In the spring of 2024 the Faculty of Archaeology welcomed a new postdoc. Dr Adam Benfer, originally from the United States, occupies a double position as a researcher in the project of Alex Geurds and as the Faculty’s Data Steward. ‘It is pretty much what the title says: I steward data. Essentially,…

During the Faculty of Archaeology’s 2018 Field School excavation, in Leiden, two Early Medieval burials were encountered, as well as some house plans. One of the burials was found by Beatriz, an international student from Mexico. “When I found the pelvis bone it was clear that I had found a human sk…

A master's degree in Psychology at Leiden University combines theoretical knowledge with academic and professional skills, making you an attractive candidate for many employers.

The Biomedical Sciences Master programme in Leiden will help to deepen and broaden your understanding of human health and disease. We provide you with a challenging and flexible programme in a personalized environment.

Martijn Manders conducts research on the sunken VOC ship De Rooswijk. Tirzah Schnater from the Ministry of Education, Culure and Science produced this impressive report of the work of this underwater archaeologist.

What are the patterns and processes of human mobility in the pre-colonial circum-Caribbean as revealed by burial populations and what are the underlying motives and socio-cultural principles on both micro- and macro-scales?

The major aim is to examine the potential of learning the body to produce a similar physiological (autonomic, neuroendocrine, or immune) and physical (e.g., desensitization of persistent physical symptoms) response to placebo medication than to active medication (pharmacological conditioning). If proven…

This project develops a scientific method to extract clinically relevant new information from patient forum websites that discuss patient experiences concerning e.g. medication, nutrition, co-morbidities, genetic factors etc.

From as early as classical antiquity there has been an interplay between literature and medicine.

Here you find the curriculum of the master's specialisations of Health, Medical and Neuropsychology.

The Master Health, Ageing and Society will equip you with the kind of knowledge and academic skills that will enable you to enhance the lives of our senior citizens. As no other, you will be primed to play a key role in improving the future of our ageing society.

Do you have any questions about the master's specialisation Health and Medical Psychology? Please contact us.

Graduation Ceremony

The Executive Committee consists of the following members:

As a result of an increased life expectancy, more people suffer from chronic diseases and discomfort. Elderly patients may have multiple diseases simultaneously, with concomitant multiple medications.

Contact Medical Biochemistry

Knowledge of mental distress and resilience factors over the time span from before to after a stressor is important to be able to leverage the most promising resilience factors and promote mental health at the right time. To shed light on this topic, we designed the RESIST Study, in which we assessed…

The international travelling exhibition Caribbean Ties will open at Museon in The Hague on Saturday 25 May. It tells the untold story of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and their lives before, during and after European colonisation. Caribbean Ties will be on show simultaneously in 11 countries…

The Leiden Faculty of Archaeology is an institution of international renown. Frequently, researchers from other places of learning visit the faculty to broaden and deepen their own expertise. Currently, the Laboratory for Human Osteoarchaeology is hosting two scholars from Egypt, Samar Abudahab and…

It is late June, and on a windy meadow north of Leiden known as the Vrouw Vennepolder a group of archaeology students just hit the last ice age. Considering this involves manually pushing a ground core to a depth of 10 meters, this is no small feat. Even so, the taking of ground samples in this, at…

One and half years ago, Lewis Borck exchanged the arid and hot Southwest of the USA for the Netherlands. While an expert in Ancestral Pueblo and Hohokam archaeology, he switched to the Caribbean as a researcher in the NEXUS 1492 project. “Theories and methods brought me in first.”

The major aim of the Health and Medical Psychology specialisation is to provide you with the theoretical background and professional skills required for health and medical psychology research and interventions. Health and Medical Psychology looks at how health, illness, and recovery are affected…

International Symposium on Malaria Studies

Forty archaeology students are holding a shovel somewhat awkwardly in the fields at Oss. This is their first day of fieldwork and they are going to use muscles they didn’t even know they had.

Neanderthals were able to make fire on a large scale with the aid of pyrite and hand-axes. This means they could decide when and where they wanted fire and were not dependent on natural fire, as was thought earlier. Archaeologist Andrew Sorensen has discovered the first material evidence for this. Publication…

In his new six-hour series, Africa's Great Civilizations, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. takes a new look at the history of Africa, from the birth of humankind to the dawn of the 20th century. One of the experts interviewed in the programme is our own dr. Sada Mire.

On November 16 a festschrift in honor of Dr Olivier Nieuwenhuyse was presented in a moving event at the Faculty of Archaeology. Professor Bleda Düring, a personal friend of Nieuwenhuyse, was one of the initiators. ‘If he had been here, he would have loved this book.’

The IBL represents the core of modern biological research at Leiden and we interact closely with the other life science Partner Institutes in the faculty:

The members of LUXs develop and validate new methods and algorithms for analysing data, and apply these in a wide range of problems. Their research ranges from multidisciplinary applications to proving mathematical theorems.

The collaboration between Leiden University (Medical Center) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona forms one of the most powerful international alliances for the creation and transmission of knowledge in the field of transfusion medicine.

Archaeologists often use the percentages of heat-affected stone or bone artifacts found at archaeological sites as a way to determine how frequently fire was used by the inhabitants. Andrew Sorensen and Fulco Scherjon have come up with a computer model called 'fiReproxies' to simulate how fires used…

A technique originally developed for satellite imaging can now be used to recover pictographic texts from underneath the surface of a five hundred year old Mexican manuscript.

The excavation of three Bronze Age barrows and surrounding landscape at Apeldoorn-Wieselseweg

The Iraqi archaeological site of Nimrud was recently recaptured from IS. The site has been severely damaged. The question now is, what to do with it? Should it be restored? Bleda Düring spoke with Trouw about this complex issue.

On Thursday January 19, 2017, Hayley Mickleburgh was invited to speak at the Dutch talkshow RTL Late Night. Here she talked about her research on so called 'body farms', where the decomposition of bodies is being investigated.

In May 2022 Lennart Kruijer succesfully defended his PhD, which he wrote as a member of the VICI Project ‘Innovating Objects’, led by prof. Miguel John Versluys. So succesfully, in fact, that he was awarded the Cum Laude honors. Just a short time later he was awarded a grant and a fellowship to further…

During World War II, the Nazi’s ordered a coastal defensive line to be built from the south of France to Norway. This Atlantik Wall aimed to defend their territories in continental Europe from an Allied naval invasion. The defensive line went right through the Dutch city of The Hague. The material remains…

On the basis of the characteristic aspects of a picture, certain computers can tell us what the picture is showing. They can learn this in the same way that young children are able to learn to recognize images. Further improving these techniques opens the way to a whole range of new applications. Biology…

Can the conditioning paradigm be used for checkpoint inhibition cancer treatment?

New technology offers many new possibilities for research, such as on dementia. ‘Organ-on-a-chip’ is a new technology in which small bits of organ are grown out of stem cells on a small plastic plate. A small piece of blood vessel, heart or nerve offers many new possibilities for research, such as…

For questions regarding education, you can go to the Student Services Center (ground floor). For other questions, you can go to the unit’s secretariat.

The rapid advances in imaging technology enable to see inside the body with ever increasing detail.

Assistant Professor at the Metabolomics group, LUMC, The Nederlands

This partnership is based on an academic collaboration between the Leiden University Medical Center and the Institute of Public Administration, research has been conducted on leadership in the domain of health care in times of crisis.

Ian Simpson is a relatively new face at the Faculty of Archaeology. Starting as an assistant professor in the Heritage and Society department in 2018, he is one of the faculty’s members in critical heritage studies and looks both at the past as well as the future. ‘I study how heritage can be employed…

Research projects