Simulation is a formal scientific method used to develop, compare and test hypotheses (models). In the last few decades the use of simulation has increased dramatically in virtually all scientific disciplines, but is still limited in archaeology due to the technological barrier – coding skills. Starting…

About 90 per cent of Austronesian and Papuan languages are under threat of soon becoming extinct. Marian Klamer is the only professor in the world who researches both these language groups. She records languages before they disappear and sheds new light on the history of Indonesia. Inaugural lecture…

When an international cartel is exposed, the parties involved often face punishment by more than one authority for the same behaviour. There is very little international coordination in the actions of these authorities. Pieter Huizing claims that this can, and must, change. PhD defence on 10 March 2…

From the discovery of exoplanets to the hunt for extraterrestrial life. At the Astronomy Gala on 17 December in the concert hall in Leiden, astronomers looked back, but above all ahead. With King Willem-Alexander as guest of honour.

Producing offspring of a crop without sowing and that is even bigger than the parent plant. According to Leiden researchers this can be achieved by overstimulating a single gene that rejuvenates cells, including bringing them back to the embryonic phase.

Who shall be responsible or liable when damage is caused by Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)? Is it fair enough to force a GNSS provider to bear the burden of compensation given GNSS open signals are provided free of charge? And are current international laws adequate to deal with those questions?…

Leiden alumna Tulasi Das moved to England to pursue a career in film, was accepted onto the BBC Trainee Scheme and now works in London as a researcher on historical documentaries. “I still can’t believe I get to do such cool work.”

‘We want to say something very different from the norm. We are the radicals now.’ Tahir Abbas is lyric about the DRIVE project he will be leading from Leiden University in The Hague. This is a short introduction to the research that will be carried out in the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and the United…

How do Chinese view the Netherlands, and what do they experience here? These and other matters were discussed February 9th at the conference: “China, the Netherlands and Europe” which took place in Leiden. The conference, organized by the LeidenAsiaCentre, also marked the opening of the Leiden Asia…

Former archaeology student Ivo Verheijen made a unique discovery in Schöningen in Germany: the almost complete skeleton of an extinct Eurasian straight-tusked elephant. The remains show that our ancestors enjoyed the odd elephant steak. But they weren’t the only ones…

Over a thousand researchers and students protested in Leiden on 2 September against the plans to transfer money to science and technology at the expense of other disciplines. Just metres away, Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Ingrid van Engelshoven, was giving a speech at the opening of the…

The monthly ILS Lunch Seminars bring together colleagues and students from Leiden Law School, by providing an informal setting to hear what researchers from other research programs and institutes are working on. On Thursday 19 April the next edition of the ILS Lunch Seminars takes place, featuring presentations…

What do people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama have in common? They have mastered the art of public speaking. There are plenty of books on learning this skill, but one aspect of rhetoric remains underexposed in science: how do you make sure the audience remembers your message? Martijn Wackers…

Exploring the minds of our primate cousins in the wild, using under-exploited observations of their travel paths. A large set of observations of the travel paths of wild primates provides new opportunities for in-depth insights in the evolution of the mental abilities that primates, including ourselves,…

On 16 April 2021 the webinar ‘Children and young adults in contact with the law: Systemic vulnerabilities and institutional responses’ took place. In total 17 speakers and discussants engaged with the topic of vulnerability.

Brain researcher Elseline Hoekzema has discovered that the structure of the brain changes during pregnancy, particularly those areas related to social functions. These changes persist for at least two years after the mother gives birth. Publication in Nature Neuroscience on 19 December.

Whilst the world is opening up, the teaching will continue in a hybrid form next academic year. During the past year, when all of us were bound to our home offices and computer screens, new forms of education had to be developed – some of which proved to be efficient in preparing the students for their…

Several years ago, two amateur archaeologists from Brabant discovered over a hundred Roman coins near to Berlicum in the north of the province. After years of research, it now appears that the location, close to a ford in the river, was a site for offerings. Another interesting fact is that the coins…

Today, March 15 2016, the FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship were formally published in the Nature Publishing Group journal Scientific Data.

On average, Dutch breeding birds have become more numerous in the period 1980-2010. The common species have even done better than birds in other European countries. Farmland birds are an exception: they declined sharply both in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe.

Migration is not only reflected in DNA, but also in language. By tracing changes in language, we learn more about the lifestyle of the people that speak it. University lecturer Tijmen Pronk (40) conducts linguistic research into (pre)historical migration.

A large interdisciplinary NWO research project attempted to discover the cognitive origin of the human ability to learn linguistic rules. This is not so simple, according to linguist Andreea Geambaşu and her colleagues. PhD defence on 11 December.

‘What I find most alluring about soil life is that you can steer it,’ researcher Martijn Bezemer of the Institute Biology Leiden (IBL) reveals. ‘You can ask: What do you want? And then I can transform the soil into something you need. At least, that is what we thought.’

