Have you had a busy week at work? If so, it’s better to take a walk in a natural environment than to go shopping in the city.

From museum collections to artificial intelligence: Leiden University has selected eight research programmes that will receive extra funding

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

Anthropologist Rodrigo Ochigame studies how AI is changing the practice of scientific research. From astrophysics to mathematics to climate science, they find that the adoption of new AI models is raising questions about what counts as reliable scientific evidence.

The New Scientist magazine has selected two young Leiden scientists for its Top 25 Young Talents in the Netherlands and Flanders: historian Karwan Fatah-Black and neuropsychologist Mariska Kret. Who will be the winner? You can vote for one of them!

The excuses for the slavery past? It would have been better if the cabinet had taken some more time on that, thinks university lecturer and Atlantic slavery expert Karwan Fatah-Black. 'Too bad they didn’t wait for the results of the study.'

Last year, Dr. Henk van Steenbergen received a Grass Shoot grant to completely redevelop the research master's course 'Experimentation I: Programming Psychological Experiments'. The revised course was taught for first time last block and has just come to an end. Time for a brief recap.

Today is the general election in the Netherlands – although the polling stations have actually been open for two days already because of the coronavirus restrictions. Leiden researchers and students are involved in all manner of ways, and are analysing the campaigns and possible results.

It must be there. We just cannot see it: mysterious dark matter and dark energy in the universe. Henk Hoekstra is one of the many cosmologists who would love to know what exactly these substances consist of. He has received a European research grant of 1.3 euro million to find out.

The PhD students at the Academy for Creative and Performing Arts of Leiden University include a composer, an artist and a baroque flautist. Henk Borgdorff, who studied the phenomenon of PhDs in the Arts, says, ‘Artistic research in all disciplines of the Arts is a booming business worldwide.’

Dark matter. Something invisible that, according to calculations, comprises about 85% of the matter in the universe. With an ERC Advanced Grant of €2.5 million, Professor of Observational Cosmology Henk Hoekstra will map out even more precisely where this dark matter is to be found.

How do democracies develop? The Institute for History is devoting a three-day conference to this question.

Many astronomers suspect that most of the matter in the universe is invisible. So how can you weigh dark matter if you can't actually see it? Professor Henk Hoekstra is looking for a solution. Inaugural lecture 25 June.

Large numbers of Indonesians were active members of the resistance during the Second World War. One of them was Irawan Soejono, a student at Leiden University. He was shot dead on Boommarkt, during a raid on 13 January 1945. Seventy-five years later he was remembered in a small ceremony in the very…

On November 21, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena gives the Ehrenfest Colloquium. Maldacena is known worldwide as the inventor of AdS/CFT correspondence, which might be key to a theory of quantum gravity. Maldacena is winner of the prestigious Dirac Prize and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental…

Minuscule elementary particles from space colliding with Earth can give us an insight into the distant objects they come from. But first, you need to know how to catch them. With a Vidi grant from NWO, researcher Sjoert van Velzen will 'hunt' for neutrinos coming from exploding black holes.

Afro-American slaves in the 19th century did not always flee to the north of the United States, according to historical research. Most of the slaves who fled remained in the southern states and posed as free coloured people. This is the conclusion that Professor Damian Pargas from Leiden University…

We have examined sequences from the ligand-binding domain of the nicotinic acetyl choline receptor (nAChR) in 148 vertebrate species. We are in interested in this receptor because the α-neurotoxins of many venomous snakes binds to this receptor in its location at the neuromuscular junction in all ve…

The Old Obervatory Leiden is one of the partners of the local learning ecosystem ‘Verwonder om de Hoek’, an educational platform from Leiden that lets school children and families wonder about the world of Nature, Science, Technology and Sustainability. On this page you will find the educational programmes…

Ruling Overseas: Connected Practices of Governance of Law

Combining different disciplines, researchers work together to formulate innovative solutions to societal problems.

