At Leiden University many staff members and students value making sustainable and responsible choices in their personal lives. Making these choices in our professional lives may feel a bit more complicated. But is that feeling justified? Archaeologists Gerrit Dusseldorp and Roos van Oosten share their…

The European Union has awarded a COFUND grant to a consortium of researchers from the universities of Groningen and Leiden for a collective PhD programme called ‘Evolve’. The 7.1 M€ programme, which is co-financed by the participating universities, will recruit and train 17 PhD students to conduct world-leading…

Het zichtbaar maken van ongeschreven verhalen van inheemse culturen en volken van de Cariben. Dat doet de tentoonstelling ‘Caribbean Ties’ in de Oude UB.

The success of Dutch radio astronomy in the last century was largely due to Leiden astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort. He made astute use of circumstances in the post-war period. Historian Astrid Elbers' research focuses on this golden period.

Scientists of the faculty of Governance and Global Affairs research completely different subject, among which terrorism, cybercrime and migration. In the upcoming weeks we will give the floor to several of our very best researchers. In this episode: Constant Hijzen researches secret services.

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, a world-wide effort by the botanist and plant protection community, is making considerable progress in protecting plant diversity around the world, a new report says. The Hortus botanicus Leiden is one of the partners of the project.

Cut marks on the bones of bears show that people in North-West Europe used bearskins to keep warm 300,000 years ago.

Research on Asian plants is his life's work. Now a crown is added to that: a plant from the coffee family bearing his name. Paul Kessler is LUF professor of botanical gardens and botany of South East Asia and Scientific Director of the Hortus botanicus. 'Completely unexpectedly, you get to see the results…

Two Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) have been placed in front of the University Library in memory of the Jewish Cosman family. At the time of the Second World War, they lived in one of the houses where the library is now located.

Global versus local, democracy versus dictatorship, tradition versus modernisation: such contrasts make it difficult for anthropologists. They look in detail at what really happens and can therefore add some nuance to blueprints and debates, is what Frank Pieke, Professor in Modern China Studies, will…

The annual homicide rate has decreased considerably since the 1990s. In their hunt for an explanation, researchers Pauline Aarten and Marieke Liem made a surprising discovery: if you divide homicides into categories, you find significant differences in the homicide rate. Publication in the European…

Michael Ignatieff, Canadian author, university professor and former politician, has been appointed Cleveringa Professor for the 2013-2014 academic year at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Professor Ignatieff will deliver the Cleveringa lecture on 26 November 2013.

The Institute for History announces vacancies for three PhD positions on Rethinking Disability: the Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in Historical Perspective and one PhD position to conduct research on the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

We are saddened by the news of the unexpected passing of prof.dr. Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld on 28 July 2021.

Pigeons, zebra finches and parakeets. Carel ten Cate studied bird sounds. But not just that. Together with linguists from Leiden, he investigated parallels between birdsong and language. On 9 June, his farewell symposium was held to mark the end of his broad career. Well, the end? Carel ten Cate has…

Leiden University Professor and world renowned Bach specialist Ton Koopman returned to the San Francisco Symphony for two weeks of concerts celebrating J.S. Bach and his legacy.

In recent years, freedom of movement within Europe has come under increasing pressure as a result of transboundary crisis situations. In his inaugural lecture on 22 October, Professor Jorrit Rijpma argues that what is needed is even closer cooperation to provide the best protection.

An incredible quantity of archaeological reports are stored in digital archives. If you want to search for information in them, you have to do this manually. And that is a real chore. Archaeologist Alex Brandsen has now used deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to develop a search engine…

It is theoretically possible that habitable planets exist around pulsars, rotating neutron stars. Such planets must have an enormous atmosphere that convert the deadly X-rays and high energy particles of the pulsar into heat. That is stated in a scientific paper by astronomers Alessandro Patruno and…

After the Second World War almost three million people emigrated from the Netherlands to countries such as Canada and Australia. The government information was anything but objective, Professor by Special Appointment of Dutch Studies/Dutch Literature Ton van Kalmthout concludes in his inaugural lect…

Historian Frank Dikötter will receive an honorary doctorate from Leiden University for his work on the history of the Chinese Republican period and the People's Republic of China under Mao. He will be awarded the honorary degree during the university's Dies Natalis celebrations on 8 February 2017.

How can we best deal with the current problems caused by the human impact on the nitrogen cycle? How do we make the transition to a sustainable society? As of 1 September, nitrogen expert Jan Willem Erisman will be working on these questions at Leiden University: he will exchange the Louis Bolk Institute…

Ominous witches, gruesome monsters, and hideous freaks: from Saturday 15 June, Kunsthal Rotterdam will be putting the spotlight on the shady depths of human imagination in the exhibition Hello darkness, my old friend. Seventy works on paper from the collection of the Leiden University Libraries confront…

Mark Klaassen, Assistant Professor of Immigration Law and member of the Dutch Advisory Council on Migration, explains on Dutch radio programme ‘Met het Oog op Morgen’ why it’s a bad idea to use Denmark as a model country for Dutch asylum policy.

