This project investigates the effects of the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953) on the production, distribution, preparation and consumption of food in transwar Japan and Korea.

At the heart of this study is a thorough inquiry of categorisations of social identity used in the VOC’s record-keeping bureaucracy. How were service, occupational and caste groups classified and shaped by the VOC?

To construct catalysts that can produce fuels from CO2 innumerable times, we need to learn much more about how catalysis works. Irene Groot is conducting groundbreaking research into catalysis at the atomic level.

This project focuses on Dutch registration of land and people in rural Sri Lanka. How did the practice of “fixating” the fluid social relations and dynamic daily practices into categories affect family strategies of reproduction and survival?

Colonialism Inside Out: Everyday Experience and Plural Practice in Dutch Institutions in Sri Lanka (c. 1700-1800)

Research aims: Identification of key genes involved in programming the cellular architecture of A. niger & Genetic engineering of A. niger in order to improve its secretory capacities and rheological behavior under industrial fermentation conditions.

Sanne Dokter-Mersch defended her thesis on Thursday 15 April 2021.

Leiden researchers have compiled information collected by scientists over the past 120 years into a database of plant-fungal interactions. This important biological data is now freely available for researchers and nature conservationists. Publication in New Phytologist.

A cannon, a sabre, guns: these Sri Lankan objects had been in the Rijksmuseum for centuries. In early December, they were returned to Sri Lanka. Associate Professor of Colonial History Alicia Schrikker led the research that formed the basis for the restitution and published a volume on the findings…

In a world first, an international team of researchers has read an unopened letter from Renaissance Europe – without breaking its seal or damaging it in any way. Nadine Akkerman, Reader in early modern English literature at Leiden University, is co-author of the article that appeared on 2 March in Nature…

The LLM programme is proud to announce that former student Alice Walker, graduate of the ‘20 class, received the Lord Denning Scholarship offered by Lincoln’s Inn for 2021-2022.

Under #TheCode European media report about Martijn Nouwens’s research on the secretive EU Code of Conduct Group which is tasked with tackling harmful tax competition in Europe. The stories expose to the wider public for the first time how this diplomatic high-level working group of EU Member States…

The Research Institute for Mathematics & Computer Science in Amsterdam hosts a unique X-ray machine that creates 3D scans of the most diverse objects. This allows them to reveal details that remain hidden in regular scans. In a series of articles they showcase examples of what happens in the lab. Leiden…

Nira Wickramasinghe, professor of modern South Asian studies at Leiden University, spoke to Al Jazeera about Sri Lanka's turbulent past:

In a conversation, you provide all sorts of information to the listener. For example, you can indicate that you're certain about something, or that you heard it through someone else. Associate Professor Jenneke van der Wal has been awarded a Vici grant to investigate whether the way people do this is…

Dr Sri Margana succeeded Bambang Purwanto last September as professor in the Faculty of the Humanities. Margana is a specialist in the early modern history of Indonesia. The appointment will run for five years.

The centre of our Galaxy is so dark and dense that it is almost impossible to observe what is inside. By catching the rare hypervelocity stars that are ejected from it, Elena Maria Rossi aims to unveil the mysterious environment around the supermassive black hole inside. But she’ll also be solving another…

Our team is involved in the translation and adaptation of several questionnaires, for research purposes. Information about each questionnaire is listed below.

This programma, an initiative of the Institute for History in partnership with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta. Aims to study more than 20 kilometers of Dutch archival materials in The Netherlands, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and South Africa.

Freek Vonk and Mike Richardson, with many collaborators, have published two snake genomes in two parallel articles in the prestigious journal PNAS. Their new findings provide insight into the co-evolutionary arms race between predator and prey.

Our object is to identify and characterize transcription factors involved in lignocellulosic biomass degradation in the filamentous fungus Aspergillus niger.

This thesis considers multi-prover commitment schemes whose security is based on restrictions on the communication between the provers.

Suddenly getting lost, failing to recognise family members, or forgetting words and names are well-known symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Psychologists have now discovered that the disease also manifests in more subtle ways: through the rhythm of finger tapping.

Astronomers have captured a new deep field of Pandora's Cluster (Abell 2744) with the James Webb Space Telescope. The images show never-before-seen details. The results are described in four scientific papers. Leiden astronomers Marijn Franx and Mariska Kriek collaborated on the study. 'This opens a…

This dissertation investigates ikat from the eastern Indonesian islands from a uniquely technical perspective, including design analysis of asymmetry and microscopy.

Athens is universally known as a symbol of democracy, philosophy, and ancient Greek aesthetics. Some of the most famous classical monuments, including the Parthenon and the temple of Hephaestus, can be found here.

What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word UN? Is it just the Security Council and the ‘blue helmets’ or is there more to it? These are some of the questions tackled by the Chair’s research group.

By analysing neglected (continental) spy centres and integrating these groups of female intelligencers into the traditional, male-orientated historical narratives, this project will proceed towards a gendered history of early modern espionage.

What holds people together and what makes them willing to fit within larger political structures? Our project examines this question in the practices of dynastic rulership in Eurasia ca. 1300-1800.

Western thought has often dismissed shadows as fictional, but what if fictions reveal original truths?

Research master student Linda Bomm found in her thesis that men, compared to women, believe female sexual assault survivors less, blame women more, and judge them more negatively – especially if they identify strongly with their male gender.

Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

The overall aim of this project is to understand, on the molecular level, how the bacterium V. fischeri cells interacts with their squid host.

The relevance of intentionality to the interpretation of Aristotle was first suggested by Brentano in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Here we take our starting point from Brentano and investigate how Brentano’s concept of intentionality is rooted in Aristotle.

This dissertation explores Aristotle’s use of teleology as a principle of explanation, especially as it is used in the natural treatises.

In 2007, a spy from the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) planted a destructive computer virus at an Iranian nuclear site, halting the Iranian nuclear weapons programme. Dutch newspaper ‘de Volkskrant’ has revealed that the AIVD kept the crucial role of the Dutch spy a secret from…

Individuals suffering from social anxiety disorder (SAD) consistently avoid eye contact. However, in a non-clinical population, gaze avoidance in socially anxious individuals depends on social situations, Jiemiao Chen saw in a series of experiments, for which she used wearable eye-trackers. On 25 April…

Leiden archaeologists reveal the function of specific locations and buildings in order to protect indigenous heritage and lifestyle.

To what extent can Nietzsche's Amor Fati be seen as a Stoic concept?

In this research project child language phonology is studied from the perspective of a psycholinguistic speech-production model and this model is in turn studied from the perspective of developmental phonology.

In his lecture, Professor Platt discussed some of the main arguments from his latest book entitled “Beyond these Walls: Rethinking Crime and Punishment in the United States”

The presents thesis investigates the extent to which Chinese, Dutch and American speakers of English are mutually intelligible. Intelligibility of vowels, simplex consonants and consonant clusters was tested in meaningless sound sequences, as well as in words in meaningless and meaningful short sent…

Uniting an international consortium of scholars, the Skandapurāṇa Project comprises a team of researchers working in fields across the Humanities. We are creating a critical edition of a foundational work of purāṇic literature and, in doing so, tracing the dynamics of a textual tradition to better understand…

Kathryn Emerson defended her thesis on 28 June 2016

Bringing together the most current research on the relationship between crime and gender in the West between 1600 and 1914, this authoritative volume places female criminality within its everyday context.

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of…