Without scientific knowledge, we won’t be able to tackle the grand challenges of the 21st century: climate change, energy transition, social inequality and coronavirus, for example. Professor by Special Appointment of the Social Value of Science Laurens Hessels is therefore calling for more transdisciplinary…

The idea that socially anxious people avoid eye contact because they are not interested in other people needs to be changed. They take their information from other physical sources, such as people's hands. This is the finding of Leiden psychologist Mariska Kret whose research has been published in…

Twice a year, Gert Renkema, Head of Financial and Economic Affairs at FGGA, provides us with an update on the faculty’s finances. This time, he sits down with Niels Laurens, Director of Operations, over a cup of coffee and tea to share the results of the past year and the financial outlook.

On 25 September, lights throughout Leiden will be turned off for the Seeing Stars event. What makes the urban night so special? We asked university lecturer Sara Brandellero, who researches cities, night and migration.

It is a stormy Sunday afternoon, with gusts of a whopping 110 kilometres per hour. Chemist Teun Sweere defies the enormous headwind on his city bike and wins the NK Headwind cycling after 22,5 minutes. A new highlight follows six months later: his PhD defence (14 June).

Sugar excipients, needed to stabilize medicines, can be unsafe for patients due to an impurity discovered recently by Daniel Weinbuch. ‘The biopharmaceutical industry should now consider new excipient quality criteria for safer drug development,’ he says. PhD defence on 13 December.

Black Theatre, activist theatre by and for black South Africans, flourished under apartheid. However, according to Francis Rangoajane, the democratisation of South Africa has in no way diminished the importance of this art form. PhD defence 16 November.

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…

The Hague Project Peace & Justice, in cooperation with Dr. Alanna O’Malley of the Leiden University Institute for History, organized a one-day conference on October 23rd, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the United Nations. Students of the ‘A History of the United Nations’ elective course of the…

When you want to analyse big quantities of archaeological data, you run into the issue that searching through excavation reports is extremely time-consuming. If only there existed a search engine specifically focused on querying these reports… But wait, work on an archaeological search engine focused…

It must be there. We just cannot see it: mysterious dark matter and dark energy in the universe. Henk Hoekstra is one of the many cosmologists who would love to know what exactly these substances consist of. He has received a European research grant of 1.3 euro million to find out.

Of the 87 Vidi research subsidies awarded by NWO, five have been awarded to Leiden researchers. This represents almost 6 per cent of the successful applications.

The latest scientific articles by the Rectores Magnifici of Dutch universities will soon be freely available online. They aim to set a good example to researchers in the Netherlands. Carel Stolker from Leiden University is one such Rector.

Modified viruses can both kill cancer cells and activate the immune system. This is what an LUMC team discovered while researching a new prostate cancer therapy.

How do practice and theory reinforce one another in neuroscience? Professor Birte Forstmann’s inaugural lecture on 2 October will be about building interdisciplinary bridges between cognitive neuroscience and cognitive models. Her approach may lead to brain research with fewer side-effects for patie…

Mark Klaassen, Assistant Professor of Immigration Law and member of the Dutch Advisory Council on Migration, explains on Dutch radio programme ‘Met het Oog op Morgen’ why it’s a bad idea to use Denmark as a model country for Dutch asylum policy.

Geometrical patterns serving as decorations do more than just that; they always have a meaning, according to art historian Arthur Crucq. Doctoral defence 17 May.

On 8 and 9 July 2022, Leiden Law School hosted the second conference of the Research Group on Institutions for Conflict Resolution (COI).

The monthly ILS Lunch Seminars have slowly developed into somewhat of a tradition. During this seminar series, all researchers from Leiden Law School can present their research and apprehend in a comfortable setting what researchers from other research programs and institutes are working on. On Thursday…

The Dutch biotech start-up In Ovo is the first company to develop a large-scale solution for determining the sex of a chick while it is still in the egg. This fast and cheap technique can be applied mechanically at hatcheries, which was not possible before.

How many species of plants, animals, fungi and moss live in the gardens surrounding the Oude UB at Rapenburg 70? On Tuesday May 20th, the Citizen Science Lab led an investigation in the front gardens and back courtyard of the Old UB at Rapenburg 70, together with 15 colleagues working in that buildi…

Op 17 februari 1983 trad de geheel herziene Nederlandse Grondwet in werking. Het radioprogramma Villa VdB – gepresenteerd door Jurgen van den Berg – besteedde aandacht aan het 42-jarige jubileum van die gebeurtenis. Van den Berg ging daarover in gesprek met hoogleraar staatsrecht. Wim Voermans.

The group structure of Jihadist networks changes rapidly, which makes it difficult to monitor them. This is the finding of research by criminologist Jasper de Bie. PhD defence 14 April.

Leiden University is publishing a list giving an overview of its research collaborations with the fossil fuel industry.

