Archaeologist Eduardo Herrera Malatesta reflects on the unfamiliarity with the pre-Columbian past that he encountered during fieldwork in the Montecristi province in the Dominican Republic.

To help you improve your skills in communicating about your research in English, the Graduate School has an in-house Academic English Lecturer.

Target selectivity is an important aspect of any drug molecule, and certainly a parameter to be optimized. That is not trivial for a number of reasons. First of all hundreds of drug targets (receptors, enzymes, ion channels) exist, and no single lab in the world has assays for all of them.

Dynamics of material, social and ideological relationships in the pre-Columbian insular Caribbean

The Faculty of Archaeology is pleased to announce that Dr Sarah Schrader has been appointed as the new Head of the Department of Archaeological Sciences (DV). In April 2026 she succeeds Dr Jason Laffoon, who has led the department for the past six years.

New sampling and analytical strategies give archaeologists a better understanding of the nutrition and survival of ancient populations. Publication in PLOS One.

Of the 111 Spinoza Prizes that have been awarded since 1995, 28 have gone to researchers from Leiden University.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of the Leiden University Medical Center with Nagasaki University.

Corinne Hofman (Professor in Caribbean Archaeology) has been awarded 15 million euro by the EU for her archaeological research on the colonisation of the Americas. She will lead the ‘NEXUS 1492’ project together with colleagues Davies (VU), Brandes (Konstanz) and Willems (Leiden).

The Children’s Rights Monitor provides a thematic overview of the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Netherlands.

The first index to measure product safety, sustainability, and circularity, operationalising the EU’s (SSbD) framework.

The “harpe organisée”, 1720-1840: Rediscovering the lost pedal techniques on harps with a single-action pedal mechanism, is the title of Maria Christina Cleary's PhD thesis. This is the first monographic study on harp pedal techniques, tracing the historical way to pedal on the early pedal harps with…

From Crisis to Critique

De lichtheid van literatuur: Engagement in de multiculturele samenleving (The Lightness of Literature: Engagement in the Multicultural Society) is a plea for the social relevance of literature. The book delves into an age-old debate about literature and social engagement, which has recently been reinvigorated…

This study interrogates contemporary and historical uses of barbarism, arguing that barbarism also has a disruptive, insurgent potential.

The Behavioral Public Administration Lab (BPA Lab) conducts behavioral science to generate, share, and apply insights about human behavior to improve governance, policy, and management in the public sector.

This anthology contributes to a historically grounded understanding of the complex relationship between Christian missions and the roots of humanitarianism and its contemporary uses in a Middle Eastern context.

The Children’s Rights Monitor provides a thematic overview of the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Netherlands.

The central inquiry of this thesis revolves around how ontology can adequately accommodate the existence of necessary physical relations. Initially, the thesis demonstrates the imperative acknowledgment of necessary physical relations by showcasing the failure of Neo-Humean theories.

Reconstructing interactions between communities in and out of Cyprus in the early third millenium BC

A main goal of MSBB research is to address the major bottle-necks in combatting viral diseases: the lack of experimental models that are representative of human pathology and are cost effective and versatile. Viral diseases such as those that cause viral hemorrhagic syndromes or severe acute respiratory…

In a new study, we found that when we are exposed to potential harm to the other person, it improves our automatic attentional processes to avoid harm to that person.

Studying the underlying principles of the nature of language.

This collection considers such issues as the cognitive, linguistic and emotional benefits of speaking two languages, the perceptions, attitudes and issues relating to identity in minority language areas, and the number of grammatical aspects amongst those who speak these minority languages.

How to related figures of savages to conceptions of history?

The HOPES study is one of the largest investigations of this kind to date! By studying existing brain scans and data collected form over 4,000 14-25 year olds, the project team hopes to identify specific changes in the brain that make young people vulnerable to suicidal thoughts and behaviours.

In this article, Yannick Veilleux-Lepage and Tommy van Steen, assistant professors at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, discuss the degree of consensus within the field of terrorism studies regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the activities of violent non-state actors.

Pre-modern long-distance trade was fraught with risks which often created conflicts of interest. The ensuing disputes and the ways the actors involved dealt with them belong to the field of conflict management.

In this article, Maria-Elena Kisyova, Yannick Veilleux-Lepage and Vanessa Newby shed some light on how a small but highly visible group of influencers are actively working to promote a dangerous far-right ideology.

Taal als sleutel tot het begrijpen van de mens.

How do speakers adapt to multilingual contexts?

Do you wish to contact us for further information on the collaboration between Leiden University and Indonesia?

Why did 'character', 'habit', and 'virtue' serve as key terms in late 19th and early 20th-century scholarly correspondences, biographies, and obituaries? Why did scholars around 1900 display so much interest in the working habits and character traits of what they called the 'scholarly self'?

More than fifty researchers are working together to describe the colonisation of the Americas from the Amerindian perspective. In November they will be meeting for the first time, in Leiden. How is Corinne Hofman, Leiden Professor of Archaeology managing the international megaproject Nexus 1492?

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

Jed Wentz realized a unique concept: 19-th century melodramas for voice and piano.

Leiden heritage expert Sjoerd van der Linde is carrying out research on the heritage of the Caribbean region. This research forms part of the international Nexus 1492 project on the consequences of colonisation for the Americas. ‘We first have to find out what the local population wants.'

The central aims of MicroClock project are to describe the B. subtilis circadian clock at molecular and functional levels, and discover the mechanisms of clock-regulated bidirectional signaling between B. subtilis and the model plant Arabidopsis

The Children’s Rights Monitor provides a thematic overview of the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Netherlands.

The Guava Platform, which is at the centre of this PhD thesis, was initiated in 2014 as a conceptual framework of my art practice and research. The aim of the Guava Platform is to research and create possible techniques of art-actions that are part of my quest to continue to live in the conflicted landscape,…

Sound & Score brings together music expertise from prominent international researchers and performers exploring the intimate relations between sound, score and notation, and the artistic possibilities that this relationship yields for performers, composers and listeners.

What are best practices for teaching students to engage with 'wicked' problems?

Security and Legitimacy is one of the three organisational clusters of the Institute of Political Science.