The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should have ended poverty, inequality and climate change by 2030. In a special campaign, the Dutch universities are showing how they are helping to achieve these goals.

If a pill containing no active ingredients still helps, this positive expectation is called a placebo effect. A negative expectation is called a nocebo effect. Both can be produced by verbal suggestions and conditioning. According to Andrea Evers’ research group, combining these is the most promising…

Heavy rainfall can cause streets to flood and basements and tunnels to overflow. Jan van Rijn investigated, together with Christiaan Lamers (formerly of Leiden University) and Ton Beenen (STOWA, RIONED), how data science can help to predict which areas are at greater risk of flooding. Van Rijn presented…

The key subject of the research programme Cities, Migration and Global Interdependence 1500 - Now (CMGI) is Inequality (at local, national and global levels).

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

Study information

The public disclosure of documents under the Dutch Open Government Act (Woo) is often delayed, especially when the information is considered socially or politically sensitive. Dr Annemarie Drahmann, Associate Professor of Constitutional and Administrative law, explains the case on platform for investigative…

Recent fieldwork at the vast desert region in north-eastern Jordan has revealed an immensely rich heritage of an area that is difficult to access and archaeologically less known. Professor Peter Akkermans was interviewed about his groundbreaking research in this area, known as the Black Desert.

Modern optimization algorithms offer solutions for architectural decisions like spatial, structural and energy efficiency. A young computer scientist from Leiden University co-authored a paper that won the Best Paper Award at a leading conference in Krakow during the summer.

PhD defence

Does the δ-machine have higher accuracy than the other feature-based classifiers in some conditions?

The Leiden Slavery Studies Association (LSSA) is dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of slavery and post-slavery in any period and any geographical region.

The physics of black holes appears to be as far removed from the physics of electrons in metals as it can be.

In this thesis, we have used numerical approaches to study the effects of translational symmetry breaking on strange metallic systems as realised by the holographic duality⁠.

Studies in current archaeological applications of remote sensing and non-invasive prospection methods edited by Hans Kamermans, Martin Gojda and Axel G.

An overview of Academic E-Resources and Bibliographies

There is no heritage without emotional sharing and clashing. This article explores the involvement of divergent emotions in heritage making by discussing the debate series of Imagine IC and the Reinwardt Academy and zooming in on the commemoration of slavery and imagery of ‘Black Pete’ in the Netherlands.…

This project explored the role of material culture, in casu painted plaster and its technologies, in expressing dynamic social identities and in forging complex interwoven human relationships in the context of the Middle to Late Bronze Age of the Aegean and East Mediterranean.

Cramming from a book, making notes or learning summaries. In the past these were about the only ways to memorise your course material. But that has long since changed. Multimedia is the code word. But is it effective?

The most commonly used method for the taxonomic identification of tree trunks is wood anatomy. The number of experts in this area is decreasing, and education to become an wood anatomists takes many years. With the help of technology computer scientists of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science…

Researchers at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) are collaborating on the development of a conversation tool for patients with breast, prostate and skin cancer. The aim is to create a conversation tool that can support cancer patients in their care and help them make decisions.…

Lecture, Kaiser Spring Lecture

People are keen to make a contribution that will be valuable for scientific research. Many thousands are taking part in the Major Flu Survey. Leiden researcher Anne Land is publishing on this subject in the Journal of Science Communication.

Jamie Korporaal, who started as a junior lecturer at Leiden Law School during her master's studies and has now joined the faculty as a lecturer, will start the Labour Law specialisation after the summer. She discusses her career and this postgraduate training course with Marije Schneider, lecturer in…

Lecture, Research Seminar Europe 1000-1800

Anke Klein and her team have devised a fun and useful app to help anxious children. In the app, children can upload a video of themselves showing, for example, something that went well for them and share their success with parents, granny or grandad. Developmental psychologist Klein talks about the…

Spirits play a important role in post-colonial and minority literature as a means of processing black pages from history, according to literary scientist Chia-Sui Lee. PhD defence 11 January.

Like spoken languages, sign languages evolve organically and do not always have the same origin. This produces different ways of communication and annotation. Manolis Fragkiadakis wrote his PhD thesis on this.

Coronavirus is generating a great deal of uncertainty throughout the world. Fortunately, there are some bright spots, such as the residents of Italian cities who are in quarantine trying to keep everyone's spirits up with their clapping and singing. Closer to home, Leiden historian Suze Zijlstra took…

International organisations that represent collaborations between States are becoming increasingly more powerful, and they have an increasing impact on our daily lives. For example, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasburg established that minors have a right to legal aid immediately following…

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,…

Commonplace - Photographs from the Drummond-Fyvie Collection and the Ngilima Collection. By Tamsyn Adams and Sophie Feyder.

The Netherlands is not particularly rich in ‘wild nature’. Comparatively, what we have is a lot of intensively used agricultural land. This means that from nature’s perspective there much to be gained by combining the ‘nature’ and ‘agriculture’ functions. Not an easy task in such a densely populated…

PhD defence

PhD defence

Its idyllic setting and white sandy beaches have made the Maldives a hotspot for tourists. This provides an income but is a problem for the fragile natural environment. Students from various universities worked with the local people to make the soil more fertile. How did they go about it?

This week Leiden student Roos Kolkman will be campaigning throughout the country to win the votes of Dutch youth in order to become the next UN Youth Delegate for Sustainable Development.

Drones are proving to be a good means of mapping man-made changes in the landscape. Geophysicist Till Sonneman and his colleagues (archaeology) are experimenting with drones in inaccessible areas of the Caribbean.

Professor of Media Law and Information Society Tarlach McGonagle is concerned about the increase in online disinformation and hate speech. He argues that human rights should guide new policies for the online world. McGonagle will give his inaugural lecture on 9 May.

Professor of Fungal Genetics and Biotechnology Arthur Ram explains how fungi can help us be more sustainable.

Artificial intelligence can help doctors analyse images such as MRI scans. In future it may even be able to predict how a tumour will grow. And that is badly needed to relieve the pressure on healthcare workers.

Considering the ways in which the ‘global turn’ is changing the theory and practice of historical disciplines, Explorations in History and Globalization engages with the concept and methodology of globalization, challenging traditional divisions of space and time to offer a range of perspectives on…

Leiden Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia

Multiple stars, that is two or more stars composing a gravitationally bound system, are common in the universe.

The high velocity tail of the total velocity distribution of stars provides essential insight into fundamental properties of the Galaxy.

The Jeugdwerkgroep is a national astronomy association for young people who are interested in astronomy. The Leiden section organizes a monthly meeting in the Old Observatory Leiden.

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A comparative anthropology of commercial insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

Promotor: W. Jaffe, Co-promotor: K. Meisenheimer

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.K. Richardson