Lecture, Oort lecture

The Archaeology and Epigraphy of Jordan’s North-Eastern Desert and Beyond

The origin and evolution of galaxies are closely tied to the cyclic feedback processes between stars and the interstellar medium (ISM).

Magistri Symonis (?) Questiones secunde partis Doctrinalis Alexandri de Villa Dei First Critical Edition from the Manuscript with Introduction, Appendices and Indexes

With the help of software that mimics a human brain, ESA’s Gaia satellite spotted six stars zipping at high speed from the centre of our Galaxy to its outskirts. This could provide key information about some of the most obscure regions of the Milky Way.

Promotor: Prof.dr. S.F. Portegies Zwart

The thesis deals with the study of giant radio galaxies (GRGs), which are radio galaxies of megaparsec sizes.

OB associations are loose groups of young, massive stars. They constitute the last stage of the massive starformation process, and the context in which new stars are formed.

In this thesis, we use low-frequency and high-frequency radio observations to address the following questions regarding quasars: is the radio loud/quiet quasar dichotomy real?

The project seeks to come to an understanding of the archaeology of the desert and the ways in which its inhabitants engaged with their constraint, marginal environments through time. It compares and interprets site distribution and community organisation over a long time scale and across several different…

He started his career as a part-time PhD candidate and a reading volunteer at his children's school. Now, as a professor, he looks back on forty years of research and education: Peter Klinkhamer of the Institute of Biology Leiden, ecologist in heart and soul.

To investigate the effectiveness of an online self-help programme for people with HIV and depressive symptoms.

The work presented in this thesis is based on ALMA surveys of protoplanetary disks in three star-forming regions: Lupus, OMC-2, and NGC 2024.

When we think of politics, we tend to think of adversary, antagonism, polarisation, a struggle for power. But politics should serve positive purposes, as well. Political psychologist and meditation teacher Femke Bakker (Leiden University) thinks that positive politics is first and foremost about tolerance.…

Promotor: Promotor: W.Th.F. den Hollander, Co-promotor: V. Sidoravicius.

Promotores: Prof.dr. H Lenstra, Prof.dr. A Facchini (Padova University)

‘I would never want to be treated by a computer,’ says Boudewijn Lelieveldt, Head of Radiology at the Laboratory for Clinical and Experimental Image Processing and Medical Delta professor in the Bioinformatics group at Delft University of Technology. No matter how intelligent a system, we have to continue…

The formation of stars and planets happens over multiple scales, which can interact. In particular, planet formation happens in the dense, complex environment of star forming regions.

Promotor: Prof. dr. A.G.G.M. Tielens

PhD defence

The earth has more than 7 billion inhabitants, all of whom leave behind traces of pollution. However, not all forms of pollution have the same harmful effect. Leiden scientists help determine where we should put our priorities.

Simulations of galaxies help researchers understand astronomical observations better. The EAGLE simulation, a large project in which Leiden astronomers play a leading role, shows the evolution of the Universe, from just after the Big Bang to the present day.

This thesis presents pioneering work on the panchromatic emission of some of the most luminous galaxies in the early Universe: star forming galaxies and active galactic nuclei.

Master’s student of Linguistics Marten van der Meulen helped organise the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Miracles of Human Language, which ran from 30 March until 11 May 2015. What was it like for a student to organise an MOOC? And what did he learn from it?

The project examines the political conflict in the Red River Valley of Louisiana between the majority-black Republican Party and the overwhelmingly white Democratic Party by studying the composition and actions of each party.

In September 2023 Social Justice Research, a journal from Springer Nature, published a ‘Special Issue on Veteran Reflections’. Eight ‘veterans’ analysed the current status of justice research and suggested new directions and refinements. Herman Steensma, guest member of the section Social, Economic…

This thesis investigates the structural evolution and assembly of galaxies since the first few billions years after the big bang.

This project aims to explore, in general, what explains civil servants’ attitudes and behavior, and, in particular, why some civil servants are more committed to professional norms and public service values – such as impartiality, equity, efficiency, and innovation – than others.

Promotor: Prof.dr. K.H. Kuijken, Co-Promotor: Dr. H.Hoekstra

Stellar feedback is a crucial ingredient in the evolution of galaxies.

Through the clever use of two types of telescopes, a team of researchers has produced stunning images of clusters of galaxies. This not only produces beautiful images, but also provides more information about the enormous amounts of energy released around supermassive black holes in clusters. The astronomers,…

The first photo of a black hole and measuring anxiety in the brain... From 13 until 22 May we're serving a free slice of science with your pizza.

Diversity and inclusion within the police creates opportunities but also meets resistance. Professor by special appointment and former police officer, Saniye Çelik, emphasises how ambivalent feelings about D&I are essential to the learning process and can lead to informed decisions and real change.

Lecture, Oort lecture

Serge Rombouts is a physicist whose PhD thesis was about functional MRI (fMRI). This visualises activity in regions of the brain. The appealing images of glowing brain regions that emerge from the computer are the result of calculations. According to Rombouts, this isn’t proper artificial intelligence.…

This project applies a social-historical approach to examine and contrast various groups of African-American slave refugees who sought freedom within North America between 1800 and 1860. It innovatively distinguishes between different “spaces of freedom” for runaway slaves, namely sites of formal, semi-formal,…

Truth is stranger than fiction. In 1997 Juan Maldaceña discovered a remarkable dictionary that translates equation for equation the physics of black holes in string theory into the more conventional physics of quantum mechanics of interacting particles. The remarkable possibility exists that…

Piercing through the skull with an ice pick, administering electric shocks without an anaesthetic, or applying leeches to the uterus: these may seem like medieval methods of torture, but they are in fact therapies used in medicine. Willem van der Does writes about all of them in his new book. ‘Physicians…

In the South African context, certain iconic images have been a dominant source for public understandings of historical events. The emphasis given these images tends to overshadow the historical value of other more personal photographic sources – like studio or amateur photography. This project looks…

Rossi

What causes depression in a child and how can they get over it? Leiden Professor of Psychology Bernet Elzinga and behavioural scientist Carine Kielstra recently hosted a webinar on the subject of depression in teenagers. The level of interest was overwhelming.

Macrophages and atherosclerotic lesions The infiltration of monocytes in the arterial wall, their differentiation to macrophages, and the subsequent accumulation of cholesterol in these macrophages initiate the process of atherosclerosis. We study the importance of specific genes in macrophages for…

Dark matter is one of the biggest mysteries of the Universe. Its properties cannot be explained with the known laws of physics and elementary particles.

This thesis investigates how galaxies form and what diversifies the evolutionary histories of galaxies.

So far it has been impossible to compare large sets of syntactic constructions in large sets of languages systematically and automatically. The online availability of parallel text corpora and software tools to align, enrich, search and analyse them has the potential to make automatic massive systematic…

A high performance computer or supercomputer owes its massive processing capacity to the fact that it chops a single overarching task into a whole series of smaller tasks. It simultaneously tackles each of those smaller problems.

What is the effectiveness of (booklet or online) self-help programmes for people with somatic stressors and depressive symptoms? What works best for whom? How to improve motivation and adherence?

They hurtle along at over a thousand kilometres per second: the fastest stars in the Milky Way. PhD candidate Fraser Evans conducted research into these elusive hypervelocity stars and discovered that they have a lot to teach us, about black holes and supernovae, for example.

PhD defence