How do democracies develop? The Institute for History is devoting a three-day conference to this question.

In the nineteenth century many Dutch people believed in the end of time and the coming of God's thousand-year reign. This belief effectively slowed down the process of modernisation that was taking place in the Netherlands at that time, concludes historian Rie Kielman. PhD defence 13 April.

The Honours Academy has recently started working with the new visual technology Virtual Reality (VR). 'It is important to look beyond your own borders and to keep on experimenting. It may not work out, but at least you tried.'

In two weeks' time, the official opening of the Humanities Hub will take place in the Huizinga Building. The first projects have already begun. Professor Journalism and New Media Jaap de Jong and director of the AI and Digital Humanities Lab Jelena Prokic share their experiences.

Roman philosopher and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero is still used as an intellectual example by politicians and speech writers today. But, he did not go unchallenged in his own day, as a statesman in particular. Classicist Leanne Jansen conducted research into how classical historians judged Cicero’s…

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2018, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

Lecture, Astronomy on Tap

Controversial environmental organisation Sea Shepherd fights illegal fishing all around the world and is not afraid to take direct action. Alumnus Geert Vons is director of Sea Shepherd Netherlands. How does he look back on his degree in Chinese Studies, and what motivates him in his work? ‘If we don’t…

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded Veni funding to seventeen researchers who recently obtained their PhD. This award offers promising young scientists the opportunity to develop their own ideas over a period of three years.

Conference, Meet us in your country

Conference, Meet us in your country

Conference, Meet us in your country

Valedictory lecture

The receptor nomenclature committee of IUPHAR, the International Union of Pharmacology, has several subgroups. Among these are a few that our division is involved in, those for adenosine, nicotinic acid, and GnRH receptors.

Inaugural lecture

Didi van Trijp started her PhD project at LUCAS in October 2015. Her PhD project is part of A New History of Fishes. A long-term approach to fishes in science and culture, 1550-1880, a project directed by prof. dr. Paul Smith.

How do you count the nanoplastics in your body? Leiden researchers published a method in Nature Protocols today that should make this easier. Important for both environmental and medicine research.

On Tuesday 26 June Linlin Sun will defend her dissertation entitled ‘International Environmental Obligations and Liabilities in Deep Seabed Mining’. The dissertation has been written under the supervision of prof. dr. N.J. Schrijver and prof. dr. E.C.P.D.C. De Brabandere.

Plants love favourable microbes such as bacteria and fungi: they grow better and become healthier. Jos Raaijmakers, Professor of Microbial Ecology, is in search of the right microbes to be used in agriculture. Inaugural lecture 13 November.

Dark matter. Something invisible that, according to calculations, comprises about 85% of the matter in the universe. With an ERC Advanced Grant of €2.5 million, Professor of Observational Cosmology Henk Hoekstra will map out even more precisely where this dark matter is to be found.

Global problems such as diseases of affluence or microplastics in the sea are too complex to be dealt with from a single scientific discipline or by just one country. Leiden University has the expertise to bring solutions to these enormous problems a step closer. Read more in the research dossier on…

Every two years, students from Leiden University go into the Malaysian rainforests of Borneo. There they speak with Malaysian people to discover the use of plants or learn a local fishing technique. Improvising in the jungle leads to fruitful, creative, and important research.

2021 saw many prizes awarded to staff and students of Leiden Law School. Grants for new research projects were also awarded and our staff were invited to particpate on committees or recognised in other ways too. An overview of this year’s achievements is given below.

Many Western defence strategies concentrate on maintaining the status quo. Actively promoting universal values can also be a good strategy for resilience, according to Theo Brinkel, Professor by Special Appointment in Military-Social Studies. Inaugural lecture 15 January.

