The research of the Mathematical Institute is driven by the curiosity of its members and has many internal and external connections. It can be characterised as fundamental but with an open attitude towards applications.

Bribing a politician to gain influence or making sure friends end up in powerful positions: Brazilian energy companies use these power strategies daily.

Future technologies will drastically influence our daily lives. To what extent will that benefit us? The Brave New World future congress on 2 and 3 November in Leiden will reveal a range of different scenarios, some optimistic and some worrying.

Audrey Heijns explored the mindset of alumnus Henri Borel. From 1894 to 1916 he was an interpreter of Chinese and later a government officer for Chinese affairs in the Dutch East Indies. Borel's way of 'translating' Chinese was both unique and inimitable. PhD defence on 28 June.

The widespread idea that politics is mediatised needs to be revised. Although media attention heavily influences some political processes, this is not the case when it comes to lawmaking. Lotte Melenhorst, a political scientist at Leiden University, analysed three heavily covered legislative processes…

Leiden researchers Arko Ghosh and Enea Ceolini analysed the usage data of hundreds of mobile phones and discovered that our body has rhythms ranging between 7 and 52 days. These cycles influence how we behave. Their research resulted in an article in npj Digital Medicine journal, a Nature Portfolio…

How do opinions form and change in large groups of people? That's not just a sociological question, it's a mathematical one. PhD candidate Federico Capannoli studied opinion dynamics. He defended his thesis on November 19.

Fifteen hundred years ago, the north-west of what we now call China was a jumble of peoples. How did those Indians, Khotanese and Tocharians influence each other and each other's languages? Associate professor Michaël Peyrot has been awarded an ERC grant of almost two million euros to unravel this 'web…

Minority governments only become an option when attempts to form a government collapse. PhD candidate Corné Smit explored why such governments have become rare in the Netherlands and what advantages they might offer. ‘Broad majority coalitions often fail to make substantial progress on key issues.’

Medieval Memoria Research has published its final newsletter. This special MeMO-themed issue contains several articles about the MeMO project and its influence on the work of various scholars.

PhD candidates from Institutions for Conflict Resolution (COI), Eva Grosfeld (Leiden University), Marlou Overheul (Utrecht University), and Amarins Jansma (social psychology, Utrecht University), won the KLI seed money grant for research on the influence of politically sensitive cases on public trust…

On 14 and 15 September, the 'Lobbying the Courts' workshop took place in Paris. This was an interdisciplinary workshop in which researchers from different disciplines came together to brainstorm on whether, how, and when interest groups focus on the judicial process and the courts in their lobbying…

Fatemeh (Simin) Tabassi Mofrad has recently received a project grant (€ 25,000) from LUF/Gratama Foundation for her ideas in investigating sex-by-genotype interactions in brain functions. She has a multidisciplinary research perspective which enables her to look at research issues from different angles.…

Professor of Korean Studies Remco Breuker has been awarded a subsidy from the European Research Council to study the dispute between both Koreas and China on the history of Manchuria.

On 10 October 2018 Cees de Groot and Jelle Nijland organized a round-table-symposium ‘Government and private governance’ for experts in the field of private governance issues. This day was made possible by the LUF. The main objective of the symposium was to brainstorm with experts from various backgrounds,…

Movement behaviours, such as physical activity, sleep, and the amount of time we sit each day, impact our health. Recently, more researchers are looking at the influence of these behaviours combined, but this is a challenging task. For example, it is difficult to monitor in what way movement behaviours…

In a recent EUobserver opinion article, Salvador Santino Regilme, warns that Europe faces a crisis of legitimacy if it continues to ignore the structural influence of billionaires and oligarchic interests within its institutions.

Members of our research team give different types of presentations and lectures.

Groeninx said goodbye to Leiden University on Thursday, 15 December during the symposium ‘H2020 Academy – Influencing H2020 and the next framework programme’. For almost fifteen years, she has been involved in European projects at the university’s Knowledge Exchange Office Luris.

The Huizinga Institute offers an online masterclass that explores how material, visual, and paratextual elements in manuscripts and printed books developed between 1400 and 1600, and how this influenced the ways in which readers navigated the book and experienced the text it contained. Deadline for…

A new treatment for atherosclerosis showed promising results in isolated cells but proved to be less effective in initial animal tests. Bachelor student Biopharmaceutical Sciences Willemijn van der Heijden aimed to understand why. She investigated whether the formation of a protein layer around the…

‘It was a complete surprise to me to find the Emerald Citation of Excellence certificate in my pigeonhole,’ says Natascha van der Zwan. Her article ‘Making sense of Financialization’ has received an honourable mention from Emerald Publishing because it is used all over the world for research and edu…

If three or more objects move around each other, history cannot be reversed. That is the conclusion of an international team of researchers based on computer simulations of three black holes orbiting each other. The researchers, led by the Dutch astronomer Tjarda Boekholt, publish their findings in…

It's pretty hard to spot a single 5 nanometer particle. Leiden physicists pulled it off by turning a 120 nm gold rod into a detector.

