Possible improvements for the assessment of abiotic depletion in LCA.

A circular economy in which all resources are reused is a prerequisite for a sustainable world. As EU president, the Netherlands can give a firm impetus to this economic shift. This is the message of Leiden Professor of Industrial Ecology, Arnold Tukker, in his inaugural lecture on 26 February.

If you replace the standard hydrogen atoms in ice with a heavier variant, something odd happens. The volume occupied by the molecules increases by 0.1 per cent. Leiden chemist Jörg Meyer and his colleagues have created a theoretical model that describes this behaviour. Their research appeared on the…

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo, Prof.dr. G.A. Persoon

Galaxies are environments where gas coalesces, cools, and is converted into stars. However, it remains unclear the exact mechanisms through which galaxies acquire, redistribute and lose their gas.

Science is typically a patchwork of research contributions without much coordination. Especially in clinical trials, the follow-up studies that we do fail to be the most promising.

Which plant species grow where - and why? In a new study in Nature Ecology & Evolution, an international research team presents the world's first global vegetation database which contains over 1.1 million complete lists of plant species for all terrestrial ecosystems. Leiden professor of Environmental…

Alumnus Dennis Jansen was recently elected as Youth Delegate at the United Nations. For the next two years, he is committed to the area of Sustainable Development and will discuss this topic with young people.

Read on these pages all about the history of Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands. The Academia Lugduna Batava was founded in 1575 and its motto is: Libertatis Praesidium ('Bastion of Freedom').

Source: International Journal of Cosmetic Science, Volume 37, Number 1, pp. 148-148 (2015) ISBN: 0142-5463

On the 29th of June, Martin Kohlberger successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Martin on this achievement!

Promotor: R.D. Gill, F. Taroni

The Institute of Environmental Sciences of the Leiden University has, together with its European partners, presented the new MULTIPLY platform, during a workshop at the European Space Agency (ESA). This platform makes it for the first time possible to combine different data stream’s of ESA’s newest…

How can public organisations create societal added value? This theme was in the spotlight at the second Leiden Leadership Lunch, which was held on Friday 28 September. Students, academics and government professionals joined in the discussion.

Nitrogen deposition does not only affect plant biodiversity, but also strongly affects the composition of the remainder of the food web, through the changes in plant composition. In an unprecedented analysis of population changes of butterfly and moth species, an international research team including…

PhD defence

Recent publications

Researchers from the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and from universities in the Netherlands have used high-tech imaging to uncover the details of a rare Mexican codex dating from before the colonisation of America.

Comparing Mycenaean tomb building with labour and memory

On 19 February 2020, Richard Jiang defended his thesis '‘Greening’ the WTO Ban on China’s Export Duties'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. M.C.E.J. Bronckers.

Rector Magnificus Hester Bijl can see dilemmas but above all opportunities in the search to increase the societal value of research in Leiden.

Thursday 12 July the first Leiden Leadership Lunch took place. In the boardroom in Wijnhaven there was an informal lunch with researchers, students and managers from the field. Science and practice found each other around the theme leadership and added public value.

Kohei Suzuki, Assistant Professor at Institute of Public Administration, researched, together with two other authors, whether public managers with private sector experience have more core managerial values.

A new report reveals five actions that leaders can take to contribute to economic development, advance global security and sustainability, and make space a safe and globally accessible domain.

European higher education may benefit from becoming even more international, but universities should protect European values such as participation and freedom of thought. This was the position taken by European Commissioner Navracsics on 10 November in a debate with Minister Bussemaker and students…

Asexual procreation in female wasps leads to an accumulation of genetic mutations, and the shrivelling of their sex organ. Leiden biologist Ken Kraaijeveld published this discovery in Evolution. His research is one of the first experimental studies into the consequences of asexual procreation.

A packaging-free shop, small mobile homes, solar panels on all Leiden's roofs… Jeroen Schrama, alumnus of Public Administration, is a creative world improver. ‘If we really want to save the world, we have to make much more radical choices.’

Does suffering suffice? Andrei Poama, Assistant Professor at Leiden University, and Paul C. Bauer, research fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, did an experimental assessment of desert retributivism. Their resulsts were published on April 20 on PLOS ONE.

On Monday 20 July 2020, members of the Business & Liability Research Network (BLRN), Tim Verdoes (Business Studies), Jelle Nijland and Gert-Jan Boon (both Corporate Law) contributed to the online conference Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (Sase). This years' conference was themed 'Development…

Leiden University Lecturer Lettie Dorst wins a prestigious Comenius Senior Fellow grant for a project about machine translation and its use in higher education.

Many Western defence strategies concentrate on maintaining the status quo. Actively promoting universal values can also be a good strategy for resilience, according to Theo Brinkel, Professor by Special Appointment in Military-Social Studies. Inaugural lecture 15 January.

Conference, Research Seminar

In tracing intra-site, local and regional craft networks in Late Bronze Age Tiryns (Greece) the project aimed to understand technological changes, (dis)continuities and social practices from the Late Palatial until the Post Palatial periods in Mycenaean Greece.

Promotor: W.Th.F. den Hollander Co-Promotor: F.M. Spieksma

On November 22nd 2017, eLaw - the Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University, will co-organize a workshop on the ethical, legal and socio-economic implications of big data together with partners of the e-SIDES project.

This remarkable statement appears in Yi-Wen Cheng’s dissertation on state monopoly and forms of competition in the Chinese tobacco industry. Cheng presents her conclusions and looks back on her fieldwork. ‘I had to accept a lot of drinks in order to establish a network of contacts.’

On November 22nd 2017 eLaw co-organized with partners of the e-SIDES project a workshop on the ethical, legal and socio-economic implications of big data.

Laurens Hessels was appointed Professor by Special Appointment, lecturing in the Social Value of Science at Leiden University, effective 1 September 2021. His research will focus how best science and industry can work together. Alongside his new position he will continue his work at the Rathenau Institute…

Your own food truck, working from the comforts of a tropical beach in Bali, or a permanent job? Children, living together, getting married, a registered partnership? Thirty-somethings have a lot to think about. On Monday 16 April, Psychologist Nienke Wijnants gave a popular lecture to 120 young alumni…

This thesis investigates how galaxies form and what diversifies the evolutionary histories of galaxies.

The subject of this thesis, ‘Approach to Markov Operators on Spaces of Measures by Means of Equicontinuity’, combines an analytical and probabilistic approach to Markov operators.

The key characteristic of active matter is the motion of an emergent collection (such as a flock of birds), which is driven by the consumption of energy by its active components (i.e. individual birds).

Dynamics of material, social and ideological relationships in the pre-Columbian insular Caribbean

This project, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Hans van der Plicht, comprises several studies aimed at the use of isotopes occurring naturally in organic material as tracers for both the climate change and its cultural impact at about 6200 BC. The research will be carried out by the co-applicant at…

The project’s main aim was to build a reconstruction of a prehistoric house plan, without using any metal tools. How effective are tools made of stone, flint, bone, antler and wood? What are the constraints imposed by the various building materials? How much labour do we need and how much knowledge…

Ecologist Rosaleen March from the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) will carry on her research on functional biodiversity: a measure to assign value to ecosystems. Following her previous Marie Curie co-fund, she now receives a full Marie Curie fellowship. March: ‘We need to know how losing biodiversity…