The Epic of Gilgamesh was a lifelong inspiration to artist Harry van Kruiningen. This tale from Mesopotamia about the adventures of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk, and his friend Enkidu is one of the oldest surviving epics in world literature. Despite its almost 4,000 year age, it still captures…

At a time when statues of figures from history have an uncertain future Valika Smeulders has just become Head of History at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. What changes does she want to make? And how does she look back on her Languages and Cultures of Latin America degree programme in Leiden?

Wawancara dengan Dr. R. Hendrian, M.Sc.

Peter Paul van Benthem is not only head of the ENT department at the LUMC but also chair of the Federation of Medical Specialists. ‘The value is in the mix.’

Laura van Broekhoven always knew she wanted to study archaeology, and that’s exactly what she did. Now this Leiden alumna is director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, one of the four museums of the University of Oxford.

Campus The Hague has forged its own identity: alongside interdisciplinarity, interaction with the city is its defining feature. ‘The campus is now a young adult. It is well beyond puberty,’ says campus chair Erwin Muller. An ambitious new strategy reveals this.

This research project is funded by a subsidy from Instituut Gak.

Connect art and academia at ACPA

The occupation of the Afghan capital Kabul by the radical Taliban movement on 15 August 2021 received enormous international attention, not least because of the crisis that soon enveloped Kabul airport as desperate Afghans sought to flee the country on evacuation flights mounted by the United States…

The Persian language and its poetry are intertwined with the history of Central Asia. Although some mediaeval poets were later claimed by an individual state, their influence knew no frontiers. This is what Gabrielle van den Berg, Professor of Cultural History of Iran and Central Asia, argues in her…

If it was up to alumna and member of the Advisory Board Anne Marie van Rietschoten, philosophy and ethics would be part of the standard curriculum for a law degree. In our monthly flash interview with alumni, Anne Marie explains why she believes this is so important.

A permanent exhibition on the place of humans in the cosmos. This is something Franx wants to use his Spinoza Prize for. ‘So much progress has been made that we are still trying to define the questions. In finding the answers we are constantly coming up against surprises.’

Associate Professor Asghar Seyed Gohrab considers it his role to tell students about Iran, the country where he was born and raised. His research focuses on the connections between the present and the past on the basis of the ‘magical triangle’: Persian literature, politics and religion.

The death of his grandfather in 1988 motivates Changsheng Wu to become a scientist. In 2016, he is awarded the C.J. Kok Jury Award for his thesis on novel antibiotics. Two years later, he will become a Professor at Shangdong University, at the age of 30 years.

North Korea may seem like an isolated country but it has strong ties with African regimes. This alliance, which trades in arms despite international sanctions, is increasingly operating out of the liberal world order’s sight, PhD candidate Tycho van der Hoog warns.

What are the patterns and processes of human mobility in the pre-colonial circum-Caribbean as revealed by burial populations and what are the underlying motives and socio-cultural principles on both micro- and macro-scales?

This abrupt climate change of 8200 years ago (the so-called 8.2k calBP climate event) has received wide attention among natural scientists, also because of today's rapid climate changes and their impact on our own society. The archaeological implications, however, have not been investigated so far.…

This project studies travel writing about the Dutch East Indies written between 1800 and the end of the Second World War. By analyzing both Dutch travel texts and Indigenous travel texts in Javanese and Malay, it presents a new, double-voiced perspective on (the historiography of) the Dutch colonial…

Medical psychologist Willeke Kitselaar developed a model that helps identify patients with persistent somatic symptoms earlier, based on an extensive large medical database. ‘I advise GPs to ask patients to fill in a questionnaire about both physical and mental symptoms at an earlier stage.’ PhD defence…

The Belgium Netherlands Artificial Intelligence conference (BNAIC) is an annually organized conference bringing together AI researchers from all over the Benelux. This year it was supposed to be held for the first time in Leiden. Due to the continuing lock-down, it was organized online. A trend started…

This year four research trainee projects were approved by the faculty to be carried out at the Institute for History this semester.

People need to get to know each other to see the positive side of migration, according to photographer and documentary maker Koen Suidgeest. Since the end of September, Suidgeest has been the new city photographer for the region of Leiden. His goal is to photograph as many cultural identities as possible…

Solafa Saad (29) fled her homeland of Sudan for the Netherlands in 2016. She is now following the Leiden Preparatory Year (VGL), an initiative by Leiden University, Leiden University of Applied Sciences and the Foundation for Refugee Students (UAF) that prepares young refugees to study. ‘I regained…

Leiden researcher Ethan Mark has a mission, he explains in the alumni magazine Leidraad. He wants us to take off our Eurocentric glasses when we study the Second World War. We have focused on ourselves for far too long; after 75 years, it’s about time we listened to stories from the rest of the worl…

At science festival 'Over de kop', surprising brain facts alternate with confronting stories from the operating room. Researchers explain why our brains love beans and why you should never ride a racing bike without a helmet.

Local residents, scientists and students are investigating riverbanks in Leiden for the 'Bank Plants' citizen science project. Which plant species are found where? And how can the municipality of Leiden improve its riverbank management to ensure optimal biodiversity?