Starting your PhD during two major crisis in your country; it happened to Kamaran Palani, PhD student at the Dual PhD Centre and ISGA who lives in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. In spite of the difficulties in his county, Palani (34) stuck to his PhD-research about the fluidity…

NWO has awarded eleven Leiden researchers a Vidi grant of 800,000 euros. The research subjects range from Cicero and muscle dystrophy to the archaeology of bogs.

The Dick Stufkens Prijs for the best PhD thesis of the Holland Research School of Molecular Chemistry (HRSMC) has been awarded to Dr Tatu S. Kumpulainen for his thesis “Proton-Transfer Reactions in ‘Super’ Photoacids and Supramolecular Assemblies”. It describes his innovative research into methods for…

Five Leiden researchers have been awarded a Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant of up to two million euros will enable them to continue and expand their scientific research.

What do people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama have in common? They have mastered the art of public speaking. There are plenty of books on learning this skill, but one aspect of rhetoric remains underexposed in science: how do you make sure the audience remembers your message? Martijn Wackers…

How do you offer proper education in times of corona? Annebeth Simonsz (Educational Advice and Quality Assurance) and Anna Benjamins (ECOLe) work closely together to support lecturers in hybrid and online education. They are happy to share with the faculty, lecturers’ creative solutions for the new…

Since 2017 guest researcher Gerrit de Wit has been working together with Congolese linguists and the Boa community to develop the oral Boa language into a written one. He tells us about 2 unique projects, which are steadily unearthing and describing the structure of a new language.

On 23 March a Sonology concert took place in the Arnold Schönbergzaal at the Royal Conservatoire, dedicated to Gabriel Paiuk’s The Construction of an Imaginary Acoustic Space, a composition for ensemble and electronics performed by New European Ensemble.

Graphene, the ultra-thin wonder material just a single carbon atom in thickness, holds the promise of such impressive applications as wear-resistant, friction-free coatings. But first manufacturers have to be able to produce large sheets of graphene under precisely controlled conditions. Dirk van Baarle…

Lecturers had a week to convert their courses to online teaching. An enormous challenge because remote teaching definitely wasn’t commonplace at Leiden University, and some lecturers have to share their ‘lecture hall’ with their children or partners. Alexander Pleijter, a lecturer in Journalism and…

The former Volvo director travelled from Sweden to Leiden to give a lecture to the master’s students of the Leiden Leadership Programme. Among other things, Peter Hertinge speaks about the ‘why’ of leadership: ‘You have an important position that affects other people’s lives.’

Economic anthropologist Erik Bähre does research on the morality of insurance. In his latest ethnography ‘Ironies of Solidarity’ Bähre explores how the South African insurance market expanded.

Since January the Dutch public have been able to follow a free course on artificial intelligence (AI) and its far-reaching impact on our lives. Leiden scientists Marlies van Eck and Valerie Frissen, from the Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of the Law at Leiden's Law Faculty, are part of the…

Not only dark matter, but also ordinary matter and dark energy are tracked in the largest ever cosmological computer simulation ever. In the FLAMINGO simulations, you can see virtual galaxies and clusters of galaxies emerging over the course of billions of years. This is no easy task: with more than…

A common assumption in chemistry is that the coordination number of a catalyst's surface determines the reactivity of the reaction it catalyses. Strikingly, Leiden chemists have now proven that this is not true for nature’s most simple chemical reaction: the dissociation of hydrogen. The researchers…

‘It became very clear that Brazilian legislative policy was frail, obsolete and unreliable,’ says Felipe de Paula. He will defend his dissertation on the limits and possibilities of legislative policy in Brazil on Tuesday 27 March 2018.

Practicum Artium is a joint programme by Leiden University and the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) that offers students the opportunity to develop their artistic skills. Due to the pandemic, this year’s exhibition will take place online so we asked a few of these talented students about their experience…

For the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, women students and researchers from physics talk about what inspires them about their work. From quantum to cosmology and biophysics, their curiosity about how nature works is what connects these women. What do these 5 scientists want to share…

Electrical signals travel like a wave through our neural pathways. The mathematical models for these movements could not yet properly describe all the biological properties of the nerves. PhD student Willem Schouten-Straatman changed this by improving the existing models. ‘I hope that one day we will…

An international collaboration, including Leiden physicist and computer scientist Vedran Dunjko, showed that quantum technology can speed-up the learning process of artificial intelligence (AI). To prove this, the physicists and computer scientists used a quantum processor for single photons. Their…

The European Research Council has awarded a Starting Grant to five early career scientists from Leiden University. They received funding up to 1.5 million euros to further expand on their research subject.

Following the retirement of Roswitha Manning, a vacancy arose at Faculty of Archaeology for the role of Research Policy Advisor. We found one in the person of Jimmy Mans, a well known face for longer-serving Faculty staff. In this interview we reconnect with Jimmy, who calls himself ‘a homegrown Leiden…

Seven researchers from Leiden University have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant. This will enable them to start their own project, build their research team and put their best ideas into action.

How can you solve equations that define not ‘just’ curves, but also two-dimension surfaces or even higher-dimensional objects? That’s the big question that mathematician Martin Bright and his team will be trying to answer. They’ve received a NWO Science-XL grant of 2.8 million euros.

The 22nd of march 2023, political scientist Lukas Spielberger will defend his dissertation ‘Lessons from Europe for the study of international bank cooperation’. He wrote his thesis about the cooperation of central banks during international financial crises: ‘central banks pay more attention to shared…

In 2018, astronomer Jorryt Matthee won the C.J. Kok Jury Prize for the best dissertation of the Faculty of Science. He succeeded in finding a number of rare galaxies from the early Universe. One of them received the same initials as football player Cristiano Ronaldo: CR7.

