Working towards resilient communities, transparency in science and connecting with the employment market – these are the three key themes being addressed by the departments of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Dutch universities. On 11 February, they presented a joint sector plan to Marcelis Boereboom,…

European research infrastructures must become more sustainable in order to make the most of their scientific potential and thus increase European competitiveness, the League of European Research Universities (LERU) states in a report.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies is now available. This more than 850-page book offers methods how to study sound as well as how through sound and listening (new) knowledge can be gained.

Do offshore windfarms affect the local biodiversity of the pelagic fish community and are fish deterred or attracted by sounds?

These might be ‘just’ provincial council elections in the Netherlands, but the outcome on 15 March could have serious consequences for how the country is governed. Conflicts between the government in The Hague and the provinces, and tension within the Dutch cabinet, might be looming. On 1 July, every…

Sonorous phenomena are always on the verge of becoming something else. As it unfolds, sound constitutes spaces, mediates presence, articulates time. Furthermore, it may prompt emotions, generate awareness, organise patterns of behaviour or trigger a sense of belonging. As sound becomes audible, it is…

The environment also benefits when people follow national nutritional guidelines, Paul Behrens demonstrated in research published in PNAS. The publication attracted media attention both at home and internationally.

Professor Simon Portegies Zwart and doctor Jeroen Bédorf had the honour to write for the IEEE Software magazine.

The material and intellectual presence of Egypt is at the heart of Western culture, religion, and art from Antiquity to the present. In his book ‘Beyond Egyptomania. Objects, style and agency’, archaeologist Miguel John Versluys not only presents the Nachleben of Egypt as a major constituent of (European)…

On Tuesday 4 September, Martina Vijver delivered the scientific lecture during the academic opening of the Faculty of Science. Martina is professor in Ecotoxicology at CML and would like to have collaborations with colleagues from the Leiden Centre of Data Science. We had a brief interview with her.

Marliese Vollebregt (BA International Studies, MA International Relations) works at JINC, a Dutch NGO focusing on equal opportunities for children. After graduation, she first became a ski instructor for kids in Austria, something she had dreamed of for a long time. “My biggest advice for all of you…

Stressful events and a lack of support from the environment are both consequences and causes of mood swings in people with a bipolar disorder. This is the finding of PhD research by Leiden clinical psychologist Manja Koenders. PhD defence 7 April.

Tuesday 7 September sees the release of the book ‘Plots stond het Leidse leven stil’ by Charlotte Boin, a freelance writer from Leiden. This book of interviews gives an impression of the turbulent effect of coronavirus on the lives of students, researchers and partners of Leiden University.

PhD defence

Can birds - like people- ‘see’ voices and learn how to sing by listening and watching?

What roles does music play within our society? How does current society influence music? And vice versa: how does music influence, for instance, politics, media and technology? The minor Music Studies offers you a different way of thinking about music. Music is more than just a form of art, more than…

How can saxophone without mouthpiece techniques be accurately and consistently comprehended and explained?

Broken ensemble is a series of sound installations, in principle a self-played ensemble, consisting of some broken instruments which can not be normally played anymore.

The LUCAS Audience Award 2021 has been awarded to Nadine Akkerman. This is a prize for researchers who appeal to an audience wider than the academic community. The prize consists of 1000 euros, a trophy and eternal fame.

Arts and culture, Concert

To what extent did the Netherlands grow rich from the Transatlantic slave trade? In his dissertation 'Walcherse Ketens', Gerhard de Kok looks at Vlissingen and Middelburg, the most important slave trade cities in the Netherlands during the second half of the 18th century. It turns out that, although…

Starting 2 July 2022, a new exhibition will be opened to the public at the Old Observatory: More-than-Planet. This exhibit asks the question: how do we imagine our planet?

Charisma K. Lepcha (PI, Sikkim University), Pradyut Guha (co-PI, Sikkim University), Rajib Sutradhar (co-PI, Christ University Bangalore) and Erik de Maaker (Leiden University) have been awarded a two-year grant of USD 18.000 to conduct research on the impact of ‘green farming’ on the sensitive mountain…

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,…

Composer Paul Craenen (1972) is actually a pianist, but as part of his PhD ceremony, he performed a composition on PVC pipes. Craenen studies the position and role of the body in music. ‘I am interested in what precedes the resulting sound’.

Justin Bennett teaches in the Institute of Sonology of the Royal Conservatoire (KC) in the Hague. He is also a member of Jubilee, a platform for artistic research and production in Brussels.

World history is often framed in terms of flows of people and migration: humans coming ‘out of Africa’, the spread of farmers in the Holocene, Phoenician and Greek diasporas over the ancient Mediterranean, the colonization of the world by Europeans from the 16th century onwards. Together with his Exeter…

On 8 December, Friday afternoon, the second year students of the Honours College track ‘Tackling Global Challenges’ presented their final assignment for the Competences Lab course. The goal was to set up an impact project and organize an event about it. The diverse groups listened and shared their ideas…

Music as a multi-faceted and integral part of our society.

We perform multidisciplinary research at molecular, cellular, and organismal levels of animal biology to increase fundamental understanding of health and disease.

Festival

Lecture

This thesis investigated how microphones and loudspeakers could become musical instruments.

After Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), the farming culture of the indigenous people quickly disappeared. This has been demonstrated by Leiden archaeologists and colleagues from other universities on the basis of soil research. Publication in…

The Hague Journal of Diplomacy is delighted to announce it will be starting its own podcast series! The series will be aimed at bringing the themes of the journal’s research off the page, and onto the discussion table. Each episode will feature a guest who will share their insights and personal experience…

Bachelor's and master's students and PhD candidates came together from 10 to 13 July at Campus The Hague for the EUniWell Summer School ‘COVID-19: Impact on European health & well-being’. The participants attended lectures and workshops on the impact of the pandemic on public health. They also discussed…

PhD candidate Vincent Walstra reflects on alternative social interactions and mutual aid in the city of Rotterdam during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

On the 12th of November, Xander Vertegaal successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Xander on this achievement!

On February 19th, Arum Perwitasari succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Arum on this great result.

Implementation of the new sound synthesis and analysis method in music composition.

In 2016, the 23 members of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) generated a collective economic value of €99.8 billion in Gross Value Added and 1.3 million jobs. These and other figures, which appear in a just published report by LERU, demonstrate the impressive contribution that LERU…

Learning with the City, a partnership between the Municipality of Leiden, Leiden University and University of Applied Sciences Leiden, has a new online platform. Learning with the City aims to use knowledge and expertise from higher education to solve social issues in Leiden. The platform will help…

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…

In the research project, Leiden University, Utrecht University and Radboud University will together analyse the issues facing the judicial system in the Netherlands during the coronavirus crisis, the measures taken and their impact.

The development of new environmentally sound technologies is seen as a key route towards achieving sustainability.

The socio-economic effects of climate change often do not receive enough attention. At the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) a group of researchers will provide more insight. How does climate change affect whether people work together or conversely end up as opponents? And what can we learn from societies…

The European Regional Office of Astronomy for Development (E-ROAD) has held its first conference session at the 2020 virtual Annual Meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS), the largest astronomy conference in Europe. The E-ROAD is an initiative of the International Astronomical Union, the…