Lecture, colloquium

TEXTS FROM ANCIENT EGYPT. Highlights from the Collection of the Leiden Papyrological Institute. Online exhibition on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the foundation ‘Het Leids Papyrologisch Instituut’ in 2015.

Professor Joanna Aizenberg (Harvard University) is the recipient of the 2017 Havinga Medal. She is awarded for her eminent and original contributions to the field of biologically inspired materials science.

At the LION/Sterrewacht new year’s reception, Scientific Director of Casimir Tjerk Oosterkamp handed out the 2017 Hendrik Casimir Prize to physics students Nashwan Sabti (Leiden) and Nikolas Kavadias (Delft). The Casimir Research School yearly awards the prize to the best MSc students in (Applied) Physics…

Two scientific papers in Science deliver new pieces of the puzzle for the reasons of bee decline. Professor Koos Biesmeijer comment on this research in articles in the Dutch newspapers Volkskrant and NRC.

On the past 6th of October, the Pillar A of the research program me Citizenship, Migration and Global Transformations finally had its awaited kick-off event, which was previously cancelled last spring due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

On a stormy Tuesday evening in June an Alumni Seminar was held for alumni and students of the (International) Leiden Leadership Programme for which a special international guest had been invited: Dr. Anna Dolidze.

What is the impact of humans on nature? In Science an article appeared in which researchers try to give an answer to that question. Biogeographer and postdoc at LUCL Sietze Norder is one of its authors.

In the beginning of December 2016 PhD candidate Catarina Guzzo Falci was awarded a scholarship for a collections study by Musée du quai Branly. The Musée du quai Branly has implemented this scholarship programme to document its collections.

The analysis of protein residues extracted from the storage containers of circa 50,000 year old bone-tools reveals Neandertal strategic selection of bovid ribs to make some of their “lissoirs”.

As a result of two attacks in Germany and one attack in France within only one week, fears of new terrorist attacks in Europe have reignited. In France a radicalised police agent stabbed and killed four people. In Germany a man from Syria drove his car into a line of cars wounding sixteen people and…

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) has awarded a KNAW Early Career Partnership 2023 to Philippe van Gruisen for interdisciplinary research on (labour) migration from a broad perspective on societal wellbeing.

The Lectorate Design at the KABK explores the research method of walking from a design perspective, and features the working process used by public space and landscape designers Krijn Christiaansen and Cathelijne Montens (KCCM) who teach field research in BA Interior Architecture and Furniture Design…

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…

Former PhD student of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) Bart Thomee has received this year’s Rising Star Award from the Multimedia group of ACM, the worldwide computer science association. Today, Thomee is a successful researcher at Yahoo Labs.

What is a refugee? This question might seem easy to answer, but it is not, concludes Catherina Wilson. For 7 years she did research in The Democratic Republic of the Congo near the Ubangi river, on refugees from the Central African Republic. The research shows that among refugees there exists a wide…

PoreLab is officially opened on November 1st, 2016. This new lab located at the Sylvius Laboratory will be working with the latest DNA analysis technology and will bring science, education and industry together to explore practical applications with the MinION.

With roadworks to widen the A1 motorway near Deventer (province of Overijssel, the Netherlands) now complete, a substantial dispute has arisen between the Municipality of Deventer and the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat, RWS). The municipality is demanding…

The Trojan War plays an important role in Greek mythology. But there is much more to Troy than mythology. The exhibition ‘Troy. City. Homer. Turkey’ can be viewed from 7 December to 5 May 2013. Leiden linguist Alwin Kloekhorst wrote an article for the exhibition catalogue on the language of Troy.

With a Kick Off Meeting on 10 December 2021, we are proud to present the partnership of Leiden University’s Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) in the LIFE SECURDOMINO project!

From July 25th till August 7th, a team led by Professor Marie Soressi went to France and worked at La Grande Roche de Quinçay, a cave site located in a forested area close to the city of Poitiers. The corona outbreak triggered the need to rethink the organisation of the excavation.

Each week, Dutch radio programme BNR Lobbypanel discusses a topic at the intersection of politics and entrepreneurship. From 2020 Arco Timmermans, Professor by special appointment Public Affairs, will participate each month in the BNR Lobbypanel discussions. This week Timmermans joined the discussion…

In Summer 2015, Bob Wessels accepted a post as (visiting) External Scientific Fellow of the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law.

Leiden University’s Annual Report 2021 has been published. In this report, which consists of a general section and a financial section (the financial statements), the University provides a record of its research, teaching, knowledge transfer, operational management and policies in that year.

Was Nabatean also a spoken language? And if so, for how long? These are just two questions that historical linguist Benjamin Suchard will address in his new research project. Suchard is one of three LUCL researchers to receive a coveted Veni grant of 250.000 euros from the Dutch Research Council (NW…

The Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport is to appeal against a recent court ruling on the Public Access to Government Information Act (Wet openbaarheid van bestuur, WOB). The court ruled that the way in which the Ministry handles WOB requests was not in accordance with the law.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has granted four grants to Leiden humanities scholars. They get to spend this money on research on a topic of their choice, without thematic preconditions.

