After three years of covid postponements, the time had finally come on Wednesday 29 June 2022: Carel Stolker’s last speech as Rector Magnificus was buried according to tradition under the ginkgo tree in the library at the Kamerlingh Onnes building.

Playing a game, picking a cutting for your room or just having a cup of coffee: it is all possible in the new Humanities Living Room in the Matthias de Vrieshof. From Wednesday 17 May, staff and students will be able to meet informally and socialise here.

In 2007, a spy from the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) planted a destructive computer virus at an Iranian nuclear site, halting the Iranian nuclear weapons programme. Dutch newspaper ‘de Volkskrant’ has revealed that the AIVD kept the crucial role of the Dutch spy a secret from…

Research

Research

Education

RARE-NL, a new collaboration between university hospitals, hopes to find treatments for rare diseases. Professor Teun van Gelder is representing the LUMC in the initiative.

'It gave our team a big boost to hear that our work was valuable,' says medical chemist Elmer Maurits about the moment they won the Venture Challenge. With their company Iprotics, they want to develop a drug that can better treat patients with autoimmune diseases and blood cancers. 25,000 euros of prize…

PhD defence

PhD defence

Annetje Ottow is the first female president of the Executive Board of Leiden University, which means a return to her Alma mater.

On 8 March, International Women’s Day, equal opportunities for women worldwide, empowerment, and gender equality take centre stage. For years, the role of women in the past has been nearly invisible. Four archaeologists reflect on this inequality of focus, from hunter-gatherers in the palaeolithic to…

Sabine de Winter

Research

Exploitation of smaller game is rarely documented before the latest phases of the Pleistocene, which is often taken to imply narrow diets for earlier hominins. In a study now published in Scientific Reports, a team of German and Dutch archaeologists present new data that contradict this view of Lower…

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

When do we define a piece of nature in the city as a park? And when is something a tree or shrub? It may seem obvious, but in scientific literature the definitions vary quite a bit. That makes comparisons difficult. Environmental scientist Joeri Morpurgo looked at the differences and designed a general…

Paco Barona Gomez is the newest associate professor at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL). The Mexican researcher is fascinated by the evolution of natural products: compounds made by microbes, but also plants and animals. ‘It’s like we investigate chemical dark matter.’

A lot of municipalities work with a points system to encourage construction projects to take biodiversity and creating green areas into account. But this way of working also benefits local neighbourhoods and residents, master's student Marije Sesink discovered. She based her study on The Hague.

With a self-converted red camper van, biologists and twin brothers Kevin and Marvin Groen go on a nature adventure in Eastern Europe. Together, they search for wild animals, beautiful nature and places to sport. From a long search for a bear in the Slovakian wilderness to the discovery that pelicans…

Neanderthals were able to outwit straight-tusked elephants, the largest land mammals of the past few million years. Leiden professor Wil Roebroeks has published an article about this together with his German colleague Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser in the Science Advances journal.

Netherlands and China can learn from each other to handle household and livestock wastewater more sensibly. In the FOREWARD project, scientists from Leiden, Wageningen, and China are working together with local partners on feasible solutions that advance the environment, health, and economy.

Cotton is the most widely used natural fibre for clothes. But how polluting are our jeans and shirts actually? Environmental scientist Laura Scherer coordinated an international research project on the impacts of cotton. ‘The purchases of consumers in Europe can contribute to water scarcity in China…

To facilitate the search for new antibiotics. That is the aim of Gilles van Wezel, professor molecular biotechnology at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL). He wants to do this by looking at similarities in the DNA of antibiotic-producing bacteria. Van Wezel has been awarded an ERC Advanced grant…

Connecting worlds, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. In that respect, a huge amount happened at Leiden University in 2023.

Over 30 ambassadors strengthened their ties with researchers and university leaders in a recent visit to Leiden University. Cross-border collaboration (both literal and figurative) was the theme of presentations and a tour of the Hortus botanicus.

A huge shiny aluminium object stands in the middle of the Polderlab in Oud Ade. Are the researchers trying to make contact with extraterrestrial life? Certainly not; they are using the ’Moon landers’ to measure whether innovative forms of agriculture reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Fleur van Duin works…

Light, open and green: a description that fits the new, renovated location of the Faculty of Humanities. The official opening of the Herta Mohr Building took place on 8 October, and it has many remarkable features: for example, recycled ‘mushroom columns’, a pedestrian bridge to the University Library…

Lecture, webinar

Leiden PhD candidate Mona Shahab climbed Mount Everest two years ago to raise money for the education of disadvantaged children in Egypt. She made it to the top and posed there with the University flag. She recently presented the flag to Rector Carel Stolker.

Leiden University is taking a major step forward in the energy transition with the expansion of the thermal energy storage (TES) in the Gorlaeus Building. This expansion is needed to be able to heat and cool all the new and renovated buildings on the Campus Square of the Faculty of Science sustainably.…

How do you count the nanoplastics in your body? Leiden researchers published a method in Nature Protocols today that should make this easier. Important for both environmental and medicine research.

From sponsored runs to festivals and from open days to concerts: Leiden University hosts lots of events each year. We are highlighting six of them for 2023.

On Tuesday 6 September, the faculty year 2022-2023 got off to a great start with Leiden Law Op 1, our yearly talkshow live from the Kamerlingh Onnes Gebouw. Together with the Faculty Board, academic staff and students, we looked ahead to the upcoming academic year.

Facility

Eight university vegetable patches will soon join the display at the Hortus botanicus. The sun shone down on almost 40 enthusiastic students and staff as they started work on the new Community Garden there earlier this month.

Alex West’s dissertation, "Bujangga Manik or, Java in the Fifteenth Century: An Edition and Study of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS jav. b. 3. (R)" (Leiden, 2021), has been selected for one of the five prestigious Praemium Erasmianum Dissertation Awards 2022.

Four promising young researchers will be able to conduct two years of research at a university abroad thanks to a Rubicon grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The Leiden laureates are Renske Janssen, Girija Josh, Anne van der Meij and Yana van der Weegen.

Soil ecologists Emilia Hannula (Leiden) and Elly Morriën (UvA) received the Golden Medal of Teylers Tweede Genootschap on 5 November. They received the prize for their submission to a competition on sustainable soil management.

At the end of the 7th century something curious occurs in Northwestern Europe. Suddenly, people start burying the dead next to their dwellings instead of in communal cemeteries. Professor Frans Theuws recently published a book on this phenomenon. ‘We wanted to know if the study of these farmyard burials…

The Vrouw Vennepolder near Oud Ade has been transformed into the Polderlab. Scientists and students from Leiden University, together with farmers and citizens, investigate how to manage peatland in a sustainable and profitable manner. A great opportunity for students to experience how scientific knowledge…

Biotechnological developments are moving fast. From genetically modified plant varieties we are now moving to cultured meat. These developments require moral interpretation - and they get it in the form of art. Lotte Pet wrote a dissertation about it.

Are you looking for some listening material for the upcoming long weekend? Staff members and alumni of the Faculty of Humanities have been creating various podcasts over the last few months. A selection is shown here:

Organisation

Inviting members of the public to help monitor wildlife, photograph plants or conduct samplings. These are some of the many examples of Citizen Science. It is increasingly recognized as effective and impactful for collecting data, but also for engaging the public in scientific research. In Nature reviews…

Hans van den Berg, CEO of Tata Steel NL, is in the eye of the storm. He continues to believe in connection, debate and knowledge that will make green steel possible.

Pesticides can form a toxic cocktail when they occur in combination in surface water. This is the finding of research that Leiden University and the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) presented on Monday 14 October. The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management…