On February 3rd, the Institute of Security and Global Affairs in The Hague hosted an experimental workshop in collaboration with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). Students in the MSc International Relations and Diplomacy embraced the workshop as a good supplement to coursework and inspiration…

Political scientist Femke Bakker (Leiden University) has won the 2019 Jean Blondel PhD Prize. According to the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), her ‘Hawks and Doves: Democratic Peace Theory Revisited’ is best thesis in politics of the past year.

On 8 February Jan Michiel Otto, professor of Law and Governance in Developing Countries, delivered the dies lecture entitled: 'Unity in diversity. The topicality of professor C. van Vollenhoven'. Otto emphasized - following Van Vollenhoven - the importance of scope and respect for the public sphere…

Science Magazine has published three back-to-back papers on an important discovery in solid state physics. Leiden physicist Jan Zaanen wrote a Perspective article on the subject in the same issue of 4 March.

Last July saw the start of the new master programme Cosmopolis Advanced, an initiative of the Institute for History at Leiden University in partnership with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta. The Cosmopolis Advanced programma, led by prof.dr. Jos Gommans and coordinator dr. Lennart Bes, provides…

Dr. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Researcher at eLaw, received the COVR award, a 60K seed grant to work on LIAISON, a project aiming to link robot development and policymaking to reduce the complexity in robot legal compliance.

Single-celled organisms have stiffer DNA than multicellular lifeforms like humans and rice. Theoretical physicists managed to simulate the folding in full genomes for the first time to reach this conclusion. Publication in Biophysical Journal on February 7.

The use of virtual girl Sweetie, used by the police to investigate pedofiles, is problematic in the Netherlands. Researchers of Leiden University and Tilburg University conclude that this is due to the criminal law applicable at the moment.

Leiden scientists will be working on the development of a camera for the European Extremely Large Telescope that is currently under construction. On 28 September the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy signed an agreement with the European Southern Observatory.

King Willem-Alexander visited Leiden on 6 December to open the new wing of the Leiden Instrumentmakers School. Students of this vocational programme make instruments needed for scientific research.

Alumnus Petri Freundlich received the first prize for his LL.M. thesis in the category Master’s theses and academic articles of the Max van der Stoel Human Rights awards 2017

Mathematician Hester Bijl will be appointed Vice-Rector Magnificus and member of the Executive Board of Leiden University with effect from 1 November 2016. She succeeds Simone Buitendijk.

The quantum computer is on its way, but is society ready for it? Quantum computers have a reputation of being difficult to grasp because of their complexity. This limits society’s ability to envision future applications creating a gap between society and quantum computers. A consortium of 14 knowledge…

Leiden University strengthens the collaboration with the Chinese Xi’an Jiaotong University. The Chinese delegation visited the Faculty of Science to talk about collaborations in the field of life science and data science.

The Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) accepted the request for subsidy to digitise the archive of the archaeological fieldwork at Tell Deir Alla in the eastern Jordan Valley. The subsidy comes from its KDP-program (Small Data Project) and is meant to promote digitisation of important datasets.…

Jongeren kiezen vrienden met een vergelijkbare achtergrond, zoals etniciteit en gedrag. Dit concludeert pedagoog Janna Fortuin in haar promotieonderzoek.

An important discovery makes it possible to communicate complex information among multiple people without the message being cracked. The communication can also relate to complex information.

Following periods of oppression and widespread violations of human rights, there is often a need for transitional vetting – a sort of ‘cleansing’ of the civil service. Where does this need come from? There are many answers to this question. But vetting, among other things, can contribute to recovering…

ARC is a new platform for the artistic-academic discourse in the Netherlands and is an initiative of the Leiden University Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA).

Leiden University is happy to announce that it has won a prestigious Jean Monnet grant for a Centre of Excellence. The Centre, called CompaRe, focusses on comparative regional integration.

Every year The Young Academy (a sub-group of KNAW) nominates ten talented researchers to join their ranks. This year two of the nominees are from Leiden University: Quentin Bourgeois and Frans Snik.

In the PhD project of Teuntje Vosters, which started in January 2016, she analyses the history of NGOs and their influence over time. The research question of her project is: to what extend and in what circumstances were NGOs successful in influencing European refugee policy between since 1900?

The second authors' conference of the General Labour History of Africa (GLHA) project will be held from 10 to 12 December 2015 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The project Hybrid Intelligence receives 19 million euros from the Gravitation programme of the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The consortium consists of six Dutch universities and combines human and artificial intelligence, aiming to amplify human intelligence instead of replacing it. Leiden professors…

This year, Leiden University is organising the 34th Award Ceremony of the World Cultural Council (WCC). Who will be the prize winners this year?

Fluctuations in individual plant communities contribute to the stability of an ecosystem as a whole, a study published in Ecology Letters shows. Nadia Soudzilovskaia and colleagues for the first time used data from plant communities across five continents to prove this hypothesis.

Recently, four books have been published which contain a chapter by ACPA senior researcher, lecturer and PhD-supervisor Dr. Marcel Cobussen.