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

‘De aanpak van microplastics zit vol haken en ogen’

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

The environmental policy (Duurzaamheidsbeleidplan) of Leiden University insisted on starting a Green Office to expand and promote sustainability within Leiden University. This plan has now become reality as we have started with several activities and projects. To make people understand what a Green…

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…

The Stans Prize is a yearly student incentive award for the best thesis, article or report produced by a CML student. Jim van Ruijven wrote his report for his bachelor study in Sustainable Molecular Science and Technology.

Having to remind users of the café at the University Sports Centre (USC) about the 1.5 metre rule is something that can be quite difficult for the students who work there. Even more so since the restrictions on outdoor sports have been lifted. The students are now taking a course to show them how it's…

After a detour via the ANWB in Munich, alumna Manon Schouten works as a history teacher at two schools. ‘It's so rewarding to see the material resonate with students.’

The Horizon programme 'Eurasian Empires: integration processes and identity formations' started September 1st 2014. The six PhD students and two Postdocs introduce themselves.

Doing your taxes, Netflixing or driving a car: more and more daily activities are supported by computer applications. It is challenging and expensive to test software thoroughly, leading to errors in most applications. PhD candidate Benjamin Lion made a mathematical framework to deal with this problem.…

Silver jewellery, sculptures made of cork and intriguing photos of psychiatrists' treatment rooms. Staff at Leiden University exhibit their artworks in the Old Library. The summer exhibition can be viewed until 12 August.

Chemist Roxanne Kieltyka has received an ERC Starting Grant of 2 million euros. In her lab, she creates gels that mimic the instructive material that supports cells in our body. With the grant, she aims to make these gels stiff and tough, and to create a bio-printed miniature heart ventricle.

PhD candidate Ludwig Hoffmann will spend two years at Harvard University in the US thanks to a Rubicon grant he won on April 11. Using theoretical models he studies biological tissues, for example during morphogenesis. This is the process that causes tissue or organisms to develop their shape. ‘This…

Former student of Leiden University professor Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, Cyprus-born ACPA researcher Yannis Kyriakides, currently developing his PhD dissertation under the supervision of Professor Frans de Ruiter and docARTES PhD supervisor/ORCiM research fellow Dr. Bob…

For all the artworks that Riccardo Giacconi creates, he begins by conducting extensive research. He discovered three stories about rebellious characters that were transmitted through unofficial channels: as characters in puppet shows or in folk tales. He translated the three stories into three cycles…

From a catastrophic fire to a flood that engulfs the earth. Mineke Schipper, Professor Emeritus of Literary Studies, has collected myths from the four corners of the earth about the end of humanity. These have inspired 30 striking paintings by Japanese artist Yuriko Yamaguchi. The Dutch premiere of…

On a wintry Wednesday evening, big issues were the topic of conversation at Grand Café de Burcht. Young Academy Leiden (YAL) was holding a round table: Next444. Now the 444th anniversary of Leiden University is over, it’s time to look once again to the future. What issues will we be facing over the…

In 2015, Jorryt Matthee thought he discovered an extremely distant galaxy called CR7, which lacked elements heavier than helium. Three years later, he shows with measurements using the ALMA telescope that the galaxy does have carbon after all, and even in normal concentrations. The American Astronomical…

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.

The guardian of our genome, the protein MutS, scans the DNA for spelling errors and makes sure they are corrected. An essential process for our health. Researchers at Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) have discovered precisely how this protein works by making MutS visible with cryo-electron microscopy.…

Mum works in healthcare, dad in engineering and everyone is straight: many textbooks still show men and women in stereotypical roles, PhD candidate Tessa van de Rozenberg has discovered. She also found that children’s views on these topics often closely resemble those of their parents.

Since February 1, 2015, Adriejan van Veen is working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for History. Here, he is preparing a NWO grant proposal on local experiments with candidate selection in British and Dutch politics in the nineteenth century.

Leiden University is the highest scoring comprehensive university in the biannual valorisation ranking produced by Elsevier and Science Works. They calculate which Dutch universities best exploit their scientific capital, in economic terms and in terms of societal impact. .

PhD student Esmee Koedoot studied the underlying processes responsible for metastases in a dangerous type of breast cancer. She hopes to find new possibilities to fight the disease. In December 2019 she obtained her doctorate cum laude.

Specific fatty acid-sugar molecules allow leprosy bacteria, among others, to hide from our immune system. How exactly is not entirely clear. Hessel van Dijk, who received his PhD on 13 October, replicated the molecules, helping to solve a piece of the puzzle. Van Dijk's dissertation is titled: Synthesis…

Pharmacometrist Bas Goulooze has won the prestigious Lewis Sheiner Student Session award. He received the prize of 300 euros at the annual conference of the Population Approach Group Europe (PAGE) in Stockholm, where he presented his research for 800 people.