The skin has recently gained attention within body studies for its many specific cultural and social associations, in addition to its biology. This project aims to examine the different layers of meaning and the functions invested in the skin in ancient Greece: how did ancient Greek literary and medical…

Cities, Migration and Global Interdependence focuses on inequality in all its forms. You will approach this subject from an intersectional perspective. Since categories of power and identity are always intertwined, the courses in the programme reflect this reality. This means you will study how societies…

Lyndsey Housden teaches in the Interactive/Media/Design department at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague. She is a researcher and artist, working with interactive and haptic installations, spatial design and interdisciplinary projects for exhibitions, theatre, and festivals.

Master International Relations specialisation Culture and Politics.

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.

Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS)

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

The quest for Trustworthy AI is high on both the political and the research agenda, and it actually constitutes TAILOR’s first research objective (H1) of developing the foundations for Trustworthy AI. It is concerned with designing and developing AI systems that incorporate the safeguards that make…

Rottgering

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.

From 15 augustus 2014 onward, Leonor Álvarez Francés is appointed as PhD student on Raymond Fagels NWO project ‘Facing the Enemy. The Spanish Army Commanders during the First Decade of the Dutch Revolt (1567-1577)’

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2022, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.

Many of the journal's issues contain short contributions from practitioners of diplomacy. These practitioners' essays offer unique insights into the world of diplomacy and they serve as a source of inspiration for researchers.

Former PhD, Bachelor and Master students of the Van Exter Lab

The aim of the project is to understand the process of formation of Bon religious identity in Tibet at the turn of the first millennium AD.

Many Asian countries are in a process of democratisation. The expectation was that citizens would gradually gain more control over the functioning of their elites. Experts from Leiden have concluded that this process often fails to improve the quality of the administration. They researched the nature…

How do tax treaties have to be explained and implemented, and what role does the supranational regulatory process play in this? Which objectives are meant to be used in establishing tax regulations and to what extent are such legislative practices undertaken in a goal-oriented manner?.

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2017, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

Op 30 oktober presenteerde de Commissie tot Revisie van het Reglement van Orde, onder voorzitterschap van Kees van der Staaij (SGP), haar bevindingen aan Kamervoorzitter Khadija Arib.

Two former Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences students win the KNMP Student Award this year. Esmée de Zwaan for her research into new therapeutic strategies, Sanne Bakker for a study of bleeding risk associated with the use of antidepressant SSRI. Pharmacy organization KNMP awarded the annual prize on 8 October…

On 27 and 28 April, the annual conference of the Society for Artistic Research will take place at the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. This year’s conference will address the theme writing.

On November 30, 2023, the research group Institutions for Conflict Resolution (COI) organized a stakeholder meeting on governmental problem-solving and its implications for legitimacy. COI is a joint collaboration between the Universities of Leiden, Utrecht, and Nijmegen as part of the Dutch Sector…

Ijeoma Uchegbu is Professor of Pharmacy at University College London (UCL). As a female scientist of colour, she was initially reluctant to play an active role in the university’s diversity policy. Until, that is, she had a radical change of heart: ‘I knew it; I had to become an evangelist.'

The centre of our Galaxy is so dark and dense that it is almost impossible to observe what is inside. By catching the rare hypervelocity stars that are ejected from it, Elena Maria Rossi aims to unveil the mysterious environment around the supermassive black hole inside. But she’ll also be solving another…

In 2020, many of our staff and students have again won prestigious prizes and been awarded important research subsidies.

The Caribbean as we know it today is fundamentally a product of colonial activity and globalisation. Practically everyone that inhabits the Caribbean has ancestors from different continents due to colonial activity, which profoundly affects the area to this day. Caribbean writers, both in the Caribbean…

Salt crystals, a nano-sized golf stick and molten glass. The LION Image Award competition of 2023 yielded a lot of beautiful images once again. But in the end, only one can be the winner.