At the start of the 20th century there were fewer than 2 billion people. Now at over 7 billion, Earth’s population is on target to reach 8 billion by 2027. How has this dramatic increase in human population impacted Earth’s life support systems and natural resources? How should we understand the meaning…

Are there other planets like the earth, and will there also be life? Astronomers study planets around stars other than the sun, with the aim to find out what kind of gasses their atmospheres are made up with.

Today, humanity produces sufficient calories, in theory, to feed the 7.7 billion people on the planet: the amount of food produced per person on the planet has gone up more than 40% since the 1960s. Yet, ironically, the prevalence of undernourishment – which had been declining for decades – has started…

This thesis presents the results of a study on the interfaces of insulating oxides with and without the insertion of a magnetic layer.

Published by Brill Nijhoff and written by leading experts including national judges, academics and practitioners East African Community Law is the first comparative as well as open access textbook on EAC law. The book provides a key resource for the research, teaching, and practice of EAC law. It also…

Latest since Rutger Bregman’s “Utopia for Realists”, Universal Basic Income (UBI) has caught public attention again as a possible solution for many societal issues. Watch the event back via the video below.

Promotor: Prof.dr. D. Bouwmeester, Co-Promotor: M.J.A. de Dood

1) Assess the trends in supply and production status of these critical minerals and mineral products worldwide and Europe’s dependence including on intermediate products such as permanent magnets, RE based super alloys, batteries, polishing compounds, phosphors, catalysts etc. 2) Trace the entire value…

Promotor: G.J. Kramer Co-Promotor: E.G.M. Kleijn

References to nature and the environment in the Caribbean literary and the contemporary age of globalization.

Leiden University has participated in an international study carried out by the CARMENES consortium, which has discovered two small, terrestrial planets around Teegarden’s Star. The planets have masses similar to Earth and their temperatures could be mild enough to sustain liquid water on their surf…

What are the behaviours of plant traits throughout various points in the growing season in a radiative transfer model framework and how well can this knowledge be integrated through data assimilation to provide priors for robust local and global vegetation products and analysis?

The first photo of a black hole and measuring anxiety in the brain... From 13 until 22 May we're serving a free slice of science with your pizza.

On 3 March 2022, Cambridge University Press published An Introduction to Public International Law, a co-authored textbook led by Cecily Rose.

Mum works in healthcare, dad in engineering and everyone is straight: many textbooks still show men and women in stereotypical roles, PhD candidate Tessa van de Rozenberg has discovered. She also found that children’s views on these topics often closely resemble those of their parents.

Every year, at 8:30 pm on the last Saturday of March, millions of people across the world join in raising awareness of the issues facing our planet.

The Faculty of Science

What is the state of democracy in developing and transition countries in 2024? Terrible, according to the BTI Transformation Index.

On May 20th, Joost de Moor took part in a panel that examined what is (not) unique about the recent waves of climate mobilization, as well as the question of engagement with or opposition to formal global sustainability governance institutions.

Last week we organized an event together with the Green Office from the Bucerius Law School. We wondered: how realistic is UBI as an option to create a more sustainable society? More than 100 people signed-up to join us to find an answer to this question.

Principles of Environmental Sciences provides a comprehensive picture of the principles, concepts and methods that are applicable to problems originating from the interaction between the living and non-living environment and mankind. Both the analysis of such problems and the way solutions to environmental…

Textbooks in the Netherlands contain significantly fewer female than male characters and relatively few characters from a non-Western background. They also contain implicit stereotyping. This is what Judi Mesman, Professor of the Interdisciplinary Study of Societal Challenges at Leiden University, has…

Is it possible to formulate a new conceptual foundation for attributing an evaluative role to historiography of science, without relinquishing the historiographic sensitivity of recent work in the discipline?

A new online platform makes it possible to estimate the state of agricultural crops and nature area’s around the world. This enables scientists and other users to consistently combine observations of different satellites for the first time.

The Educational Sciences programme group of the Institute of Education and Child Studies at Leiden University provides courses in the field of student education and the learning and development of children in the school context.

What tools can be applied to measure the output, outcome and impact of science communication efficiently and effectively?

The overall objective of ECS is to widen and strengthen the European Citizen Science community through capacity building and awareness raising activities such as the creation of a European Citizen Science Academy and the establishment of a network of 28 ECS Ambassadors.

How can we bridge the gap between experts and the general public?

PathOS aims to contribute to a better understanding and measurement of Open Science impacts and their causal mechanisms. This is pivotal in order to develop effective OS policy in the EU (European Union). It will do so by collecting concrete evidence of OS effects, by studying the pathways of OS practices,…

Published by Brill Nijhoff and written by leading experts including national judges, academics and practitioners East African Community Law is the first comparative as well as open access textbook on EAC law. The book provides a key resource for the research, teaching, and practice of EAC law. It also…

The mission of the Plant Science research programme is to contribute to the sustainable production of high quality crops, flowers and high-value bio-based products. This is realised by generating fundamental knowledge of basic biological processes related to development of plants and their interaction…

We have to do all we can to stop climate change. But: the Earth is more resilient than we thought. That is the surprising conclusion of an international team of ecologists and mathematicians, which included Leiden mathematician Arjen Doelman. The team discovered that ecosystems can still avoid tipping…

Global warming, deforestation, nature conservation. All major environmental challenges that call for major measures. To see what the effects of these measures are, observation data from the Earth is used. Researchers at LIACS receive €90,000 from the European Space Agency (ESA). With this they are investigating…

In the research programme Microbial Sciences we perform state-of-the-art research in the field of biotechnology and microbial sciences.

The discovery that eleven asteroids might collide with our Earth has become world news. The research of three Leiden astronomers has appeared on more than 190 news sites worldwide, from America to China. They developed and trained an artificial neural network for this discovery.

The master's specialisation Data Science: Computer Science at Leiden University provides students thorough knowledge and understanding of statistical and computational aspects of data analysis, including their application in databases, advances in data mining, networks, pattern recognition, and deep…

Three Leiden astronomers have shown that some asteroids that are considered harmless for now, can collide with Earth in the future. They did their research with the help of an artificial neural network. The results have been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

We perform multidisciplinary research at molecular, cellular, and organismal levels of animal biology to increase fundamental understanding of health and disease.

There are eight institutes at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences: