The SAILS conference The Future of AI is Here (and Guess What … it’s Human) brought together researchers and policy makers to discuss the important issues in the area of artificial intelligence (AI). Where are the opportunities and what are the dangers?

A devastating tsunami engulfed large coastal areas in Asia and East Africa in 2004. With over 170,000 dead, the Indonesian province of Aceh was hardest hit. The survivors proved to be remarkably resilient as they returned to everyday life. Anthropologist Annemarie Samuels went to live in Aceh, and has…

Politicians in Barcelona are preparing for a new political battle. Nationalists fighting for Catalan independence have announced that they will organize a referendum this autumn, just as they did in 2014. Other parties claim that it will lead to new court cases because the referendum is unconstituti…

Below is a chronological list of the most recent to oldest publication from the MultiGreen project.

Many of our staff and students have won an award, received a grant, obtained an academic fellowship for their quality or have been socially engaged due to their specific expertise. See below for an overview per year.

On Saturday 25 June, the Europa Institute of Leiden University hosted the 61st Leiden-London Meeting, an annual event organized jointly by the Europa Institute and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL). This year’s meeting had “Interdependence, cooperation and strategic…

Greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and fertilizers in the groundwater have negative consequences for our environment. With an electrochemical process they can be transformed to more valuable and useful substances like fuel and alcohol. Chemistry PhD candidate Elena Perez Gallent discovered how this…

Leiden physicists are helping Wageningen plant researchers to study unpredictable plant embryos. For this, they are using a novel two-photon fluorescence microscope, aided by a 30 thousand euro ZonMW grant.

Today marks the start of RoRI’s Phase 2. With our international consortium of partners, we’re excited to launch another five years of generating, synthesising and translating ideas and evidence into practical solutions to improve research.

Associate Professor of Physical Geography Paul Hudson at Leiden University College was interviewed by TIME Magazine on the Mississippi floods that have been harassing the United States this year.

Each year, CML gives out three Stans Awards. The Institute's staff could nominate students and colleagues for the prices of best student thesis, best PhD paper and best outreach from the past year. Jury members Jan Willem Erisman and Nicole de Voogd made the final decision.

Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and the Centre for Human Drug Research (CHDR) are taking part in the phase 2 clinical trial of Janssen Vaccines’ candidate coronavirus vaccine. The vaccine will be tested on 45 test participants in Leiden from 14 September onwards.

Research is at the heart of a solid security policy. That’s why researchers from Leiden are analysing the motives of radicalised people and the biggest risks surrounding digital activity. Read more about their work in the research dossier ‘Security and Threat’.

Funded by a ZonMw grant, the LUMC and the Health Campus The Hague will be working with headache patients on research into the use of an electronic headache diary. This resource can help patients gain a better understanding of their migraine attacks and, together with the physician, produce the best…

The winner of the Africa Thesis Award 2022 is Robert Okello for his thesis on rural women’s legal empowerment through digital technology in Northern Uganda. Robert did his Master in Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

A large table with tablecloth, a sitting area with soft lighting. A new meeting place in Plexus for students from a migrant background, opened on 6 October. It's has a homely atmosphere, which is just what these students are looking for.

Researchers in Bilthoven, The Netherlands, have recently unraveled the defense against whooping cough bacteria in unprecedented detail. The outcome of the project, conducted at Intravacc (Institute for Translational Vaccinology) in Bilthoven, provides opportunities for a new approach in the development…

In 1800, French explorer Nicolas Baudin led an important scientific expedition to Tenerife, Mauritius, Australia, Timor and South Africa. He returned with hundreds of exotic bird species. PhD candidate Justin Jansen reconstructed this ‘catch’ in a weighty book and talked to us about the wonderful fi…

Matthias Barz has been appointed full Professor of Biotherapeutics Delivery at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR).

Since 1 October 2022, Sarah Nelson is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for History. Below she introduces herself.

On Wednesday 11 October 2017 the African Studies Centre Leiden and the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society are organizing a workshop.

Three of our researchers have been awarded a certificate for receiving enough downloads to be in the top 10% of papers in 2022

Offshore wind farms host more soil animals per square meter than the North Sea floor, discovered Leiden researchers. After 25 years, hundred times more animals and a doubling of the number of different species could live on the foundations of wind turbines. The researchers published their findings in…

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has made a subsidy of 17 million euros available to further develop a Netherlands network for electron microscopy (NEMI). The network comprises five UMCs and eight universities, with Utrecht in the coordinating role. From Leiden, the Institute…

Lack of manliness, avaricious or too imaginative. These are just a few of the accusations with which British scientists discredited each other over a hundred years ago. PhD candidate Léjon Saarloos researched British scientists around the year 1900 and their idea of what makes a good - and therefore…

An organized overview of the current global fungal diversity, that is what Irene Martorelli and colleagues try to achieve with the new MycoDiversity Database (MDDB) she builds in collaboration with Naturalis Biodiversity Center. The new database will make it easier and quicker to observe which fungi…