Joanne Liu, International President of Médecins Sans Frontières, is the Cleveringa professor for the 2016-2017 academic year. She will deliver the annual Cleveringa lecture on 25 November.The day before this she will give an extra lecture for students and staff on Ebola.

If you end up in prison somewhere in the world, the chances are you won’t be allowed to vote. If it were up to researchers Tom Theuns and Andrei Poama, rather than disenfranchise felons, we would oblige them to vote. That would be a better way to express democratic values.

On 27 June 2017, Daniel Dimov will defend his PhD dissertation “Crowdsourced Online Dispute Resolution”. The defence will commence at 16.15 hrs, in the Academy Building of Leiden University, Rapenburg 73. The supervisors are Professor H.J. van den Herik and Professor A.R. Lodder.

Leiden University College The Hague received the 'Top rated Programme' seal from the Keuzegids Universiteiten 2021 (Dutch University Guide). It is the eighth consecutive time the Liberal Arts & Sciences programme focusing on Global Challenges is awarded the honorary seal.

Feeling nostalgic, Professor in Public Administration Science Bernard Steunenberg explains how some years ago he would occasionally show a TV broadcast to his students, first removing the videotape from its big box and putting it in a VHS player. Today, a student from Maastricht, sitting in the train…

The idea that socially anxious people avoid eye contact because they are not interested in other people needs to be changed. They take their information from other physical sources, such as people's hands. This is the finding of Leiden psychologist Mariska Kret whose research has been published in…

What did plays look like in the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth centuries? With the new OverActing theatre festival, university lecturer Jed Wentz is trying to get closer to an answer to that question.

Leiden University College The Hague received the 'Top rated Programme' seal from the Keuzegids Universiteiten 2023 (Dutch University Guide). It is the tenth consecutive time the Liberal Arts & Sciences programme focusing on Global Challenges is awarded the honorary seal.

Brothers and sisters within a family, with the same parents, experience their upbringing differently. As well as the impact of their own negative experiences, the way siblings experience their upbringing also plays an important role in anxiety and depression. This is the conclusion reached by Marie-Louise…

The recently promoted Hao Wang from the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science teaches computer programmes how to solve real-world problems. His goal is to make the process of problem-solving more efficient. On 1 November, he obtained his doctorate with the predicate cum laude. ‘I hope to solve…

According to Russian propaganda Ukrainians are Nazis and people from the West are Satanists. Egbert Fortuin thinks we should take this propaganda seriously.

When focussing attention, the neurotransmitters noradrenaline and acetylcholine play an important role. This new finding made by psychologist Stephen Brown provides clues for further research on how focussed attention comes about. Dissertation defence on 16 June.

While Old Germanic studies might seem dated and, regrettably, occupies a less than secure position in various academic institutions, exciting new research presented by young researchers shows that the field is still vibrant and may have a bright future. On Thursday, the 7th of April, the ‘Junius Symposium…

KNAW has elected eighteen new members, including two professors at Leiden University and one who studied and obtained his PhD in Leiden. The New Academy members will be installed at a later date this year.

South African poet Antjie Krog will be the writer in residence at Leiden University in autumn 2021. Krog is famous for her poetry collections and books, which are often inspired by the history of South Africa. In her role as writer in residence, she will give the annual Albert Verwey Lecture and a series…

The Faculty of Archaeology is running a funding scheme to assist small-scale projects that contribute to diversifying archaeological practice in all domains, including classrooms, laboratories, museums, and the field. We discuss the grant with two representatives from the Diversity Committee: Tuna Kalaycı…

Earlier this year, the public voted environmental scientist Paul Behrens Discoverer of the Year 2018. Behrens is an interdisciplinary scientist who wants to understand our impact on the planet. ‘Unfortunately, we are not doing enough. Huge changes are underway and we’re running out of time to avoid…

Less meat and dairy means more space for nature, leisure, climate, biodiversity, more justice, and it's good news for the economy. That's according to the thought experiment conducted by Strootman Landscape Architects and Leiden environmental scientists. They presented their findings on 11 April.

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,…

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.…

Leiden University has become more sustainable in the past few years, but it could do better, particularly in the area of teaching and research. A student and staff workgroup is preparing a new Sustainability Vision 2030. Programme Manager Daphne van den Berg explains how this is taking shape and where…

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 Helias Udo De Haes and Gjalt Huppes made the final decision.

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?