Salma Balazadeh, Víctor Carrión, and Jos Raaijmakers, biologists at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), have successfully applied for an NWO grant and got awarded 730.000 euros. The board of NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences awarded funding for their project within the Open Technology Programme…

A mega-dam around Europe is a possible solution as protection against rising sea levels. Whether that is really a good idea, was debated on by young professionals during the debate on the future of European coastal protection. 'A big dam may seem safe, but actually isn't,' argued debate winner Haye…

Almost fifty scientists and twenty companies will be working on developing new antibiotics and alternatives for antibiotics use. NWO and the Ministry of Health, Wellbeing and Sport will together invest close to seven million euros in this research. Scientists from Leiden University and LUMC will be…

Missing legends, illogical connections or three-dimensional graphs. There are many ways in which data can deceive. Five students took up the fight against misleading statistics. Their lesson series can now be found online.

How do you go about the sustainable restoration of a nineteenth-century ship without affecting its historical worth? Leiden University students from the master’s programme in Industrial Ecology spent six months working on this question. We spoke to Hidde Boom (25) and Tycho Jongenelen (25), two of the…

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 Hague is the archetypal multicultural city. With a different language spoken on every street corner, this makes it a paradise for linguists such as Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade. Her book Languages of The Hague is a collection of fascinating conversations with the city’s non-native speakers.

Farmers do not love them all. Microbes can cause tragic consequences for crops. Even the presence of just one pathogenic fungus or bacterium can drastically reduce yields. Still, there are exceptions. In that case, a pathogenic microbe is present in the soil, but does not cause any harm. Adam Ossowicki…

Antibiotic resistance is one of the major threats to human health. This week the National Antibiotic Development Platform, NADP, was officially launched via a meeting in Utrecht, with many of the stakeholders in the field present.

The NWO just announced the results of the Vrije Competitie proposals. Paul Smith, professor at the French department is, as a member of LUCAS, one of three scholars within the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University who has been awarded this grant.

Do you know a children's book fanatic? According to the Griffel-jury, 'Rekenen voor je Leven' (Calculating for your life) by Science Communication Professor Ionica Smeets is highly recommended. The book was awarded a silver ‘Griffel’, one of the highest awards for Dutch children’s literature. And that…

It is mostly rainfall and soil acidity that determine which microbes survive in a particular habitat and which do not. This knowledge is important for maintaining biodiversity. Leiden environmentalists contributed to the research. Publication in Nature on 1 August.

Fish populations in lakes and rivers have declined in recent decades. This is probably due to light and noise pollution. The Horizon Europe grant enables ecologist Hans Slabbekoorn to investigate this and improve the situation for migrating fish. In order to do so, a seven-metre-long swimming tunnel…

The International Workshop 'Maritime Conflicts and their Resolution in Atlantic Europe (13th-17th Centuries)' takes place at the University of La Laguna, Tenerife (Spain) from 21 to 22 April 2017.

City dwellers in the Middle Ages were probably no worse off than people living in villages. Both groups had very different health risks, is Rachel Schats' conclusion from her research on bone material. PhD defence 3 November.

An overview of research projects at the Predictive Pharmacology group.

Street theatre, drama, poetry and a lot of science: Leiden's Rapenburg was the backdrop for the fifth Night of Art and Knowledge on Saturday 16 September. Many University buildings - from the Observatory to the Hortus - opened their doors to artists, scientists and a public curious to know more.

During the online panel discussion ‘Het spel en de macht’ (the game and the power) held on 9 March, six members of Leiden’s Centre for Dutch Politics and Governance (CNPB) discussed trends regarding the current and previous general elections. Will it be tense, this campaign? ‘Baudet probably still has…

Writing a book on the recent history of Leiden University in corona times. For educational and policy historian Pieter Slaman (34), this has meant working in the attic of his parents’ house while they looked after his daughter, along with numerous online conversations and very few, if any, visits to…

Dutch people are far more law-abiding than they might like to think. And they are very different from the Belgians in that regard. The different approaches of the two governments towards the coronavirus crisis, for example, can be explained from the history of both countries since the Middle Ages. Historians…

On January 7th Minister van Engelshoven of Education, Culture and Science of The Netherlands announced that the project Island(er)s at the Helm: Co-creating sustainable and inclusive solutions for social adaptation to climate challenges in the (Dutch) Caribbean is one of two projects awarded with funding…