The tenth International Conference on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and the Pacific will be a special edition with a focus on reconciliation. The fatal shooting in 1722 will be remembered, when the Dutch shot and killed ten Easter Islanders. The conference will be held in Leiden from 19 to 24 June.

What is the impact of humans on nature? In Science an article appeared in which researchers try to give an answer to that question. Biogeographer and postdoc at LUCL Sietze Norder is one of its authors.

The number of insect species is plummeting, which is why the University is creating a more biodiverse environment around its buildings. Annetje Ottow, President of the Executive Board, planted the first bee-friendly plants in the front garden of Oude UB on 20 September.

Biologist Marcel Schaaf is one of four science faculty members who achieved the Senior Teaching Qualification in Leiden last year. How was that and what drives him? ‘Students receive way too often feedback that they cannot put into practice.’

Ustadh Mau Digital Archive project (UMADA) is among the UCLA Library 29 international cultural preservation projects supported by the Modern Endagered Archive Program (Cohort 3). From the 3rd up to the 5th of October, a digitization training workshop took place on Lamu island, on the so-called northern…

In the eighteenth century, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) housed its enslaved people on ‘Slave Island’ in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. Today ‘Slave Island’ is under serious threat from property developers. Senior lecturer Alicia Schrikker, together with her Sri Lankan colleagues Iromi Perera…

Climate change is affecting all areas of human life. 2024 has been the hottest year on record and natural disasters are becoming increasingly frequent around the globe. Every year since 1995, national delegations come together to address the climate crisis through the Conference of the Parties to the…

Lecture, Event

PhD defence

PhD defence

All persons making use of Leiden University buildings and grounds must comply with the general University house rules. These are listed in the Regulations on the Use of University Buildings, Grounds and Other Facilities, and are intended to guarantee order and safety for guests and staff alike.

Lecture, Unfolding Finitudes

Event

When we talk about the Kingdom of the Netherlands, it is not just about the Netherlands. On the contrary: our Kingdom consists of no less than four countries, three of which are Caribbean islands. This structure is complex, to say the least. Although all countries are officially equivalent, in practice…

On January 7th Minister van Engelshoven of Education, Culture and Science of The Netherlands announced that the project Island(er)s at the Helm: Co-creating sustainable and inclusive solutions for social adaptation to climate challenges in the (Dutch) Caribbean is one of two projects awarded with funding…

An international research team is to search for invisible life in the Galápagos Islands. The diversity of bacteria and other microscopic organisms may not be evident to the naked eye, but it is essential to nature. To the islands' giant daisies, for instance: unique endemic plants that are currently…

People from the Dutch islands of Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius say that violence (mainly verbal) is fairly common in families. This is according to research by Leiden University, the University of Curaçao and UNICEF Netherlands. The researchers make recommendations for preventing such violence over…

Representatives of the Faculty of Archaeology recently traveled to the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius to repatriate human remains. The remains, originally excavated in the 1980s, will eventually be reinterred on the island.

Lecture, Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series

The shock wave triggered by one of the five galaxies making up the iconic Stephan’s Quintet appears to be less disruptive than previously thought, with the shock likely being cushioned by dust particles in the surrounding gas. This is according to the analysis of the first scientific observations of…

A sense of security plays an important role in the decision to contribute to nature conservation. Stacey Mac Donald conducted four years of research on the influence of social and political changes and the (post) colonial context on nature conservation in the Dutch Caribbean. On 17 May she will defend…

Education

For the past 2 years, Dr Letty ten Harkel has been jointly running an excavation project of a suspected Roman villa site on the Balearic island of Mallorca with colleagues Dr Antoni Puig Palerm and Ritchie Kolvers, MA. The project was recently awarded a LUF Chastelain-Nobach fund to explore the extend…

Roberto Arciero is part of RESPIRE project (Research Educational and Storytelling Project in Italian Remote Ecosystem), an international and interdisciplinary research team led by Martina Capriotti (University of Camerino) that received the National Geographic Meridian grant. Among the different topics,…

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?

