How has landscape and land use changed in these two case studies since independence? What has caused these changes, whether anthropogenic or natural? How do local communities in the areas of study perceive these changes? How can community knowledge be integrated with mapping tools (GIS) to contribute…

Increasingly, primary sources from the period before the emergence of digital media are being digitized. These “digital surrogates” have facilitated the work of (historical) researchers; instead of having to visit several archives, libraries and other places, the (primary) sources appear in front of…

How does self-reliance lead to a decrease in collaboration for public goods?

Citizen science has recently become a widely used term, but what does it mean exactly? How does citizen science compare to crowdsourcing? And where does community archaeology stand in this discussion?

Recently, studies have shown the similarities and differences in sources of meaning between religionists, ‘nones’ and atheists (see several studies of Schnell and others). The present study that will be conducted in three European countries tries to clarify the relationship between meaning giving and…

Provenance and distribution of raw materials

This Conference volume unites a wide range of scholars working in the fields of history, archaeology, religion, art, and philology in an effort to explore new perspec-tives and methods in the study of primary sources from premodern South and Southeast Asia.

Protestant missionaries have provided the earliest and most detailed sources regarding the ritual art of the Papuan peoples of the Geelvink Bay.

Due to the fact that the Frisian lands lacked major political centers in the Middle Ages and also because most of its monasteries suffered complete destruction in the second half of the 16th century, relatively few written documents concerning medieval Frisian history have survived. To analyze them…

This thesis focuses on the study of transient and variable radio sources in the universe.

When did the Mali Empire disintegrate? What does the Sunjata heritage demonstrate about the political situation after 1600?

Bones contain information about people’s lives such as where they came from, their age at death and which diseases they suffered from. Researchers can deduce a lot from them about a person’s life and about human evolution. This generates leads that could help solve present-day problems, such as how…

Volume 4 and 5 of the Leiden series 'Dutch Sources on South Asia' are now available, written by Markus Vink (vol.4) and Carolien Stolte (vol.5).

It has now been well established that shocks and turbulent motions in the intra-cluster medium (ICM) generated through cluster mergers can produce large-scale synchrotron emission.

Geesteswetenschappen, Instituut voor Geschiedenis

Promotor: Prof.dr.ir. T.H. Oosterkamp, N. de Jonge

This project’s aim is to critically assess current homicide data sources in order to develop a proposal for long-term EU-level monitoring of DRH.

Leiden University Library and related museum holdings in Leiden contain a body of materials showing the unique role of Dutch-Japanese trade relations as a node in the history of global flows of knowledge, materials and culture during the early modern period.

Between 1600 and 1800 countless manuals appeared on the subject: the improvised bass part on the harpsichord, pianoforte or organ. Musician and researcher Kathryn Cok unravels the secrets of the Dutch basso continuo accompaniment for modern-day musicians.

Campaign initiated at Generosity to cover the cost of construction.

Are there general principles or values that should govern our actions as moral agents and/or as political subjects?

Lezing

Can zebrafish larvae be used as a behavioural model for screening natural products as potential neurotropic drugs?

This research project is supported by an NWO Aspasia grant, DeepDish TV, crowd-sourced funding, and the Democracy and Media Foundation.

LAPP was invited by the Plastic Soup Surfer to attend the premiere screening of SOURCE 2 SEA, a documentary following the Plastic Soup Surfer on his journey along the Rhine.

Lezing

This paper explores the historicity of state and Buddhist accounts of the monk Xuanzang 玄奘 (602-664), arguing that in the reconstruction of Xuanzang’s life and career we ought to utilize the former to help adjudicate the latter.

Bones contain a wealth of information about a person's life. Leiden archaeologists glean information from skeletons about human development and find ways of combating diseases. Read more in the research dossier on 'The skeleton as source of information'.

Japanese animated films are often fantastic to watch. What's less known is that anime often has a political message. Mari Nakamura researched this phenomenon. PhD defence 14 March.

In recent years, online platforms have been utilized more and more to spread Chinese nationalist discourse. In an interview posted on The Diplomat, director of the Leiden Asia Centre Florian Schneider gives his thoughts on how the digital environment has changed the way Chinese activists work.

How were Spanish commanders fighting in the Low Countries between 1567 and 1577 portrayed in Spanish and Dutch narrative sources during the Eighty Years War?

For the first time, scientists have traced back a high-energy neutrino to its source in space. It was produced by a so-called blazar—a supermassive black hole. Researchers from neutrino detector IceCube report this in Science. ‘This is a milestone for neutrino science,’ says physicist Dorothea Samtleben…

The dental remains of 25 enslaved Africans from the site of Newton's Plantation, on Barbados, were subjected to isotope analysis. Previous research had pointed out that the locally born individuals were subjected to high concentrations of lead poisoning. A new study, done by Dr Jason Laffoon among others…

Read about our recent research projects below.

It may well be possible to remove nitrate from polluted groundwater and at the same time produce ammonia in a sustainable way, according to PhD candidate Phebe van Langevelde and Professor Marc Koper of the Leiden Institute of Chemistry in Joule on 26 January. Together with a German colleague, they…

Intelligence of the crowd, or in other words, intelligence of a large, random collective, exists mostly in social media platforms such as twitter. The collective does not comprise (at least not necessarily) experts on crises, just regular people mostly. Nevertheless, there is valuable intelligence to…

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. de Jong, Co-Promotor: Dr. A.J. Heijboer

Besides being the author of such a classic work of literature as The Hobbit, Tolkien was also Professor of English Language and Literature in Oxford. How did he incorporate his research in his fiction? An international conference on the subject is being held in Leiden on 18 June.

Besides being the author of such a classic work of literature as The Hobbit, Tolkien was also Professor of English Language and Literature in Oxford. How did he incorporate his research in his fiction? An international conference on the subject is being held in Leiden on 18 June.

Lezing

During my PhD research, I studied the photon statistics of light emitted by a microcavity that contains a single quantum dot (QD) on resonance.

Researchers at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) have managed to culture human heart muscle cells on a massive scale. This is an exceptional achievement because it is very difficult to replicate heart muscle cells outside the body. Using a special technique, the researchers have now created…

Anne Marieke van der Wal-Rémy, assistant professor of African History and International Studies, has received a Comenius Teaching Fellow grant of 50,000 euros. She intends to use the grant to set up an online archive of digital primary sources, together with her students. Van der Wal-Rémy: ‘ “Once on…

The Municipality of The Hague called on researchers to come up with a proposal for an innovative research project on problems big cities face such as energy transition. Four of the five projects that have been granted funding come from researchers from Leiden University.

Humans are fundamentally a social species, rather than individualists.

Heritage Quest citizen scientists conduct research in two ways: online and in the field. Online, from their own home, they inspect elevation maps for traces of archaeological heritage.

Osteoarchaeology is a rich field for reconstructing past lives in that it can provide details on sex, age-at-death, stature, and pathology in conjunction with the cultural, social, and economic aspects of the person’s environment and burial conditions. While osteoarchaeological research is common in…

Read-Urban was a first project to investigate whether policy recommendations can be made with the aid of linked data collections and data science and to gain experience with the success factors for such a process.

Promotie

The central research question focuses on identifying shifts in the urban social network in terms of private, semi-public and public space by means of mapping the spatial distributions of wells and cesspits in the town of Haarlem in the course of the pre-industrial period (1200-1800). Shifts may be indicative…