Lecture, Studium Generale

Japanese animated films are often fantastic to watch. What's less known is that anime often has a political message. Mari Nakamura researched this phenomenon. PhD defence 14 March.

Lecture

PhD student Willem Noteborn has investigated supramolecular structures. These can be useful for the loading of medicines and signalling molecules regarding, for example, cellular differentiation. In his thesis, he describes the functioning of these structures.

Bones contain a wealth of information about a person's life. Leiden archaeologists glean information from skeletons about human development and find ways of combating diseases. Read more in the research dossier on 'The skeleton as source of information'.

The Humanities Faculty welcomes Thea Hilhorst as a professor. Due to the cooperation between the universities in Leiden, The Hague and Rotterdam, she will be appointed professor at Leiden University in addition to her current position as a professor in Rotterdam. Hilhorst discusses her field and this…

Inclusive teaching and research, a good reflection of society and a safe and accessible learning and working environment. The new Diversity and Inclusion Work Plan has set the direction of University policy and aims to create a university where everyone feels respected and at home. Diversity Officer…

Throughout the coming year, all attention in Leiden will be on Asia. This special year, featuring numerous Asian events, conferences, exhibitions and concerts, celebrates the new Asian Library at Leiden University. Come and read, watch, listen, taste or dance Bollywood style.

Patients with certain diseases discuss their experiences and support one another on specialised internet forums. With the right data-science methods, these forums can be a goldmine of information for researchers. PhD candidate Anne Dirkson is researching these methods.

For his dissertation, Joost Akkermans searched for areas of improvement for delicate fetal laser surgery with Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTS). This syndrome occurs in the Netherlands 60 to 70 times a year among single-egg twins sharing one placenta. Treatment is possible, but not without risk. Inaugural…

ILS organizes a new lunch seminar series where all researchers from Leiden Law School can present their research. The idea is to hear in a simple and nice way what researchers from other research programs and institutes are working on. During a seminar two or three speakers will present their research.…

Leiden biotech startup Azafaros has successfully completed a funding round, raising 25 million euros of investments for developing treatments of rare metabolic disorders. The company holds exclusive license to a library of novel patented compounds discovered by experts from Leiden University.

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…

On 14 December 2022, students of the course Social and Ecological Activism in the Visual Arts (as part of the Creative Strategies for a Society in Change minor) presented and performed their final collective project at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht: the Water Cultures Institute group role-playing…

This book by Dirk Jacob Jansen traces the career of Jacopo Strada (Mantua 1515-Vienna 1588), examining his role at court in Vienna, where he served as Imperial architect and antiquary. Strada’s career was unusually wide in scope and cosmopolitan in outlook even for a Renaissance artist.

It may well be possible to remove nitrate from polluted groundwater and at the same time produce ammonia in a sustainable way, according to PhD candidate Phebe van Langevelde and Professor Marc Koper of the Leiden Institute of Chemistry in Joule on 26 January. Together with a German colleague, they…

From Persia and Arabia to North Africa: as early as the nineteenth century, there were Dutch people who used the camera themselves in various regions of the Middle East.

Do you want to promote the interests of students or staff? If you do, put yourself forward as a candidate for the University Council or the Faculty Council between 5 and 8 April. Two council members, PhD candidate Elisabeth Kerr and Law student Mante Kaaks, tell us about their experiences.

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected five Leiden professors from different disciplines as new members. One of them is Judi Mesman, Dean of LUC

PhD candidate Jiangnan Ding explores how you can design a thick slab of rubber in a way that it might act as a mechanical computer bit. This so-called mechanical metamaterial is pushed in a specific way to change its shape. ‘With a very simple material, we might be able to do simple calculations in…

On the Master’s Open Day on 15 February Liza Vromen from Harlem arrives in Leiden to investigate the pre-master’s programme Psychology. As a matter of fact she will look beyond that programme for a master’s specialisation which fits her personal interest.

According to Russian propaganda Ukrainians are Nazis and people from the West are Satanists. Egbert Fortuin thinks we should take this propaganda seriously.

In an (Dutch) interview with the regional Leiden newspaper “Leidsch Dagblad”, Ruben Huele and Ester van der Voet talk about the recently started project PUMA (Prospecting the Urban Mines of Amsterdam).

