The secular West is struggling with the rise of AI, but so too is Muslim Southeast Asia. What can we learn from each other?

Paul Behrens and his team have won the Frontiers Planet Prize of half a million euros for their research into the effects of switching to a plant-based diet.

Festival, Graduation ceremony

Debate, Roundtable

Lecture, Food for Thought

The United Nations has declared May 22 the International Day for Biological Diversity. A moment of global reflection on everything on Earth and its indispensability. Anthropologist Marja Spierenburg stresses the importance of the interaction between natural and social sciences in addressing sustainability…

A female body equals a woman. Nonsense, says Professor by Special Appointment to the Socrates Chair Annemie Halsema. She argues that our sense of identity and social environment also determine our identity. ‘We should stop assigning people’s sex at birth.’

On paper it is recycled, but in reality enormous quantities of plastic waste from the Netherlands end up in Asian seas. Researchers from the Leiden Institute of Environmental Sciences charted the fate of plastic food packaging waste from the Netherlands. They published their results on July 8 in the…

Debate, Fireside Peace Chats

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

On 15 June 2022 Professor Anthropology of Sustainability and Livelihood Marja Spierenburg was one of the invited speakers at the round table in the House of Representatives of The Netherlands.

In the first episode of the podcast series, Andrei Marin, Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, interviews Marja Spierenburg, Professor of Anthropology of Sustainability and Livelihoods and Scientific Director at Leiden University, along with Diana Vela Almeida, Assistant…

Leiden University is proud of its research and teaching, its staff and its students. This is why we are keen to inform society of what goes on at the University.

Festival, Graduation ceremony

From Wednesday 13 July 2022, for four days, Leiden is at the epicentre of European science, as it hosts Europe's largest interdisciplinary conference, the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF). We interviewed Marja Spierenburg, Professor in the Anthropology of Sustainability and Livelihood. In addition to being…

To find funding, you first need to define your goal. Do you need to fund your own salary? Go abroad? Start up a collaboration? Buy equipment or do field work? Develop a company based on an invention that came out of the research? Next, find a match between your goal and the many funding opportunitie…

‘The climate crisis is the greatest threat we face,’ says Leiden University environmental scientist Paul Behrens. ‘And yet, there is hope. In the near future, I think we will wonder why we didn’t make these changes earlier.’

Lecture, Histories Connected: Work-in-Progress

Festival, Graduation ceremony

Conference

Dr. Andrew Littlejohn has been awarded a Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. The fellowship provides funds for early-career scholars to write and publish significant monographs that will impact the development of anthropology.

Debate, Roundtable Conversation

Study information, Experience Day

Debate, Fireside Peace Chats

PhD defence

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Research

From 1 January 2024, Bart Barendregt will be appointed as vice-dean of Research on the FSW board. This is a new role.

Festival, Graduation Ceremony

Festival, Graduation Ceremony

Festival, Graduation Ceremony

Festival, Graduation ceremony

Festival, Graduation ceremony

Festival, Graduation Ceremony

Each year a staggering 18 billion chickens, turkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, and cows either die or are killed without making it onto someone's plate. Environmental scientists Juliane Klaura, Laura Scherer, and Gerard Breeman were the first to calculate this number on a global scale. 'Reducing these numbers…

Festival, Graduation ceremony

Peter Pels, affiliated with the Institute of Cultural Anthropology of Leiden University, is one of the researchers. Together with Birgit Meyer (UU), he will lead the work package 'Heritage and the Question of Conversion'.

Facility, Library

Hunter-gatherers acquire their food through complex gender-specific foraging techniques for a relatively stable and diverse supply of energy. New research indicates that this specialisation by boys and girls starts at a very young age. Most likely, this enabled the human species to evolve much larger…

Maria Vasile's ethnographic fieldwork in Turin reveals that volunteering and citizen engagement may not empower residents or allow them to shape their cities. Her analysis of urban gardens, food markets, and food aid initiatives calls for a broader perspective on urban peripheral areas and a shift away…

Leiden biologists have found a mutation in flour beetles that allows them to speed up their development. The study has been published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Data scientist Lindsey Burggraaff has won the second edition of the Krijn Rietveld Memorial Innovation Award. She receives the prize for her research into bioactive substances in food. ‘Burggraaff's work is situated at a unique intersection of data science, biochemistry and the fields of food and nutrition,’…

Four researchers from Leiden University have been awarded NWO Open Competition grants in the Science domain. This is for research into subjects such as immune cells in tumours, antibiotic resistance and magnetic semiconductors.

In the fight for a liveable planet, we desperately need a fairer distribution of wealth and equal rights for all, argues anthropology professor Marja Spierenburg. ‘That will also generate broad-based support for sustainable development.’

The whole world gets raw materials from Latin America, but at the expense of nature. Håvar Solheim researches the role of organised crime in this environmental crime and Soledad Valdivia researches sustainable urban initiatives in Latin America. What do these university lecturers think the future of…

PhD defence

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series