Twenty years from now, the world population is estimated to be around 9 billion people (now 8 billion). In combination with the improvements in living standards and the corresponding growth in consumption, this population will result in an enormous increase in the demand for food, consumables, water…

Adoptees in the Netherlands generally do not use more medication than their non-adopted peers.

To get a feeling of how we operate at LED3 when it comes to Early Drug Discovery, please browse through our case studies. When you select a case study you’ll find relevant contacts.

An international team led by Leiden astronomers has discovered diverse ices in the darkest, coldest regions of a molecular cloud. To do so, they used the James Webb Space Telescope. This discovery allows astronomers to examine the simple icy molecules that will be incorporated into future exoplanets,…

On 11 and 12 September 2025, a conference will take place at the KU Leuven, titled: "Canonical Life in Western Europe in the Long Tenth Century: Reforms, Identities and Intellectual Networks (Late Ninth Century - c. 1050)." The organisers invite paper proposals of max. 400 words in English or French,…

Speculation about alien life, a new nitrogen map, AI as a thesis supervisor, groundbreaking telescopes and multi-million-euro investments to combat antimicrobial resistance – the diversity of these topics shows that our readers are just as broadly interested as our researchers. Discover the most-read…

Shortly before Remembrance Day, a new film was launched about the life and legacy of Ben Telders. Telders was professor of Dutch Law at Leiden University at the start of the Second World War; he was imprisoned in a concentration camp on account of of his protest against the Nazis.

The first index to measure product safety, sustainability, and circularity, operationalising the EU’s (SSbD) framework.

For thousands of years, societies have fallen under the reign of a single leader, ruling as chief, king, or emperor. In this fascinating global history of medieval and early modern dynastic power, Jeroen Duindam charts the rise and fall of dynasties, the rituals of rulership, and the contested presence…

My artistic practice deals with documents and, more specifically, with the use and the exploration of their narrative potential.

Hydrogen fuel cells are expected to be pivotal in the energetic transition towards renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. However, their industrial scalability is severely hindered by the high cost and degradation rate of platinum catalysts, one of their key components. Addressing this…

L1-oral language education is widely regarded as essential for developing communicative competence and critical thinking. However, as a research domain it remains relatively underexplored. The aim of this study was to identify effective elements and challenges within oral language education and to contribute…

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.K. Richardson

This research delves into a region of space known as the interstellar medium (ISM), which is essentially the area between the stars filled with gas and dust.

Striga hermonthica, commonly known as witchweed, infests major cereal crops in Sub-Saharan Africa causing severe yield losses and threatening the livelihood of millions of resource poor farmers.

Promotor: E.F. Smets Co-promotor: J. Geml

The research of the Applied Mathematics cluster is concerned with such diverse topics as dynamical systems, representation theory, differential equations and pattern recognition.

Where did species survive the cold cycles of the current Ice Age?

Promotor: W.T. de Groot

Streptomyces are multicellular, Gram-positive bacteria in the phylum of actinobacteria which produce a high amount of bioactive natural products of which the expression is tightly coordinated with the life cycle.

Plants and soils from natural ecosystems harbor great diversity of soil microorganisms, which could potentially contribute to the sustainability of horticulture. The knowledge about using wild plant species and soil from natural ecosystem to improve the crop health will advance the application of ecological…

Human civilization consumes a huge amount of fossil fuels, which has resulted in an atmospheric CO2 level which has not been higher in over 800 millennia.

Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) are mechanical waves that travel along the surface of a material and find many applications in modern technologies due to the ease of excitation on piezoelectric substrates via interdigital transducers (IDTs).

Changing burial rites in Early Medieval Northern Gaul, 450-600 CE

Research and design are two activities that are becoming increasingly important in the Dutch subjects O&O (‘research and design’) and NLT ('nature, life and technology’). The dissertation of Tessa Vossen (ICLON and Faculty of Science) indicates that teachers and students understand the importance of…

This dissertation revolves around the design and implementation of novel instrumentation and related measurement techniques, at the single molecule level, for use in biophysical research. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the field of fluorescence-based single molecule measurements. In particular,…

Understanding the water use of power production is an important step to both a sustainable energy transition and an improved understanding of water conservation measures. However, there are large differences across the literature that currently present barriers to decision making.

Leiden University is established in two cities: Leiden and The Hague.

How do mycobacteria subvert the defenses of host immune cells?

Fungal food spoilage often starts with a contamination with spores. Experimental data strongly indicate the existence of subpopulations of spores with different levels of resistance to preservation methods.

The electrochemical oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is an essential half-reaction for the utilization of hydrogen as a sustainable fuel, via the conversion of hydrogen to electrons and protons facilitated by the ORR. In the most common fuel cells, the ORR is requires high loadings of non-abundant platinum…

Vitamin A or retinol is essential in embryonic development, the visual cycle and the immune system.

Bacteriophages, or phages for short, are the most abundant biological entity in nature. They shape bacterial communities and are a major driving force in bacterial evolution.

Promotores: Prof.dr. G.W. Canters, Prof.dr. T.J. Aartsma

How did Anglo-Saxons reflect on the experience of growing old? Was it really a golden age for the elderly, as has been suggested?

This work is dedicated to interpreting in cohomological terms the special values of zeta functions of arithmetic schemes.

Leiden Law School has a methods portal that offers an overview of the various phases of empirical legal research.

On 20 January 2022, Marco Stam defended the thesis 'Essays on Welfare Benefits, Employment, and Crime'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. M.G. Knoef.

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.P. van Wezel

On 13 October 2021 Ross Spence defended the thesis 'Collateral Transactions and Shadow Banking'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. M. Haentjens and Prof. A.M. Pacces (UvA).

On 22 June, Chalermwut Sriporm defended the thesis 'Franchising legal frameworks: a comparative study of the DCFR, US law and Australian law regarding franchise contracts'. The doctoral research was supervised by Jacob Hijma and Iris Houben.

Kuba funerary art from the Congo River Basin

Professor Kees Waaldijk presented the report on the LawsAndFamilies Database to Pearl Dykstra, member of the High Level Group of Scientific Advisors of the European Commission on 25 April. This comparative study shows that in European countries same-sex partners are increasingly gaining equal rights.…

Young people spend a lot of their time online. Even so, we still know very little about how this intensive use of social media influences their development. Brain researcher and Spinoza Prize winner Eveline Crone from Leiden University and media psychologist Elly Konijn (VU) describes what the research…

The Just Peace Festival's first edition is live! The Opening Event marked the beginning of two weeks filled with activities to reflect on what peace and justice mean in today's world.

Most students do not have to deal with death on a daily basis. A Bachelor Honours Class about this specific topic seems to be a special experience: the discussions about end-of-life care are tough, and students are broken out of their comfort zone. They nevertheless agree upon one thing: these are all…

How adolescents perceive parenting is related to their mood. Differences between the perspectives of parents and adolescents are also of importance for adolescents’ mood. That is what research by Loes Janssen and her Leiden University colleagues in Clinical Psychology shows. Open Access publication…

‘A challenging rollercoaster, but also a very bonding and insightful experience,’ that’s how the team of iGEM Leiden 2022 wraps up their participation in the iGEM contest. The contest for synthetic biology climaxed during the Grand Jamboree in Paris. The team ended up in the top 10 of over 360 teams…

As a mathematician, Fred Rohde (1948) explored the world of numbers. As a photographer, he captured demonstrations. And now he’s reconstructing his mother’s wartime story – an extraordinary tale of her stay with an Austrian family, the inventors of asbestos cement.