How do people vote? How rational are voting choices? How much do external factor weigh in? In this article social scientis provide some background.

On 13 January 2020, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named 95 members ACM Fellows who have demonstrated excellence across many disciplines of computing. Among the new ACM Fellows is Professor Holger Hoos of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, who was specifically selected…

Submissions are sought for a special issue with Frontiers in Political Science that explores the conceptual and practical aspects of a ‘just’ energy transition both within and beyond Europe. In particular, contributions to the theoretical and interdisciplinary foundations of just transitions, as well…

With their thesis research, Master’s students from Leiden, Rotterdam and Delft help solve real-world problems in The Hague Southwest. That is the aim of the Thesis Project. We spoke to two students who are participating in the project.

Using mathematics as a weapon against desertification. With this subject, Robbin Bastiaansen managed to win the C.J. Kok Jury Prize 2019, the prize for the best dissertation of the Faculty of Science that year. Nine months later, we speak to him about this prize. How does he look back on it?

The New Scientist magazine has selected two young Leiden scientists for its Top 25 Young Talents in the Netherlands and Flanders: historian Karwan Fatah-Black and neuropsychologist Mariska Kret. Who will be the winner? You can vote for one of them!

A new and recently started Getty Foundation project, Material Entanglements in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond, aims to forge connections among Mediterranean and Eastern scholars who rarely come into contact with one another’s work. Ann Brysbaert is one of the 25 invited specialists investigating…

How can ‘Big Data’ be used in development and humanitarian aid, and what are the risks? Leiden University and the United Nation’s Global Pulse are organising an international expert meeting in The Hague on 23 October.

The Dick Stufkens Prize 2019 for the best PhD thesis of the Holland Research School of Molecular Chemistry (HRSMC) will be awarded to Thom Hersbach. In his thesis, Hersbach presents a thorough analysis of cathodic corrosion. His comprehensive research, on which he graduated with the distinction cum…

Bringing the community together, doing up the community centre or researching how to make gardens greener. Students now have a base in Leiden-Noord where they can work with local residents and partner organisations to make the city a better place to live. It was the official opening of ‘Learning with…

The Dick Stufkens Prijs 2010 is awarded to Dr. Niels Elders. The prize is given by the Holland Research School of Molecular Chemistry for his Ph.D. thesis “Multicomponent Approaches to Molecular Diversity & Complexity”, in which he describes the development of various new multi-component synthetic procedures…

Ian Simpson is a relatively new face at the Faculty of Archaeology. Starting as an assistant professor in the Heritage and Society department in 2018, he is one of the faculty’s members in critical heritage studies and looks both at the past as well as the future. ‘I study how heritage can be employed…

The world is autocratising. In 2022, a record number of states across all continents, including Europe, was shifting towards autocracy. But against theoretical expectations and common sense, autocratising leaders – known for their nationalist agendas and human rights violations – do not always restrict…

Last year around 2,000 international students started a master’s degree at Leiden University. To make this possible, there are various grants that these students can apply for. One such grant is the LExS: the Leiden University Excellence Scholarship Programme. Three LExS students tell us about their…

LUCL is pleased to announce that Professor Johan Rooryck has been awarded both an NWO Horizon Grant for his project entitled 'Knowledge and culture', and an NWO Vrije Competitie Grant for his project entitled 'Lend me your ears: the grammar of (un)transferable possession' for a total of €2.75m.

At the beginning of the corona pandemic, our Faculty appointed student mentors to guide first-year and international students. What drives these mentors, and what is it like to be back at the Faculty again? Mireia and Marten tell us all about it.

Arbeidsuitbuiting van migranten wordt als een vorm van het strafrechtelijke delict mensenhandel beschouwd. De rechtspositie van de slachtoffers is mede daardoor ondergeschikt aan de strafrechtelijke procedure. Dat kan en moet anders, stelt Gerrie Lodder in haar proefschrift. Promotie op 21 april 202…

‘Universities are only the trustees of a complex intellectual heritage that they themselves did not create,’ said Stefan Collini, professor in Cambridge, at the opening of the academic year of Leiden University. He was addressing the question: Who does the university belong to?

The channel through which two cell components exchange material appears to form at the edge of their contact surface, and not in the middle. This was discovered by the Leiden physical chemists Jelger Risselada and Edgar Blokhuis together with researchers from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.…

At the New Year’s reception of the Faculty of Science on 6 January, it was announced that Annelien Zweemer, Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research, has been awarded the ‘Discoverer of the Year 2014’ prize. Matteo Brogi, Leiden Observatory, wrote the best dissertation in 2014 and Dennis Claessen, Institute…

The Dick Stufkens Prize 2017 for the best PhD thesis of the Holland Research School of Molecular Chemistry (HRSMC) is awarded to Dr Sven Askes. In his thesis

Electrons in graphene behave like light particles; they have no mass and can penetrate everything: very useful if you dream about nano-electronics. But you do have to channel them. Carlo Beenakker will be researching how. He has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant of 1.5 million euro to carry out this…

The 2023 Digital Humanities Pilot Project Symposium and Digital Winter School took place, 30 Jan – 2 Feb 2023.

Environmental scientists Stefano Cucurachi and Paul Behrens and astronomer Jorryt Matthee have received prizes during the New Year's reception of the Faculty of Science on Tuesday 8 January. In addition, Kavli Prize winner Ewine van Dishoeck announced a new award.