in Emmen. How have things been during the pandemic? And how has her degree in Education and Child Studies helped her? ‘In the evening I was attending lectures and the next day I was applying what I’d learnt in the classroom.’

Is the child benefits scandal an omen for the future and will people’s lives soon be fully dominated by algorithms? Assistant Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law Reijer Passchier warns that the encroaching digitalisation is giving the executive branch even more power, leaving parliament…

Several consortia in which Leiden University is involved have been awarded Dutch Research Agenda funding. Leiden is the coordinator of five of these consortia. These five consortia will receive grants worth a total of almost 24 million euros. They relate to interdisciplinary projects that will bring…