Multi-channel sound and video installation of the on-going project: Decomposing Landscape (2014 -).

Former Member of Parliament Lammert van Raan (PvdD) and alumna Eva Floris gave a guest lecture on the 13th of May on the Ecocide penalisation initiative bill. During the lecture, they discussed the idea behind the bill, the objections from politicians and the business community and the advice of the…

Recycling of post consumer plastic waste is problematic in that the environmental benefits are questionable and the costs are significant. It would be better to separately collect the most useful parts through the expansion of the deposit system.

A soap film with chemically distinct sides: it's the latest breakthrough in the research led by chemist Sylvestre Bonnet. This unique soap film, along with an innovative device capable of continuously producing new soap films, forms a crucial piece in the puzzle for the development of artificial pho…

Below are some of the scholarly works published within the context of the Institutions for Conflict Resolution programme.

The Council of Ministers has appointed Jan Willem Erisman, Professor of Environment and Sustainability at Leiden University, as chair of the new Scientific Climate Council (WKR) from 1 March. This council will advise the government on climate policy.

The C-SCAPE project has received funding of 1 million euros in the context of the NWO program ‘Living labs in the Dutch delta’. C-SCAPE, led by TU Delft, is a collaboration between the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), University Groningen, Deltares and HZ University of Applied Sciences. It…

‘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.’

Fighting against cancer, antibiotic resistance and disposable plastics: Ahmed Ali, Fredj Ben Bdira, and Valerio Barbarossa receive a LUF grant for their innovative and socially relevant research. These grants for academic talent are often an important step towards grants by NWO and other grant insti…

E-mails are not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about sustainability. Yet, your e-mails can add kilos of extra CO2 to the atmosphere each year. Students from the LDE Bachelor Honours Programme Sustainability tackled these and other sustainability challenges on behalf of partner organisations.…

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

Ecologist Rosaleen March from the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) will carry on her research on functional biodiversity: a measure to assign value to ecosystems. Following her previous Marie Curie co-fund, she now receives a full Marie Curie fellowship. March: ‘We need to know how losing biodiversity…

On Tuesday 4 September, Martina Vijver delivered the scientific lecture during the academic opening of the Faculty of Science. Martina is professor in Ecotoxicology at CML and would like to have collaborations with colleagues from the Leiden Centre of Data Science. We had a brief interview with her.

On 24 September the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) in Leiden will launch the new version of the Pesticides Atlas in cooperation with Rijkswaterstaat and Royal HaskoningDHV. The online tool is now faster, more user-friendly, more accessible and all data can be downloaded directly. Users can…

To what extent does human intervention influence the world’s biodiversity? And can we predict how biodiversity and ecosystems will change in the coming years? Inaugural lecture by Peter van Bodegom, Professor of Conservation Biology, on 8 May.

The habitats of freshwater fish species are threatened by global warming, mainly due to rising water temperatures. This is the conclusion of a study led by Radboud University, in collaboration with Utrecht University, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Leiden University and others. The…

GTGC researchers participated in the annual convention of the International Studies Association (ISA), with this year's theme of 'Globalization, Regionalism and Nationalism: Contending Forces in World Politics'.

‘De aanpak van microplastics zit vol haken en ogen’

On Tuesday 10 March 2015 - 10h Ernst Worrell, professor at the University of Utrecht with a chair on

Thursday February 2nd, 2017 Prof. dr. Janne Bengtsson from Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala has given a lecture called:

Gerard Persoon received his bachelor and master degree in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (CA/DS) from Leiden University. After his graduation, he worked a couple of years in Indonesia for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Thereafter he worked for almost 25 years at the Institute of Environmental…

Lecture

The Houthis are attacking ships in the Red Sea. Rerouting via South Africa is expensive, whereas the Arctic route only takes a week. Once a no-go zone, this route might be a more realistic option. Mind the nuclear submarines, though…

An international consortium headed by the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Sustainability has been awarded a subsidy for research on the circular economy where all raw materials are recycled.

Cutting down global emissions of greenhouse gases to combat global warming won’t do the trick alone: we also need negative-emissions technology that can capture carbon dioxide directly out of the air. In the prestigious journal Global Environmental Change, PhD candidate Oscar Rueda and colleagues shed…

Scientific research at the molecular level on a collection of medieval skeletons from Norton Priory in Cheshire, United Kingdom, could help rewrite history after revealing they were affected by an unusual ancient form of the bone disorder, Paget’s disease. Osteoarchaeologist Carla Burrell, attached…

CML grants three Stans Awards each year, known as the best PhD paper, best student thesis and best outreach from the past year. The CML staff nominated students and colleagues and this year’s jury Prof.dr. Koos Biesmeijer and Prof.dr. Nicole de Voogd made the final decision.

