Matthew Canfield (Assistant Professor, Van Vollenhoven Institute) and Danielle Chevalier (Assistant Professor Law & Society, Van Vollenhoven Institute) both received XS Grants from the NWO Open Competition SSH for their respective research projects. These grants are a maximum of €50,000 and enable…

On Wednesday 6 September 2017 the Interest Group on Migration and Refugee Law of the European Society of International Law (ESIL/SEDI) hosted a workshop in Naples, Italy, in cooperation with the ILS 2.0 Project.

Single-celled organisms have stiffer DNA than multicellular lifeforms like humans and rice. Theoretical physicists managed to simulate the folding in full genomes for the first time to reach this conclusion. Publication in Biophysical Journal on February 7.

If computers work on superconducting current, they won’t consume any energy. Leiden physicists have now gained control over a new type of superconducting memory elements. Publication in Nature Communications.

Annelou van Gijn and Diederik Pomstra took part in the Shire Project in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, to contribute to an exciting mix of lithic and use-wear analysis, as well as ethno-archaeological and experimental studies.

As chief economist, Bolhuis will conduct research on topical economic issues. Besides this position, he will remain active as a lecturer at the Department of Economics at Leiden Law School.

Prof. John Bintliff and Dr. Hans Kamermans have been awarded a 4-year EEC grant to develop Enhanced Reality reconstructions in Classical Archaeology.

Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam, together with Heritage Leiden and Region, are developing a map application of historical Leiden.

Global Interactions sponsors a number of research projects of Leiden University researchers.

We study how communication can heal and harm when patients are confronted with an illness. Most of our studies focus on serious illnesses such as advanced cancer. Communication lies at the heart of medicine, yet we do not always know which specific communication helps patients. Moreover, many complaints…

Non-urban settlement organization and Roman expansion in the Roman Republic (4th-1st centuries BC)

The map application includes information from old and new buildings archaeological projects. This makes it possible to investigate whether water facilities (wells, cisterns) and waste facilities (cesspits, sewers) were the privilege of Leiden’s wealthy elite in the late 16th and 17th centuries or whether…

Dirk Huyge (Director) & Wouter Claes (Vice-Director)

New Approaches to Understanding the Eastern Mediterranean during Byzantine and Ottoman Times

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

The LUCDH foster the development of new digital research by awarding a number of Small Grants each year. These are our past awardees.

Han Meyer, Carola Hein, Paul van de Laar and Sabine Luning, argue that in the current moment of major crises these ship channels necessitate radical reconsideration.

Last Friday was Master’s Open Day time once again. Students from home and abroad descended on Leiden and The Hague to find out more about our master’s programmes. Alongside the presentations, the information fairs gave them a good opportunity to ask any questions.

Fourteen promising researchers from Leiden University have been given the opportunity to realise their research plans for the coming years thanks to a Veni grant from the NWO. This year, these subsidies have been granted to studies of the influence of noise on the great tit, the conditions necessary…

Is scientific research useful? In his dissertation, Jorrit Smit argues that in order to answer this question one should not look at, for example, prominent scholars or influential organisations, but at places where knowledge exchange and co-creation take place. Promotion 6 May.

Dr. Tesse Stek has been awarded a Veni and a Free Competition (within the Humanities field) grant by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for his research projects.

In December 2023, Mr. Max Farasat (B.A. Religious Studies) was announced as Co-Winner of the

The end of January arrived together with welcome guests from Saxion University of Applied Sciences. As a part of their two-day-long visit to South Holland, almost 100 Saxion archaeology students visited our Faculty.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has, within the framework of Research along Routes by Consortia (NWA-ORC), awarded the research project Next Generation Immuno-Dermatology (NGID) with a prestigious grant of 11.7 MEuro. NGID is a nationwide, large-scale project to unravel novel biomarkers for six different…

Nine staff members of the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance, and Society participated in the Law and Society Association’s (LSA) annual conference from 27-30 May. VVI staff presented ten conference papers, organised multiple sessions, as well as served as chairs and discussants for numerous…

The production of history is a process of power. This is particularly relevant in Africa, where during both the colonial and the post-colonial era history has been written by hegemonic regimes. This historiography has in turn (re-)produced structures of domination, social exclusion and division.…

He makes music, goes to the athletics track twice a week and, according to his supervisor, has done his research so well that it would not be out of place in a PhD research. Physics and astronomy student Hidde Stoffels' undergraduate research on the properties of dark matter is of such high quality…

Free playtime and physical play are of great importance to children's social development. That is the main conclusion of innovative research by developmental psychologists and computer scientists from Leiden University.