Exploring logging's real impact: Insights from Anthropologist Tessa Minter in the Solomon Islands.

Het zichtbaar maken van ongeschreven verhalen van inheemse culturen en volken van de Cariben. Dat doet de tentoonstelling ‘Caribbean Ties’ in de Oude UB.

On February 28th of this year Dr. Andrzej Tadeusz Antczak died of cancer after a long battle. Until his retirement in 2023 Andrzej was attached to the Faculty of Archaeology as an Associate Professor in Caribbean Archaeology. From 2017 until 2020 he was the Head of the Department of World Archaeology,…

Four bachelor’s students in archaeology have embarked on a month-long field school in Aruba. They will work with Harold Kelly, a local archaeologist at the National archaeological museum of Aruba, and with the research team of Island(er)s at the Helm.

The Netherlands remains one of the most important locations when it comes to tax evasion. According to Tax Justice Network only the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda play a greater role.

In 2024, Professor Joanita Vroom received a substantial grant from the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) in support for her Hinterlands of Medieval Chalcis Project (HMC Project) in Greece. PHI, a California-based non-profit organization, is dedicated to archaeological research as well as to the preservation…

Archaeologist Jason Laffoon was awarded an NWO Vidi grant for an innovative investigation into ancient migrations in the western Caribbean. The innovative character of this research project lies in the wide-scale application of isotope analysis and isotope mapping. ‘We aim at further developing methods…

For ten months, PhD student Sanne Rotmeijer worked on the editorial boards of various news media on Curaçao and Sint Maarten. She also tracked how news goes around on the streets and circulates on social media. The aim? To find out how stories became 'the news'.

Roll-up solar panels, bendable phone displays, or better computer chips… The EU project STIBNITE investigated the next generation of semiconductors, made from organic materials based on carbon, nitrogen, and boron. The project has now concluded. During the Open Science Debate on 1 July, the group will…

Recently, in the midst of coronavirus situation, Professor Corinne Hofman and her team became part of the NWO project Island(er)s at the Helm. Both the application process as well as the start of the project were challenged by the limitations set by Covid-19. ‘As a preparation we travelled through the…

Four green research institutes in Leiden are joining forces to integrate evolution and biodiversity research, at local and at the national level. Pivot in this collaboration is Frederic Lens.

On 22 July, Danny Mekić, PhD candidate at eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technology and Eindhoven University of Technology, was named ‘Mr. of the Week’ following his recent wins in two lawsuits against social media company Twitter.

The Ministry of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations (BZK) is establishing two new professor chairs for the Kingdom.

If you study law, you won’t necessarily end up striding round a law firm in tailor-made suits. Alumnus Harrie Schoffelen certainly hasn’t: he made the conscious decision to follow another path in life. Together with his fiancée he runs a successful food truck on the tropical island of Bonaire. ‘Return…

Studying surfaces of solid materials: it may not seem relevant to energy consumption, but it is. Marcel Rost studies how platinum electrodes wear out. Those electrodes are a crucial component in the fuel cells of hydrogen-powered cars. ‘We need to make the switch from fossil fuel energy to hydrogen.…

Research

One week ago a group of Dutch men were attacked out of the blue by another group of Dutch tourists on the Spanish island of Mallorca. One of the victims later died as a result of his injuries. The Spanish police know who the suspects are, but those men are in the Netherlands.

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…

In a new series of articles, we explore how the humanities study topics related to sustainability. First up: waste. How and why study waste as a humanities scholar? We asked Elena Burgos Martinez, University Lecturer South and Southeast Asian Studies, and Katarzyna Cwiertka, Professor of Modern Japan…

A delegation from Leiden University visited various universities in Japan at the end of March. The strong ties between the Netherlands and Japan are still based on a long tradition of knowledge exchange.