Promotor: M. de Jong, Co-Promotor: Samtleben

Nicolaas Bloembergen, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1981, passed away on 5 September in Tucson, Arizona. Bloembergen obtained his PhD on nuclear spin resonance in 1948 at Leiden University. Some articles about his life.

Alanna O'Malley has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to the United States from August 2017 to February 2018.

A high-ranking delegation from China visited Leiden on 6 November. The party of some 25 officials from the CPPCC – a Chinese advisory body comparable with the Dutch Senate - visited the Leiden Observatory, the Hortus Botanicus and the Asian Library.

Social science research helps us understand human behaviour and social structures. These are determined by various factors, which makes the research complex and increases the likelihood of drawing the wrong conclusions. The choice of research method and analysis is therefore extremely important. It…

Smart algorithms and powerful processors are just as essential for astronomy as big telescopes. Astronomers at Leiden University therefore constantly operate at the interface between astronomy and data science.

2017 was the Leiden Asia Year. Leiden has had connections with Asia and built up extensive knowledge of the continent over many centuries. This Leiden-Asia link has been in the spotlight for the past year.

Seminar

Lecture, Research Seminar Medieval and Early Modern History

Organized by the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, this programme enables students and professionals from all over the world to engage in discussions on the prospects and challenges of international criminal justice. Registration is now open!

One of the current research projects funded by the profile area Political Legitimacy is the research group From Disorder to Order: Conflict and the Resources of Legitimacy.

Isotopic insights on human diet from the later stone age to Neolithic in Northwest Africa, Morocco

The announcement by US President Donald Trump on 9 March in response to the invitation for a summit meeting with the North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un came as a big surprise. Media analyses vary from being very positive to almost cynically negative. However, according to researcher on Korea Koen…

Biological cells, the basic building blocks of all life forms, are surrounded by a lipid membrane. More than half of the membrane is occupied by membrane proteins, which can regulate the cell functionality through specific arrangements.

The Mycenaean civilization of ancient Greek times offers enormous potential for useful information: from innovative construction methods to ways of handling crisis situations as a society. Archaeologist Ann Brysbaert and her team analyse Mycenaean construction processes in the ERC Consolidator project…

During this course, specialists from Leiden University and beyond will provide instruction on issues of editing, paleography and conservation of oriental manuscripts. They will also speak about philology, literacy and orality and the transmission of knowledge in the Islamic manuscript culture, presenting…

Leiden University archaeologists are reconstructing houses from the Stone Age, using only resources available during that period. This method offers surprising insights into the ingenuity of our distant ancestors, and challenges existing archaeological views.

What’s at stake at the NATO summit in The Hague? Three academics from Leiden share their insights.

New Approaches to the Study of Textual Material from the Early Pharaonic to the Late Antique Period

Muslim scholars work in a long and rich tradition of knowledge-production in their own culture.

Promotor: J.N. Kok, Co-Promotor: A.J. Knobbe

Plants could be regarded as small chemical factories, which produce chemical substances via photosynthesis. If we can imitate photosynthesis in an artificial system, we can make clean fuels and materials out of sunlight and CO2. Huub de Groot is very close to designing a system of this kind.

On 8 February 2016, Dr Jennifer Tour Chayes, Director of Microsoft Research in Boston and New York, will be presented with a Leiden honorary doctorate by Frank den Hollander, Professor of Probability Theory and Statistical Physics.

Jeanine de Roy van Zuijdewijn, researcher and lecturer at ISGA, was interviewed by Deutsche Welle (DW) on the topic of career foreign fighters. This is also the topic of study in her latest publication.

The human trafficking of Eritrean refugees is a booming business, where money is made with smuggling people, but also using violence, hostage situations and even torture. Modern communication methods like money transfer via mobile phones play a vital role in this, conclude professor Mirjam van Reisen…

On 3 March 2016 the book “The European Convention on Human Rights: A Commentary” by prof. dr. W. A. Schabas has been selected by The Executive Council of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) to receive the 2015 Certificate of Merit for High Technical Craftsmanship and Utility to Practicing…

Cultural anthropologist Annet Pauwelussen has been invited by the University of Washington to participate in an expert meeting on 'Global Measures of the Contribution of Small-Scale Fisheries to Sustainable Development'. 29 - 30 May 2018, Seattle.

At the International Astronautical Congress in Washington DC last week, IIASL alumna Thea Dethlefsen (Denmark/Norway) won the I.H.Ph. Diederiks-Verschoor Award, given each year by the International Institute of Space Law (IISL) for the best paper by a young author.

President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze U.S. foreign aid is raising concerns about ceding global influence to China. The Associated Press explores how this shift could weaken America’s soft power, traditionally used to build alliances and counter adversaries.

Dr. Van Eijk will teach an advertising technology Masterclass for the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) next week. It is the fourth session of the FPF & Brussels Privacy Hub's Digital Data Flows series. Van Eijk will be teaching alongside Adam Towvim (Brandeis International Business School) and moderated…

What languages do you speak? According to Felienne Hermans, ‘Python’ could be an answer to this question. Hermans studies how people learn to program at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) of Leiden University. In an article of the NewScientist she explains why programming is similar…

Last week, Dr. Larik’s article entitled

First author Scott Waitukaitis and principal investigator Martin van Hecke have made the cover of Nature Physics with their publication on a newly discovered effect. The Elastic Leidenfrost effect explains why hydrogel balls jump around on a hot plate making high pitched sounds.

A Functional Analysis of Pre-Columbian Shell and Stone Artefacts from Anse à la Gourde and Morel, Guadeloupe, FWI

When a star gets too close to a supermassive black hole, it is torn apart by strong tidal forces in a tidal disruption event (TDE).

This film will be screened on Sunday, 5 April 2026 at 7:00 pm.

Patients share valuable advice and experiences with their peers in online patient discussion groups.

This thesis discusses the development in Proto–Indo–European, Latin and Romance of a word–formation pattern which the most adequate terminology in use dubs ‘verbal government compounds with a governing first member’; I use the shorthand ‘pickpocket compounds’.

The more opportunities a child has to learn and develop, the stronger his or her future position in society. Leiden University investigates how the brain picks up information, and how learning processes can be influenced positively.

JUSTREMIT is an ERC-funded project that brings together political theory, ethnography, and security studies in an interdisciplinary study of remittances and global justice.

We would all like to live in a world in which individuals feel safe, conflicts are resolved peacefully and the interests of future generations are taken into consideration. At Leiden University legal scholars investigate to what extent public international law meets the needs of a globalised society.…