The acquittal of Richard de Mos and his fellow party member has caused quite a stir in the Netherlands. Can De Mos simply return to local politics now? And has the issue finally been settled?

On 25-26 October 2022, a select group of high-level participants gathered in Leiden to discuss research on Libya’s national reconciliation and access to justice, and to explore implications for policy and law.

Neilabh Sinha was awarded a subsidy from NWO Promoties in de Geesteswetenschappen and started as a PhD candidate at the Institute for History in September. He introduces himself.

Would you like to do collection-oriented research, but do not have sufficient resources? Every year, the Museums, Collections and Society (MCS) research group makes several research scholarships available for this purpose. Researchers Elizabeth den Hartog and Marika Keblusek previously received an MCS…

In the course of 2020 the Faculty of Archaeology was bolstered by some new staff members. Due to the coronavirus situation, sadly, this went for a large part unnoticed. In a series of interviews we are catching up, giving the floor to our new colleagues. We give the floor to Dr Martin Berger, who joined…

Starting 1 January 2023, Matthias Haentjens has been appointed as Professor of Civil Law at Leiden University. His expertise lies in the field of property law, insolvency law, and private international law.

Spitting cobra venom composition has been influenced by defensive behaviour according to an international research team. This may have originated from the arrival of human ancestors. Students at the Institute of Biology Leiden made an important contribution to the study. Publication in Science on 22…

Recently, archaeologist Dr Wei Chu received a grant from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung for an excavation in the Carpathian Mountains. Originally planning for an excavation in Ukraine, his plans were disrupted by the war. ‘We had to change plans really quickly.’

Paul Brakefield, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the Institute of Biology in Leiden (IBL) has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for his research. He will receive 2.5 million euro to develop his research programme over a period of five years.

On Wednesday 26 June, Marieke Liem, Associate Professor Physical Violence and Public Order at Leiden University’s Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), appeared on both Dutch radio programme ‘Nieuws & CO’ and the eight o’clock television news (NOS) to discuss life imprisonment.

On 24 April it was announced that, following his farewell, archaeologist Professor Maarten Jansen was appointed Knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion. Unfortunately, due to the corona pandemic the actual ceremony will have to wait.

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…

Leiden researchers Reinout Vriesendorp, Jessie Pool, and Harold Koster from the Department Corporate Law and Jan Adriaanse and Marc Broekema from the Department Business Studies are about to start a collaboration with Groningen University. The WODC (the knowledge centre in the field of the Dutch Ministry…

The D66 proposed bill on Ending Life with Dignity is inadequately substantiated and contains contradictions. This is the view expressed by Professor of Political Philosophy Paul Nieuwenburg in his inaugural lecture on 17 March.

A thousand-year-old tooth has provided genetic evidence that the so-called

What is the effect of training children to exercise self-control? Niko Steinbeis has been awarded a major European subsidy to find the answer to this question. The innovative aspects of this research are the target group, an individual approach to the training and examining the child brain the scann…

A team of astronomers of Leiden University and the University of Texas (Austin, United States) has discovered a new way to map distant galaxies. They did so by observing the fingerprint of oxygen in a distant galaxy, something that is usually not possible from Earth. The researchers will publish their…

Governance of crime and social disorder debate on Pacifying Police Unit (UPP) winning lot! In the group presentation in the CSM-elective ‘governance of crime and social disorder’ of teacher Elke Devroe CSM students battled again for the winning lot, namely this blog published in the Leiden University…

Introducing prof. Scott Nelson, the Legum Professor of the Social Sciences at William and Mary, and on the spring exchange at the University of Leiden.

In the eighties the Umhlatuzana rock shelter in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa, was excavated. Results from this excavation led to an understanding when the Later Stone Age started in this area. This archaeological period is often associated with the structural presence of modern human behavior. Now a…

Camilo Erlichman recently joined the Institute for History as a lecturer in International Relations. He introduces himself.

A European team of astronomers has discovered the largest stellar black hole in the Milky Way. It is more than thirty times as massive as our sun and is located in the constellation of Aquila, about two thousand light-years from Earth. The astronomers stumbled upon the black hole by chance while preparing…

For several months now, in addition to her responsibilities as Institute Manager for the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA), Rosalien van der Poel has been fulfilling a different role: that of confidential adviser to doctoral candidates. ‘It’s an honour to be able to do this work,’ Rosalien…

Peter Scholten is one of the four professors that were officially appointed as Leiden-Delft-Erasmus professor last week. Apart from his appointment at the Erasmus University, he has now also been appointed at FGGA. We asked Scholten five questions about his double appointment and the collaboration between…

‘The Netherlands’ response to coronavirus is inconsistent.’ These are the words of Leiden political scientist Arjen Boin, an expert in crisis management. Vulnerable groups such as the elderly need more personalised advice. ‘It would be better to cancel bridge tournaments than football games.’

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, Madiba, honorary doctor of Leiden university, was one of the iconic politicians of the late twentieth century. Mandela has died at the age of 95. Analysis by Robert Ross, Professor in African history.