In the programme NWO Open Competition Domain Science - GROOT, twenty new consortia will start a large research project. This boost of more than 47 million euros will make new research possible in the science domain. Among the winners is the Nanoscale Regulators of Photosynthesis consortium in which…

On 4 May, Leiden University remembered the victims of the Second World War from our university community. Alumni, students and present and former staff of the University came together for this Hour of Remembrance.

Professor Ian Lilley, the Faculty of Archaeology’s Willem Willems Chair in Archaeological Heritage, was invited by Her Excellency Mrs. Marion Derckx, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Australia, to present the 2022 commemoration speech for Netherlands Memorial Day on May 4th at the Netherlands-Australia…

Sasha Lubotsky, professor of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, and Ineke Sluiter, professor of Classical languages and culture, have been appointed members of the Academia Europaea.

Pakistani archaeologist Abdul Ghani Khan (MPhil) and Dr Marike van Aerde (Leiden University) have been awarded the Prince Claus Heritage Emergency Grant for the rescue and preservation of ancient rock art in the Karakorum mountain range of the Pakistani Himalayas. The project will run for a year, from…

Developing a better treatment for patients with head and neck cancer, that is what Binanox, The 2022 iGEM Leiden team, want to achieve. They hope to raise at least 10,000 euros for this cause. Support their crowdfunding campaign today.

Assistant Professor Vedran Dunjko and his team receive a €100,000 gift from Google to support them in their quantum research. The research focuses on whether quantum computers can provide new ways of understanding the mysteries of high-energy physics. Google is committed to supporting ambitious research…

The transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic is a major biological and cultural threshold in the construction of our common humanity. Technological and behavioral changes happened simultaneously to a major climatic cooling, forcing human populations to develop new strategies for the exploitation…

On 10 December 2024, the European Parliament played host to an insightful presentation of ‘Protecting Democracy in Europe: Pluralism, Autocracy, and the Future of the EU’, the new book by Tom Theuns, Assistant Professor at Leiden University. Hosted by MEP Thijs Reuten (PvdA/S&D) and his team, the event…

On 3 December 2024, Career Service FGGA organised an inspiring excursion to Brussels for students of the faculty. The programme provided a unique opportunity to explore European institutions, organisations, and alumni living and working in this dynamic city. The group departed early in the morning from…

Interested in what drives your colleagues to become a member of OSCL? And how they apply Open Science in their work? Below we interview OSCL member Ruthie Pliskin (from Social, Economic and Organisational Psychology).

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has acquired a rare manuscript map of Suriname. The map from 1830 is almost 2.5 meters long and is highly detailed. It was hand-drawn by Helmuth Hendrik Hiemcke (1808-1858), one of the official surveyors employed by the colonial administration, and shows Suriname in…

The moment is there: LUGO can finally announce the winner of the Sustainability Award 2020!

Archaeology can help us reflect critically on our European identity. This is what David Fontijn will claim in his inaugural lecture on 18 March.

Alongside the incredible devastation brought by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in the fall of 2017, the storms have had an extremely damaging effect on the archaeological site of Sauteurs Bay on the North coast of Grenada. This unique and important site is now left exposed and vulnerable to the elements.

On March 21 2018, a study was published in Nature, co-authored by Professor M. Soressi from the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University, announcing the sequencing of five new Neandertals, raising the number of high-coverage sequenced Neandertals from two to seven. A tooth lost by a Neandertal woman…

Changes in our climate, the decline in biodiversity, the development of vaccines against new infectious diseases and whether we are the only inhabitants of the universe: these are just a few of the pressing challenges our society faces today. But which scientific choices must be made at the national…

A joint global research project, “New Bank Insolvency Law for China and Europe”, which started in 2014, is nearing its completion. China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL, Beijing, China) and Leiden Law School’s Hazelhoff Centre for Financial Law are finalizing an innovative joint research…

Today, 13 students at Leiden University have started a crowdfunding campaign to collect money for research into the possibilities of growing crops on Mars. Their research will contribute to the knowledge of our galaxy. The project is in the context of the iGEM competition.

In 2024, Professor Joanita Vroom received a substantial grant from the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) in support for her Hinterlands of Medieval Chalcis Project (HMC Project) in Greece. PHI, a California-based non-profit organization, is dedicated to archaeological research as well as to the preservation…

Technological developments never stop. Machines can already perform many tasks and in the future they will probably take over even more of the work we do. Which jobs could disappear and which will remain in the future? Olaf van Vliet, Professor of Economics at Leiden Law School, commented on these issues…

On September 28, 2022, dr.ir. Mark Driessen presented a publication about the ancient Roman frontier in Jordan. Venue for the book launch was the residence of the Dutch Ambassador in Amman. The event was attended by Prince Hassan bin Talal and his wife Princess Sarvath el Hassan, members of the Jordanian…

Scientists have detected a neutrino with the highest energy ever measured. Leiden physicists Maarten de Jong and Dorothea Samtleben were involved in this project, which was widely covered in newspapers and online media last week.