The doors of the new Gorlaeus Building are officially open! With an additional lab wing, new lecture halls and offices, a library, a brasserie, and spaces for student associations, the building offers a vibrant and inspiring environment for research, study, and social interaction. Explore on your…

Bachelor, Master

2017 was the Leiden Asia Year. Leiden has had connections with Asia and built up extensive knowledge of the continent over many centuries. This Leiden-Asia link has been in the spotlight for the past year.

Lecture

Space diplomacy, defined as ‘processed of dialogue that result in outcomes of cooperation or conflict on a given space issue’ [1], has shielded space from great power conflicts playing out elsewhere – both during the Cold War and in the decades that followed.

Stacked layers of graphene can act like a mirror for beams of electrons. Physicists Daniël Geelen and colleagues discovered this using a new type of electron microscope. In an article in Physical Review Letters, they describe their results, which could lead to the development of optics for electron…

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in May, twenty-five bright international students gathered in the Old Observatory to celebrate their graduation of the International Leiden Leadership Programme. A tour of the Sterrewacht and the ‘borrel’ made for a nice completion of the Honours programme.

Researcher Max van Duijn and PhD student Bram van Dijk apply language models to stories told by children to investigate empathy. For this research, they received the Best Paper Award at the Computational Natural Language Learning Conference in Singapore.

The type of question that museums ask about objects in their collection influences conversations between parents and children. Researchers from Leiden University and Naturalis Biodiversity Center studied how questions influence conversations. Publication in Visitor Studies on 2 July.

Health psychologist Andrea Evers is one of the 19 new members, selected by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), who have been inaugurated on 16 September 2019. The Academy has now about 550 members.

Niloufar Rahim, from Afghanistan, fled to the Netherlands with her family. She studied medicine in Leiden and now shares her knowledge with students of medicine in Afghanistan.

Professor of Modern China Florian Schneider researches what people do with technology and what technology does with people. Social media, for example. And then mainly in China.

We asked a lot of everyone last year. The Personnel Monitor showed that the workload was high in 2022 and Covid took its toll. I therefore think everyone deserves some downtime. Time away from the daily grind.

By spreading fake news via TV spots and Twitter with the use of Social Bots, Pascal professor Heike Trautmann is investigating the characteristics of fake news. She is calling on Leiden researchers to cooperate in the project.

In April 2018, Melanie Fink was elected as a member of the Coordinating Committee of the ESIL Interest Group ‘The EU as a Global Actor’. For the next four years, she will work in that function alongside Christine Kaddous (University of Geneva), Anne Thies (University of Reading), and Ramses Wessel (University…

In his lectures Aris Politopoulos combines archaeology with video games. He is one of the three nominees for the 2020 LUS Teaching Prize. 'A good teacher is always open to feedback from students.'

A high-ranking delegation from China visited Leiden on 6 November. The party of some 25 officials from the CPPCC – a Chinese advisory body comparable with the Dutch Senate - visited the Leiden Observatory, the Hortus Botanicus and the Asian Library.

On Monday 6 May, GTGC guest researcher Joohyun Baik presented her research on 'Data Localization as a Data Sovereignty in Nigeria's Digital Policy Landscape'.

Bram Geurds (20) is fascinated by politics. When he was 12, a political debate on TV caught his attention. And he decided he wanted to be mayor one day. Unsurprisingly, Bram is studying political science and is politically active. It might seem like he’s on course to become a professional politician.…

Elisabeth Heijmans originally comes from French-speaking Belgium – ‘close and far at the same time’. She came to Leiden University for her Ph.D. in 2013, and consequently managed to get a postdoc position. In this role, she is part of a team of Ph.D. students, postdocs and supervisors, looking at historical…

It is undeniable that the public is central to the practice and study of public diplomacy. Indeed, this field is known as *public* diplomacy.

Professor Jan Kolen was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology on September 1, 2018. We sat down with him and interviewed him about his background, the challenges he sees, and the future of our Faculty.

AstroEDU is one of the world's most inspiring education innovations, according to the experts at HundrED. It is a recognition for a place where educators can discover, review, change, and share astronomy- and space-related activities for primary and secondary education, and where they can have their…

She left Leiden after her PhD and now, 14 years later, she returns as Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy. Mariska Kriek investigates how galaxies originate and evolve. And she is eagerly awaiting the launch for the new James Webb telescope: ‘The coolest things we are going to find are those we’re…