The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (RMO) was due to open its doors to the small photography exhibit Frank Scholten: Archaeology and Tourism in the ‘Holy Land’ in April. Since the organisers, Leiden University and the RMO, have had to temporarily close, researchers Karène Sanchez and Sary Zananiri would like…

It came as a shock to many people: one million plant and animal species are threatened to become extinct. But this number isn’t the most relevant aspect, argue Alexander van Oudenhoven, Koos Biesmeijer and three other experts in Dutch newspaper Trouw. ‘It is more important to realise that the fate of…

The aim of Plan S – open access in science – is quite right, says the League of European Research Universities (LERU), of which Leiden University is a member. But the proposed implementation plan will cause too much difficulty for researchers and institutes. LERU has therefore come up with ten recommendations…

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…

Leiden University Libraries has made a large number of unofficial poetry journals from China accessible online in its Digital Collections. This opens up thousands of pages from an internationally unique collection of unofficial Chinese poetry for teaching, research, and the general public, including…

Today marks the launch of the LDE Bachelor Honours Programme Sustainability. Students from Leiden University, TU Delft and Erasmus University will work together on concrete sustainability issues of organisations. Interest in the new programme turned out to be overwhelming. Two lecturers involved share…

Cars, wind turbines, solar panels and smartphones. ‘Critical’ raw materials like platinum or cobalt are used in all the technologies that are essential for the energy and digital transition. But we should be aware of the scarceness of these materials, a new campaign warns.

Over 170 SUNRISE’s stakeholders gathered on June 17-18 at the Academy Palace of Brussels, in connection with the EU Sustainable Energy Week, as one of the Energy Days. Renewable energy experts from Academia, Industry and Policy addressed the current state of the initiative and its priority research…

This international conference, held in Leiden form 22 to 24 May 2017, focused on adat law in Indonesia a century after the Adat Law Foundation (Adatrechtstichting) was set up in Leiden by the famous professors Van Vollenhoven and Snouck Hurgronje. In the decades that followed the Adat Law Foundation…

Annemarie Samuels and Andrew Littlejohn, Assistant Professors at the Leiden Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, have both been awarded a Leiden University Fund research grant. Samuels will use the grant to kickstart a multi-sited ethnographic study of care at the end of life.…

A rapid increase in the demand for construction sand is driving shortages and inequality around the world. Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences at Leiden University have mapped the growing need for sand, as well as the bottlenecks and possible solutions. They have published their…

By Royal Decree, Mirjam Sombroek van Doorm was appointed as a member of the Health Council of the Netherlands as of 1 January 2024. She has joined the standing committee for Ethics and Law as well as the temporary Brain Injury through Sports Committee. The Health Council of the Netherlands is an independent…

In zijn oratie bepleit Joachim Koops dat de toekomst van Security and Global Affairs ligt in onderzoek, onderwijs en academisch bestuur.

To generate renewable energy takes more space than one might think. New research by environmental scientist Paul Behrens and master's student John van Zalk shows how much space is needed for nine specific types of energy. Biomass, hydro and wind, while vital, take up the most space. Natural gas and…

Former dean and physicist Frans Saris writes in his new book ‘Darwin’s combination lock’ how our culture enabled us to dominate nature and about the corresponding responsibilities. Together with Joris Berkhout he will talk about his book during the This Week’s Discoveries on 27 February.

Three cybersecurity consortia that Leiden University is part of have been awarded subsidies of over a million euros by NWO. Leiden is the coordinator for two of the projects.

The war in Ukraine has lasted almost two weeks now. What does Putin expect to achieve with his invasion and how big is the chance that the West will get involved? We phoned André Gerrits, professor and expert on Russia.

‘Jelena Prokic, university lecturer and researcher at the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities, will be preparing students for the challenges and opportunities of the digital world. In September, six modules will start on subjects such as statistics and digitally searching through texts.…

The Confederation of Laboratories of Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe (CLAIRE), Europe’s grassroots organisation of scientists and experts in Artificial Intelligence, announces the opening of administrative offices across Europe.

The energy transition is already a huge challenge for society, but sustainable use of resources is even more complicated. Yet it is at least as urgent. Ester van der Voet has been working on it for decades, for example within the United Nations. Since February, she is a professor at the Centre for Environmental…

Chinese and Leiden scientists came together in Leiden to study the intricacies of modern visual techniques.

Take a walk through any city, and you are likely to come across a brightly coloured mural. Although these paintings often seem to serve solely as a backdrop for Instagram snapshots, art history professor Minna Valjakka says there are rich traditions and intricate histories that uncover more critical…

In an open letter, 450 leading European researchers from 33 countries have urged European and national governments to strongly cooperate on artificial intelligence , regardless of the Brexit. Leiden professor Holger Hoos is one of the initiators.

As a doctor, coming to a decision together with a patient: how do you do that in the best possible way? Researchers Geert Warnar and Roosmaryn Pilgram, who jointly teach a course within the MA in Dutch Studies, are entering into a virtual collaboration with the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa to find the…