Snowball the cockatoo gained world fame on social media. Millions of people saw him dance to Queen and The Backstreet Boys. In the journal Current Biology scientists study Snowball's dancing abilities and what they teach us about the origins of dance. Professor of Animal Behaviour Carel ten Cate casts…

In the days following Christmas, Christa Tobler gave a series of interviews to Swiss newspapers and Swiss radio about the new Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and the UK and about what it might mean for Switzerland-EU relations and the draft EU-Swiss institutional framework agreement.

Only the fittest cyclists stand a chance of taking yellow in the brutal Tour de France. Team Jumbo-Visma is working with data scientists from Leiden. They have analysed the stages and performance of Jumbo-Visma’s riders in previous Grand Tours. And they are researching how to determine the fitness level…

The Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for BOLD Cities uses data research to help solve urban issues. Three interdisciplinary research projects will begin soon. Leiden sociologist John Boy explains.

A study has been initiated at the instigation of WODC (Scientific Research and Documentation Centre) on the judicial monitoring of big data applications by government. The study is being conducted by TILT (Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society).

How can data science improve tax administration? Mark Pijnenburg, a senior data scientist at the Netherlands Tax and Customs Administration, decided to investigate this in a dissertation. He talks about his experiences: 'Sometimes a technique is scientifically interesting, but not applicable in real…

Research conducted by Deloitte, with advice from Leiden University and Nibud (National Institute for Family Finance Information), shows that six out of ten households in the Netherlands are financially unhealthy. National media paid much attention to the report.

Stijn Bussels will attend the two-day conference on The Tableau Vivant – Across Media, History, and Culture at the Colombia University of New York. He will deliver a paper on ‘‘Restored Behaviour’ and the Performance of the City Maiden in Joyous Entries into Antwerp’.

On behalf of trade union FNV, Egbert Jongen and Heike Vethaak from Leiden University conducted a study on income distribution over the past 40 years. Dutch national media outlets have given extensive news coverage to their study.

Scientists are split over whether the benefits some microdosers experience are a placebo effect or something more. Michiel van Elk has been interviewed by several international news to talk about his research and to discuss the effects of psychedelics.

The environment also benefits when people follow national nutritional guidelines, Paul Behrens demonstrated in research published in PNAS. The publication attracted media attention both at home and internationally.

Media in the Netherlands and abroad reported extensively about the drug research led by Leiden chemist Mario van der Stelt. In this research, Van der Stelt shows which unwanted side-effects a French drug candidate has.

Stay tuned for updates on relevant media appearances of Anne-Laura van Harmelen.

Making sensitive data reusable through synthetic data generation

Researchers from eLaw, the Center for Law and Digital Technologies, published a new book on EU data protection law.

On March 20, 2019, a special meeting took place in the House of Representatives: a hackathon. The aim was to find solutions for better accessibility of the large amounts of information that are produced in the House of Representatives on a daily basis.

This week Dutch newspapers NRC and de Volkskrant consulted scientists from the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) about the impact of the Cambridge Analytica storm. This company gained insight into the data of 50 million Facebook users.

On Tuesday 11 February, the European Data Protection Supervisor, Mr. Wojciech Wiewiórowski, visited eLaw, - center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden Law School to give a lecture on facial recognition systems and data protection in Europe.

OSCL members, amongst which our representative in the Archaeology faculty, were part of Data Carpentry for Social Sciences. Here's what happened.

Just like the professional riders from the Jumbo-Visma team, amateur cyclists will soon be able to analyse and improve their performance. Leiden data scientists working with the cycling team are making their smart data model available so that every serious cyclist can keep track of their fitness.

For the second time in six months, Hans-Martien ten Napel has been invited to write the opening essay for a series of international blog posts.

On 29 November Mariana Gkliati published an opinion piece in the Greek newspaper EFSYN, on the reorganisation of the greek asylum committees.

What is the best living environment for dementia patients? To answer this question, Daniela Gawehns is using data mining methods to search through different types of data source. Her research is inadvertently building a bridge between two disciplines that are sometimes somewhat wary of each other.

Today, March 15 2016, the FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship were formally published in the Nature Publishing Group journal Scientific Data.