Pancras Hogendoorn bade farewell as Dean of Medicine and Vice-Chairman of the LUMC Board of Directors with a symposium at the LUMC.

PhD student Robbin Bastiaansen applies mathematics to get insight in practical problems. By comparing mathematical models with developments in existing ecosystems, he hopes to demystify the process of desertification. His research has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…

Four researchers from Leiden University have been awarded NWO Open Competition grants in the Science domain. This is for research into subjects such as immune cells in tumours, antibiotic resistance and magnetic semiconductors.

Activities of Tony Roe, Catalina Vicens, Magda Pucci, Hans Kalliwoda, Gary Schultz, Eleni Kamma, and Danne Ojeda

On 1 November 2018, Marieke Bloembergen was appointed Professor of Archival and Postcolonial Studies at the Institute for History.

An important discovery makes it possible to communicate complex information among multiple people without the message being cracked. The communication can also relate to complex information.

Modern humans and Neanderthals may have co-existed in France and Northern Spain for up to 2,900 years until the Neanderthals disappeared. This is what archaeologists from Leiden University and Cambridge University write in a new publication in Scientific Reports.

Keynote speakers: Jennifer Gaynor (University at Buffalo SUNY) and Sue Peabody (Washington State University)

Food production in the Netherlands is an economic success but has led to many environmental issues, including nitrogen pollution. Recently, the policy to allow economic growth while reducing nitrogen losses was disapproved by the highest court in the Netherlands, casting the country into a nitrogen…

Women are more often diagnosed with depression, whereas ADHD is much more frequently detected in men. And there are other more striking differences. What role does the brain play in mental health and what is the influence of the environment? For answers to these questions, listen to the ‘(Un)gendered…

Since the beginning of September, urban criminologist Marianne Franken has been the linchpin of a special partnership between Leiden University, the municipality of Leiden and the police. As a PhD candidate she will spend four years conducting research into how safe the people of Leiden feel.

In April 2025, Ms. Esther Rachow from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem presenting her ongoing doctoral research at an Austria Centre Leiden lunch-time talk. She answered a few questions about her visit below.

Astronomer Jos de Boer has received the Chesneau Prize in Nice for his research into so-called protoplanetary disks. The prize is awarded to the best astronomical dissertation in the field of high angular resolution. 'I consider it a good opportunity to talk about my research.'

The Austria Centre is pleased to welcome Dr. Lena Sadovski as a visiting scholar who will do research at Leiden University for a few months in 2023. We asked Dr. Sadovski a few questions about her doctoral work, her future research and what she wants to achieve during her time at Leiden.

With an off-the-charts number of downloads, outstanding media coverage, and more than 300 tweets, a small team behind the Scientific Reports article led by a Leiden PhD Igor Djakovic is living every researcher’s dream.

Dr Sara Brandellero, Assistant Professor in Brazilian Studies (LUCAS), was invited by the State University of São Paulo (UNESP/Araraquara) and the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCAR) as visiting professor for the week of 8-12 June 2015.

Leiden University’s Campus the Hague is soon to expand into the Central Innovation District in the centre of The Hague. Plans are under way for a Campus boulevard with a new University building in the area between the Prins Bernhardviaduct and Schedeldoekshaven.

On an apparently normal cube a pattern of hollows and bulges appears when the cube is compressed. A method has been developed to design such three-dimensional structures and to construct these using simple building blocks. Publication in Nature.

Following the success of The Middle Period Chinese Studies Conference held in 2014 at Harvard University, we welcome paper proposals for the second conference of this kind to be held at Leiden University, September 14-17, 2017.

An international team of researchers led by Alice Booth (Leiden University, the Netherlands) have discovered methanol in the warm part of a planet-forming disk. The methanol cannot have been produced there and must have originated in the cold gas clouds from which the star and the disk formed. Thus,…

With the sowing of the last experimental plot, new research platform TERRA-Dunes was officially opened on 29 June 2018. The experiment has a fundamental scientific character, but has important practical applications in nature restoration.