The significance of indigenous Amerindian knowledge has been marginalised in the history of the colonisation of the Americas. Wrongly, according to research by Leiden archaeologists. Indigenous knowledge and infrastructure were essential for the 'success' of the Spanish colonisers. Publication in the…

The ancient Egyptians knew about marks as well as script. The New Empire (ca. 1550-1070 BC) in particular provides a rich harvest. The script has now been deciphered, but the same does not apply to the system of marks used at the time. Egyptologist Ben Haring has been awarded a subsidy by NWO from the…

The new Erfgoed Gezocht/Heritage Quest website means you can play armchair detective and hunt for undiscovered burial mounds in the Veluwe. This will help stop them being destroyed by construction projects. The website is the initiative of the Leiden University Faculty of Archaeology in collaboration…

The oldest forms of literature and law originate from Mesopotamia (3000 BC until AD 70), as do important discoveries in science and technology. All these developments were recorded in cuneiform texts on clay tablets. There is still a lot to learn from the study of cuneiform texts, says Professor of…

Density functional theory (DFT) with so-called semi-local exchange has been remarkable accurate for some dissociative chemisorption reactions on metals, but it has notoriously failed for others. A team of researchers from the University of California at Irvine and the Leiden Institute of Chemistry have…

Two Vidi subsidies for Faculty of Archaeology.

Arco Timmermans, Professor by special appointment Public Affairs, discusses the lobby that is just getting under way and is aimed at the political parties' manifestos for the upcoming election in March 2021.

Fear and hatred of Muslims are rising rapidly to the surface in the United Kingdom, Assistant Professor Tahir Abbas writes in his new book. British politicians and journalists play an insidious role in this, he says.

On November 22 in Arusha, Tanzania, the Council of Ministers of the East African Community (EASC) endorsed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as its seventh Partner State. This meeting, chaired by Kenya’s EAC Affairs and Regional Development Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed, represents one of the…

Former masterstudent Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences Maddalena Centanni will be awarded the 2020 Arenberg Coimbra Prize for Erasmus Students. Centanni spent her six month Erasmus exchange at Uppsala Universiy in Sweden where she looked for ways to improve anti-cancer drug dosing.

Sjaak Neefjes, Professor of Chemical Immunology at Leiden University, will receive the NWO Spinoza Prize this year. The Spinoza Committee called Neefjes an ‘exceptional researcher whose intelligence is matched by his boldness’. He will use the 2.5 million euro prize to pursue his research into cancer…

It is still unclear how the Neanderthals died out. For long, one theory seemed most likely: the emergence of the highly intelligent Homo sapiens, or modern humans. This competition hypothesis is no longer the dominant theory among scientists, research among archaeologists and anthropologists has shown.…

For already two years, Vincent Niochet has been affiliated with the Leiden Faculty of Archaeology as an external PhD candidate. Now, he has been awarded an NWO PhDs in the Humanities grant, allowing him to continue his research as a paid PhD staff member. ‘The past two years have been quite challenging,…

Soil ecologist Emilia Hannula has been awarded a Vidi grant by NWO to examine how soil could become a promising ally in combating climate change and improving biodiversity. ‘Soil creatures might be invisible’, she says, ‘but they play a huge role in creating a healthy environment.’

The ancient Roman province of Lusitania, more or less contemporary Portugal, has been the focus of a joint research project by Leiden University, Évora University and the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. The research project has now been provided with a new boost by a large Regato grant managed…

Tijdens het symposium ‘Transdisciplinary Study of Just Public Algorithmic Systems’, op vrijdag 24 maart in Den Haag, staat onderzoek naar het gebruik van algoritmische systemen in de publieke sector centraal. Een actueel onderwerp dat de laatste tijd veel in de belangstelling staat. Vijf vragen over…

Almost fifty scientists and twenty companies will be working on developing new antibiotics and alternatives for antibiotics use. NWO and the Ministry of Health, Wellbeing and Sport will together invest close to seven million euros in this research. Scientists from Leiden University and LUMC will be…

Leiden University would like to express our sincere sympathy to students and staff who have been affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. On Tuesday 22 March there is a meeting for Japanese students and staff. Mari Hosho, an exchange student from Japan, studying psychology at Leiden University,…

For the Dutch Safety Board (DSB), the investigation into the MH17 plane crash was unprecedented in scope. It wasn’t easy, but it provided valuable lessons for international disaster investigations, says Sanneke Kuipers, a crisis expert from the Institute of Security and Global Affairs.

Researchers at Leiden University led by Mario van der Stelt (Leiden Institute for Chemistry) have set ‘gold standards’ for developing new painkillers based on the medicinal effects of cannabis. Publication in Nature Communications.

Professor Jasper Knoester has been appointed Dean of the Faculty of Science at Leiden University. He will take up the role on 1 January 2022. Knoester is currently Dean of the Faculty of Science & Engineering at the University of Groningen. He succeeds Paul Wouters (Dean of the Faculty of Social and…

Large-scale forest fires started by prehistoric hunter-gatherers are probably the reason why Europe is not more densely forested. This is the finding of an international team, including climate researcher Professor Jed Kaplan of the University of Lausanne and archaeologist Professor Jan Kolen of Leiden…

Astronomers at Leiden University have discovered the first planets using a new instrument: the planet hunter MASCARA. This instrument, developed at Leiden Observatory, looks specifically for planet transitions around the brightest stars in the sky, which surprisingly enough have so far have hardly been…

Just as some people today dislike English influences on the Dutch language, in early modern times people also criticised the Frenchification of Dutch. But to what extent did French actually leave its mark in our language? PhD student Brenda Assendelft made a surprising discovery. PhD defence 24 May.