This project will explore how Chinese digital networks are grounded in real-world institutions, and how interest groups and individuals use digital infrastructures to shape public discourse on national history.

The faculty's research on the ancient rock art found in Jordan's Black Desert has recently been covered by several news and science websites.

While health data is essential for scientific research, that data also needs to be protected. In her doctoral thesis, Irith Kist found a balance between protecting the individual and exchanging health data.

Data theory research on the analysis on the multidimensional data

Several media published articles on the latest research from a team including Thijs Bosker, Associate Professor Environmental Sciences, last week. The research has shown that whales in the vicinity of Auckland New Zeeland consume three million microplastics a day.

It is becoming increasingly common to collect data from children and young people through digital means. The impact of this so-called ‘dataveillance’ on children, who are monitored from birth via smartphones and Fitbits, is great.

On 29 November 2022, Jan Aart Scholte and colleagues presented the project 'Digital Data: Polycentric Governance Perspectives' at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum in Addis Ababa. Click here to find out more about the event.

This inaugural lecture discusses the question: How to cooperate in the digital era?

Seminar 12th of April

It is the end of your archaeological research project, and you may be wondering where to deposit your data. After the excavation, all of the finds are drawn, scanned, digitised, and the database is completed. Perhaps you have also accumulated a lot of data through further scientific analysis of the…

How does the Chinese government communicate with its citizens? Yuxi Nie obtained her PhD with her thesis on communication strategies of the Chinese state media agency Xinhua. She discovered that on social media, Xinhua communicated in different ways, depending on the target group.

Biologists today have to be able to work with big data. Data analysis skills should be taught from the start of the degree programme, or - even better - in secondary school. This is the message of Vera van Noort, new Professor of Computational Biology. Inaugural lecture 22 January.

Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker expressed his support in the media for 'The Real Opening,' the protest against government cuts. 'The plans are a disaster for higher education.' Professor Remco Breuker, one of the organisers of this protest on 2 September, called in NRC Handelsblad for a stop to the…

Whilst the world is opening up, the teaching will continue in a hybrid form next academic year. During the past year, when all of us were bound to our home offices and computer screens, new forms of education had to be developed – some of which proved to be efficient in preparing the students for their…

The world is becoming increasingly digitised, and the information one has easy access to is often rather overwhelming. In particular, the accumulative nature of the archaeological practice has resulted in huge quantities of data being produced. But how to prevent these from becoming dust-collectors…

In the past few days, Vice-Rector Hester Bijl was interviewed by Leiden TV station Unity and the Zuid-Holland Economic Board. In both interviews she looks in more depth at the effect of the corona crisis on the University and her future role as Rector Magnificus of Leiden University.

In this thesis we will explore the use of fuzzy systems theory for applications in bioinformatics.

Speed skating coach and human movement scientist Jac Orie has been capturing all details about the performance of 'his' skaters for fifteen years. Thanks to data scientist Arno Knobbe, who calculates the collected data in new ways, Orie can train his team even smarter in the run-up to the Olympic Winter…

It is often claimed that social media can contribute to democratic decision-making by bringing politicians and citizens into dialogue with one another. But is this potential always realised, and how? Most researchers look at politicians and their online communication strategies. In this New Media &…

On 16 May 2022, Professor Michel Wouters from the Department of Biomedical Data Sciences at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), will deliver his inaugural lecture titled ‘Quality of Cancer Care: why the real world matters’. Wouters will use the opportunity to describe how quality registries…

In what ways can visual art play a vital role in countering the discriminating stigma experienced by transgender communities?

On 15 February 2018, Simone van der Hof gave a keynote lecture entitled 'Data Protection and Children's Rights - the reasoning behind the protective provisions for children in the GDPR' at the International School of Amsterdam conference on Strategic marketing & communications for international scho…

The research programme Statistical Science is concerned with the analysis and interpretation of masses of data, the quantification of uncertainty using probability models, and the development and benchmarking of algorithms and methods with these aims.

On Monday 6 May, GTGC guest researcher Joohyun Baik presented her research on 'Data Localization as a Data Sovereignty in Nigeria's Digital Policy Landscape'.

This PhD project analyses the politics and aesthetics of depictions of torture in American and European ‘war on terror’ films.