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.

Early December, lecturer Joris Timmermans gave the first virtual reality lecture at the Institute of Environmental Sciences. Together with the Centre for Innovation, he developed an innovative teaching method for the master's course Methods in Biodiversity Analysis. The first results look promising.…

Just like every other organism on Earth, plants’ ultimate goal is to survive and reproduce. In order to achieve this, they must make trade-offs between where and how to allocate their finite set of resources. Whether they put their resources and energy into their growth, reproduction or maintenance,…

Starting 2 July 2022, a new exhibition will be opened to the public at the Old Observatory: More-than-Planet. This exhibit asks the question: how do we imagine our planet?

PhD candidate Jianhong Zhou aimed to better understand whether and how plant species adapt to environmental changes. She developed two databases that she used to analyze how easily or difficultly plants adapt to changing conditions. Zhou defended her PhD thesis on 4 September.

In June 2024 the Faculty of Archaeology welcomed a new Assistant Professor. Dr Jennifer Swerida, originally from the United States, will strengthen the Faculty’s expertise on the archaeology of West Asia. ‘I explore human-environment relationships inside an ancient oasis and the surrounding land. Previous…

Countries that import plastic waste recycle an average of at least 63 percent of it. This is surprising, as we previously believed that the vast majority was incinerated or ended up as litter. This was discovered by PhD candidate Kai Li and his colleagues from the Institute of Environmental Sciences in…

Plant communities consisting of many different species are less vulnerable to attacks of plant eating animals or diseases than less diverse communities. It also helps if plant species in one community are not closely related to each other. That is the outcome of an international study published in Nature…

Dr. Jessica Kiefte-de Jong and Dr. Thijs Bosker, both Assistant Professors at LUC, have been awarded by The Leiden University Fund (LUF).

Ester van der Voet received the International Society Award in Industrial Ecology. She is awarded this price for her outstanding contributions and leadership in the field of industrial ecology, and her tireless efforts to promote sustainability and resource management. The ceremony took place on the…

We are pleased to invite abstracts for a conference on ‘Counterclaims in International Law’ to be held at Leiden University on 27 June 2024, in collaboration with Queen Mary University of London.

Leiden has been selected as one of ten cities in the European BiodiverCities project. The aim of the project is to increase the quality of life in these cities, for instance by developing a green infrastructure and enhancing biodiversity. The Municipality of Leiden will work together with Naturalis…

Changes in our climate, the decline in biodiversity, the development of vaccines against new infectious diseases and whether we are the only inhabitants of the universe: these are just a few of the pressing challenges our society faces today. But which scientific choices must be made at the national…

As of 1 September, Martina Vijver is the new Scientific Director of the Institute of Environmental Sciences. She succeeds Arnold Tukker, who led the institute since 2013 and served the maximum term of two times four years. Vijver has been appointed for a period of four years.

On Monday 14 November, the first spadeful of earth was dug for the construction of the Living Lab, an experimental test site to study living organisms in freshwater. A total of 36 ditches will be dug out to create a natural environment where researchers can study the effects of chemical compounds from…

It is mostly rainfall and soil acidity that determine which microbes survive in a particular habitat and which do not. This knowledge is important for maintaining biodiversity. Leiden environmentalists contributed to the research. Publication in Nature on 1 August.

Image from ESOF Forum programme page.

For present purposes, it is important to distinguish between an early period of settlement, about 6800-6200 BC, and a late period, about 6200-5800 BC, at Tell Sabi Abyad.

The project seeks to come to an understanding of the archaeology of the desert and the ways in which its inhabitants engaged with their constraint, marginal environments through time. It compares and interprets site distribution and community organisation over a long time scale and across several different…

Leiden archaeologists investigate how people in the past impacted their environment. Together with scientists, environmental scientists, and humanities experts, they use this information to draw conclusions about the present – and show what we can learn from it for the future.

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This research project studies the distribution and impact of medieval malaria in the Netherlands.

The research aims at achieving a European consensus on a harmonized LCA approach/framework to be applied in E-mobility sector. The research will focus on needs and gaps in current LCA practices in E-mobility and try to provide solutions for them based on the rich knowledge and experience represented…