Current antibiotics only address very few target proteins in bacteria to kill them. Researchers know that there are more possible target proteins to tackle the bacteria. The question is: which ones. Thanks to the NWO Vidi Grant, Assistant Professor Molecular Physiology Stephan Hacker and his team can…

Did you know that each year 18 billion animals die without making it to someone’s plate? Governance of Sustainability alumna Juliane Klaura has won the second prize for her thesis about the environmental impact of global food production. She won the prize at the university-wide master thesis award event,…

Physicist, former D66 party leader and author, mainly of children’s books, Jan Terlouw, gives three to four readings a week. Even at the age of 86 he is tireless in communicating his message: ‘We need to regain trust in one another, and we have to seek fraternity.’

With the aid of artificial intelligence (AI), care professionals at the LUMC (Leiden University Medical Center) are able to calculate quickly and accurately whether a coronavirus patient has suffered serious lung damage. They do this by putting a CT scan through the AI software of the CAD4COVID-CT p…

History lecturer Giles Scott-Smith is enthusiastic about the new pitch-to-peer programme (P2P), for which students have to make an original, creative assignment and evaluate one another’s work. This is part five in a series of articles about lecturers and innovation in teaching and learning.

All students receiving their bachelor diploma in Political Science last week had a reason or two to celebrate. Two of them especially so: they won the annual award for the best thesis in the International Relations and Organisations and the Politicologie/Internationale Politiek programmes. Congratulations,…

Do you have a creative idea for improving contacts between Dutch and international students? Work out a plan and you could win the Van Bergen Prize and earn 5,000 euros to put your idea into practice. Deadline 22 October.

Professor Maurits Berger is presenting an online course, starting on 6 November, on the images that Islam and the West hold of one another. The course will be useful for diplomats from Teheran to Islamabad.

Alireza Nouri comes from Tehran, Iran, and is currently in his third year of the bachelor’s in International Studies at Campus the Hague.

Microorganisms that temporarily ‘go to sleep’ play an important role in the evolution and survival of a population. Mathematician Shubhamoy Nandan conducted research on the effect of this characteristic called ‘dormancy’ in a novel mathematical model.

The immune system plays a paradoxical role in the spread of breast cancer. Some immune cells contribute to metastasis, while other cells can be activated to strengthen the effect of chemotherapy. Kelly Kersten made this discovery in her PhD research. PhD defence 7 February.

The city of Leiden has a unique combination of knowledge institutions. To ensure this knowledge flourishes and the city gains the maximum benefit from it, the Leiden City of Knowledge partnership was launched five years ago. A new partnership agreement will be signed on 11 November.

By making smart use of available data, the health and care of people can be substantially improved. Marco Spruit wants to use language and machine learning in the coming years to identify and solve the biggest care issues in the region of The Hague. He has been appointed Professor of Advanced Data Science…

The programme for the Leiden Asia Year in 2017 is now available. Rector Carel Stolker launched the new website www.leidenasiayear.nl at the opening of the Academic Year of Leiden University on 5 September.

Paul Hudson, a professor at Leiden University College, is organising a symposium on water management in the Netherlands and abroad that will take place on 22 March. We asked him what makes water management so important.

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…

Is polder rice a feasible circular alternative for cows on peatland? A pilot experiment started this week. On May 22nd, researchers from Leiden University and Wageningen University & Research (WUR) planted roughly 3,000 rice plants on the Polderlab near Leiden. The researchers want to test rice as a…

To give a better idea of the research at Leiden University, a new website has been launched that lists the University’s institutes together with the disciplines that they cover. But the institutes also work together intensively.

War and terrorism overshadow interest in the pre-Islamic heritage of the Arabic peninsula. The new Leiden Centre for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to make the general public more aware of the ancient history of this region.

Leiden will be scientific capital of Europe in 2022. The theme of the festivities was announce on 28 October: Who Knows. After all, does anyone have a monopoloy on wisdom these days? Who decides what is true? And does anyone actually know what the future holds?

Dear students and researchers at our institute,

Jongeren kiezen vrienden met een vergelijkbare achtergrond, zoals etniciteit en gedrag. Dit concludeert pedagoog Janna Fortuin in haar promotieonderzoek.

The immune system plays an important role in the development of atherosclerosis, the underlying cause of cardiovascular diseases. Thomas van der Heijden has discovered that immunosuppressants may play a preventative role. PhD defence 19 December.

The Edisen Foundation has won the 2016 Mr. K.J. Cath prize. This student organisation set up by two Leiden students gives lectures in care homes.

Two Leiden legal scholars have been awarded funding from the KNAW pilot fund 'Science communication by scientists: Appreciated!'. The fund supports scientists who have demonstrated a continued commitment to science communication.

During the 20th anniversary meeting of the Netherlands' Catalysis and Chemistry Conference, Marc Koper received the Netherlands Catalysis and Chemistry Award. ‘The ultimate candidate for the prize’, it says in one of the recommendation letters.