Are maps objective or do they convey hidden messages that you would miss at first glance? A map is always a simplification of reality. Mapmakers reduce, distort and select. This allows the reader to be guided literally and figuratively. Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Museum Volkenkunde jointly…

Jongeren kiezen vrienden met een vergelijkbare achtergrond, zoals etniciteit en gedrag. Dit concludeert pedagoog Janna Fortuin in haar promotieonderzoek.

Arco Timmermans is Professor by special appointment Public Affairs at the Institute of Public Administration. On Dutch television programme 'EenVandaag', he discussed the remarkable changes that have been made in a report on lung cancer in and around the Dutch city of Beverwijk that was presented by…

First-year Public Administration students write consultancy report for municipality The Hague

Leiden University is partner of the Netherlands Centre for One Health (NCOH). This initiative brings together leading academic research institutes in the Netherlands in an open innovation network that responds to the theme: One Health. NCOH interviewed Doris van Bergeijk: PhD student of the project…

The Dutch phrase ‘ijs en weder dienende’ (literally, ‘ice and weather serving’) is a good example of what is known as a participle clause and is perhaps one of the most unfathomable grammatical constructions in Dutch. For what (or who) is serving whom (or what)? It actually means ‘ice and weather permitting’.…

Young children exhibit more aggressive behaviour if their nervous system fails to respond adequately to stress situations and if they are exposed to risk factors such as smoking or psychological problems experienced by the mother during the pregnancy. This is the conclusion of PhD candidate Jill Suurland.…

Yuvraj Birdja converted CO2 to formic acid to store energy in a sustainable way, with different catalysts. With this new knowledge, scientists are a step closer in industrially converting CO2 to chemicals and fuels. This can help reduce CO2 emission and the greenhouse effect.

Since the end of the nineteenth century Arabic book designers have influenced the social and cultural situation in the Middle East with their work. Huda Smitshuijzen Abi-Farès has written the first global overview of this neglected field of science. PhD defence 10 January.

American foreign policy in the period after the Second World War is often characterised as liberal. This is, however, not the full picture, argues university lecturer Andrew Gawthorpe. He has been awarded a Vidi grant to research and rewrite this popular narrative.

Many of the language rules we use today were formulated in the 17th and 18th centuries. In a dual track at the universities of Leiden and Brussels, PhD candidate Eline Lismont investigated why some rules became successful while other rules were quickly forgotten.

In 2014 Russia entered Ukraine and occupied Crimea, and about two and a half years ago it began a large-scale invasion. For Ukraine, it’s a war. But Russia calls it a ‘special military operation’. Word choices of this kind affect how people look at issues. A Dutch Research Council (NWO) project led…

'How do you write a slogan to win an election?' Steven Ooms answers this question in his PhD research into ideas about good prose in the time of Caesar and Emperor Augustus. This period is considered a high point for the development of literature. The Roman Cicero and the Greek Dionysius of Halicarnassus…

What makes young people susceptible to misinformation? And how do their friends influence this? Psychologist Jiemiao Chen aims to find out by using eye-tracking to monitor where young people focus their attention while watching TikTok videos.

The latest forum in the Hague Journal of Diplomacy highlights the rich potential for interdisciplinary research at the intersection of architecture, diplomacy, and international relations. These contributions, spanning from the early American republic to the contemporary era, reveal how diplomatic spaces…

Mayors have to do with a society that polarises, politics that change more than ever and a fragmented administrative field of influence. Nikol Hopman and Saniye Celik wrote an essay about this.

The "Cognitive Turn" and the Middle Ages - There is an increasing interest in the cognitive sciences and how knowledge from this area influences literary studies, history, art history, and studies in material culture. This meeting seeks to discuss the possibilities, but also the limitations of incorporating…

Barend Barentsen, Professor Labour Law, talked about the local public transportation strikes in the Netherlands with Omroep Gelderland.

The Amsterdam media played a major role in the rise and fall of Dutch Brazil, the colony held briefly by the Dutch West India Company in the 17th century. This is the conclusion reached by Professor of Maritime History Michiel van Groesen in his book ‘Amsterdam’s Atlantic’.

The ‘Leids Universiteits Fonds’ (LUF) award grants to research and educational project in various academic fields once a year. This year, Honorata Mazepus, Tanachia Ashikali, and Jaroslaw Kantorowicz of the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs were three of the recipients of such a grant.

What happens to children of extremist parents? Commissioned by the Scientific Research and Documentation Center (WODC) of the Ministry of Justice and Security, four ISGA researchers, Layla van Wieringen, Daan Weggemans, Katharina Krüsselmann and Marieke Liem, wrote a report on the nature and extent…