The Dutch TV programme Keuringsdienst van Waarde investigated the origin of BBQ taste. Prehistoric fire expert Andrew Sorensen was invited to explain prehistoric fire making techniques.

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').

Promotor: G.R. de Snoo Co-promotor: C.J.M. Musters

Safety issues of the transport and storage of Chlorine, ammonia and LPG.

The work presented in this thesis addresses the role of the locus coeruleus (LC) - norepinephrine (NE) system in various aspects of human cognition, and the modulation of brain state.

What are the various forms of inter-organizational collaboration in the public safety sector? How are different forms of inter-organizational collaborative arrangements related? What is the relationship between inter-organizational collaboration and innovation in the public safety sector?

Lecture, Studium Generale

The starting point of human-induced landscape changes has been under permanent debate. It is widely accepted that the emergence of agriculture strongly increased human impact on their environments. However, foragers can and do actively transform land cover and ecosystems. Ethnographic observations,…

Lecture

PhD Defence

In Humanity’s End As A New Beginning, Emeritus Professor Mineke Schipper reflects on myths about ‘the end’.

Leiden Journal of Pottery Studies 23, 2007

Can we exploit the cell death machinery of the host to develop new host-directed anti-TB treatments?

On 13 October 2021 Ross Spence defended the thesis 'Collateral Transactions and Shadow Banking'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. M. Haentjens and Prof. A.M. Pacces (UvA).

By choosing Leiden University, you’ll be choosing to broaden your personal and academic horizons. You’ll be in excellent company too, because you’ll be part of an inspiring community of students, lecturers and professors from all over the world. Founded in 1575, ours is the oldest university in the…

Excavations at Geleen-Janskamerveld 1990/1991

On 21 February 2019, Ruben Zandvliet defended his thesis 'Trade, Investment and Labour: Interactions in International Law'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. N.J. Schrijver.

What is it like to study Urban Studies in The Hague? Comar Beulens, first-year student, describes what a typical day looks like for him.

Research into the evolutionary backgrounds of our diets can help us make the right choices in diet, health and lifestyle.

Natascha van der Zwan, Assistant Professor at Leiden Univeristy, together with two other authors, wrote a book that explored some of the ways coronavirus is impacting the global capitalist system – and how this could change for better and for worse.

The HARVEST project explores the dietary choices that our hominin ancestors and relatives made, by recovering information on what they consumed, and how factors like environmental variation, intrinsic biology, and development of food processing technologies could have influenced their decisions.

Leidse AI-Week

Hunter-gatherers caused ecosystems to change 125,000 years ago. These are the findings of an interdisciplinary study by archaeologists from Leiden University in collaboration with other researchers. Neanderthals used fire to keep the landscape open and thus had a big impact on their local environment.…

NWO Humanities and the Humanities Regieorgaan have awarded a PhD grant to Andy Sorensen under the joint funding program PhDs in the Humanities. Andy will start his research on how long humans already have the ability to make fire on July 1st. 2013.

Andrew Sorensen received the award for his work on the origins of fire-making, especially for his dissertation

The idea that modern humans displaced Neanderthals because they were better protected against toxic smoke components is now under fire. An earlier study that put forward this suggestion has now been refuted by genetic research by scientists from Leiden and Wageningen. This new research was published…

Making fire is no simple matter. This became abundantly clear during the demonstration by German archaeologist Jürgen Weiner. Weiner was invited by Professor W. Roebroeks to share his practical knowledge about fire. The Human Origins group of the Faculty of Archaeology organised a guest lecture and…

Scientist looked for the genetic footprint of fire use in our genes, but found that our prehistoric cousins - the Neanderthals - and even the great apes seem better at dealing with the toxins in smoke than modern humans.

The research article ‘Neanderthal fire-making technology inferred from microwear analysis’ received 7,053 article views in 2018, placing it as one of the top 100 read Scientific Reports articles in that year.

Past objects offer a wealth of information about life in earlier times. Loe Jacobs is an expert in making earthenware objects, using the same methods and means used in earlier times.

Leiden archaeologists investigate how people in the past impacted their environment. Together with scientists, environmental scientists, and humanities experts, they use this information to draw conclusions about the present – and show what we can learn from it for the future.

A monumental and extraordinary Early Iron Age Hallstatt C barrow from the ritual landscape of Oss-Zevenbergen

Leiden University commemorates its victims of the war and pays tribute to all members of the university community who resisted injustice. Rudolph Cleveringa, for instance, the dean of the law faculty who gave a protest speech in 1940 after his Jewish colleagues were fired. We honour their memory through…

New book on Dutch mayors governing local order and public safety.

This study aims to provide a long time perspective of human landscape manipulation. Studying the roles of prehistoric foragers in past ecosystems is of great importance to establish the character of past 'natural' landscapes and to enhance the management of current ones.

The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.

Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS)

From self-driving cars to innovative drug development: artificial intelligence (AI) will fundamentally change our lives in many different ways. We study this technology at a deep and fundamental level. And we seek answers to questions about liability and privacy, for example. Our researchers from…

Large-scale forest fires started by prehistoric hunter-gatherers are probably the reason why Europe is not more densely forested. This is the finding of an international team, including climate researcher Professor Jed Kaplan of the University of Lausanne and archaeologist Professor Jan Kolen of Leiden…

Wil Roebroeks, Professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology in Leiden, is to be awarded the ‘Academy Professors Prize’ of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW). Roebroeks has drastically changed academic thinking about the behaviour of early hominins and our knowledge of the earliest colonisation…

The Dutch Minister of Justice and Security is about to turn the entire volunteer fire brigade upside down. Not because it is good, but because it is assumed that it has to be done under EU law. This is tragic and unnecessary: there are strong legal arguments to defend the current set-up of the volunteer…

The Leiden Faculty of Archaeology has recently launched its own research blog. In the Leiden Archaeology Blog, our researchers share their activities with peers and the general public.

At the 7th annual meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution (ESHE) conference held here in Leiden September 21-23 Andy Sorensen won the Pecha Kucha presentation prize.

According to Thomson Reuters’ 2014 Journal Citation Reports® (JCR) and the Washington & Lee University School of Law 2014 Journal Rankings, 22 journals published by the University of Chicago Press rank at the top of their subject categories.

The world’s oldest known glue was made by Neanderthals. But how did they make it 200,000 years ago? Leiden archaeologists have discovered three possible ways. Publication in Scientific Reports, 31 August.

Can trees adapt to (climate) change? Which trees are more or less capable of doing so, and why? A group of researchers from all over the world set to work on these questions. Professor of Environmental Biology Peter van Bodegom helped to classify the functional traits of tree species. These are for…

How did interests outside the scope of the Dutch chartered trading companies influence the career-paths of Dutch colonial governors?