On Friday, April 5, the Ecuadorian police stormed the Mexican Embassy in Quito to arrest former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas Espinel.

It’s impossible to avoid, even in the Netherlands: the US will soon be going to the polls. Where does it come from, this fascination with US elections? PhD candidate Bram Eenink explains.

For academic year 2019-2020, an additional 270 housing units will be available for international students in Leiden and The Hague. Around 1,050 extra rooms in total will be available for students in both cities.

The Honours College Law (HC Law) is soon going to look very different. What does the HC Law currently do, and what’s going to change? Why should you apply for it? To answer these questions, we spoke to Maartje van der Woude, Designated Professor at the HC Law. She’s designing the new programme in collaboration…

Rich, white, urban: Western politicians often represent a small segment of the population. Political scientist Hélène Landemore advocates for a more inclusive democracy. She will deliver the Cleveringa Lecture on November 26.

This year, the second Hugo Weiland Thesis Prize of the Foundation for Austrian Studies has been awarded. This prize, in honour of the founder and long-standing chair of the Foundation of Mr. Weiland, is awarded to high quality theses dedicated to the history, culture, and politics of Austria and Central…

If an echo (or ultrasound) shows that a foetus has a heart or other defect, parents face difficult decisions. Then an idea of their child’s shorter and longer-term future is literally a matter of life and death. Haak will argue in her inaugural lecture that the cohort studies of rare diseases that are…

Sara Polak, PhD researcher and lecturer at LUCAS, has won a Fulbright scholarship to work on her research on Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yale University from September 2014 till February 2015.

What is the impact of terrorism? Researchers Jeanine de Roy van Zuijdewijn and Jessica Sciarone looked at ten jihadi attacks and concluded that there are major differences between European countries.

It’s about much more than learning how to write a readable piece or give a presentation that doesn’t send the audience to sleep. The intensive Science Communication Summer School gives young scientists the chance to really make contact with the public.

Leiden University is under fire: it is allegedly doing too little to tackle antisemitism. Rector Hester Bijl responds to this accusation and to a video from 2014 on social media in which extreme remarks are made. ‘We can be short about such comments: they are unacceptable. The university is and always…

Shell cooperates with theoretical physicists and chemists of Leiden University to research how quantum computer algorithms can help simulate complex molecules.

The theme for this year’s Week of the Classics (19 to 27 March) is war in Classical Antiquity. Leiden Classics scholars are organising various activities, including the popular Know-Your-Classics Pub Quiz.

As of 1 May 2018, Nicole de Voogd has been appointed as Professor by special appointment Global change and marine ecosystems at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML). She is currently senior researcher at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the field of tropical marine ecosystems.

While investigating 16 years of images of young stars from a retired astronomical camera, Leiden master's student Sam de Regt discovered that two of those stars were still enveloped in birth clouds. Never before has anyone captured these two stars in so much detail. He publishes his data-cleaning method…

The James Webb Space Telescope has found evidence of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere of a giant planet 700 light years away. This result provides insight into the composition and formation of this gas giant and shows what James Webb is capable of. The research by the international group of astronomers,…

The number of students suffering from stress and anxiety has decreased slightly compared with 2021. But around half still suffer from mental health problems. This is according to the National Mental Health and Substance Use Monitor.

Happy students and proud families, friends and lecturers; on 13 July the first fifteen refugee students graduated from the Preparatory Year for teaching in Leiden. They started a programme in September at a Dutch university of applied sciences or an academic university. 'This is just the start!'

During last summer, the Faculty of Law offered an Honours Class about the theme 'Governing Crime and Migration'. Hillary Mellinger, one of the participating international students, tells us about her experiences.

How did early humans use their hands, and what can that tell us about our shared past? Cora Leder, newly awarded recipient of the NWO PhD in the Humanities grant, is set to find out.

For the first time in the Netherlands, an exotic insect species is released into the wild to combat a harmful plant species. The Japanese knotweed psyllid should offer relief against the rampant Asian knotweed. Suzanne Lommen of the Institute of Biology Leiden coordinates the field trials.

Markus Altena Davidsen was 'extremely happy' when he heard that he and his colleagues had been awarded a grant from the KNAW pilot fund for science communication. Together with partners from all over the country, they are working on a book that should inspire secondary schools to renew their education…

An international team of astronomers has published the most sensitive images of the Universe ever taken at low radio frequencies, using the International Low Frequency Array (LOFAR). ‘LOFAR is unique in its ability to make high-quality images of the sky at metre-wavelengths’, said Huub Röttgering, Leiden…

It was more than two years in the making, but despite the delays, giving up was not an option. In May, eighteen staff members of LUCAS and the Faculty of Archaeology visited NIMAR.

When can a patient be discharged from intensive care? Artificial intelligence can help answer this and other questions. But using such revolutionary technology in healthcare is not easy, as Anne de Hond has discovered.

Professor Henk te Velde started as interim dean of the Faculty of Humanities on 1 March. Mark Rutgers' successor is faced with the task of getting the faculty back to financial health.

Last July, after the end of my Advanced LLM in Public International Law, I wanted to find new tasks to prove myself on topics related to what I studied during my stimulating master in the Netherlands. In the impossibility to work “on the field” as I was busy for my bar exam in my own country and I was…

Young people are particularly susceptible to misleading information on social media. Yet insights from developmental psychology show that they also have unique strengths to build resilience. In new research led by developmental psychologist Ili Ma, scientists, schools, parents and policy makers are…

Minority governments only become an option when attempts to form a government collapse. PhD candidate Corné Smit explored why such governments have become rare in the Netherlands and what advantages they might offer. ‘Broad majority coalitions often fail to make substantial progress on key issues.’

On 8 December, in honour of Human Rights Week, Roeland Böcker gave a public lecture about his experiences as ambassador to the Council of Europe. Between 2017 and 2021, Roeland Böcker was the representative of the Netherlands in the Council of Europe.

How are people of color represented in art collections? And do young people of color feel that museum collections reflect their norms and values? Developmental psychologist Carolien Rieffe is invited to serve on the Expert Group ‘Musea bekennen kleur’ because of her knowledge of children and young p…

The Faculty of Science has presented an infographic with tips and tricks for work stress. The reason for this was the Personnel Monitor 2018, which showed that work pressure is a problem for many employees at the Faculty. ‘It is important to start the discussion about work pressure, and to break the…

A Dutch consortium has received €6.7 million to accelerate the development of nanomedicines together with patients. Researchers from Leiden University play a key role in the project.

Security in the broadest sense of the word was the key focus in the Interfaculty Conference on 4 April in Leiden. With almost 200 attendees and such well-known speakers as Dick Schoof, Pieter van Vollenhoven and Ad Verbrugge, the first conference was a success.

In a speech on Keti Koti the Dutch king, Willem-Alexander, apologised on behalf of the royal family for the Netherlands’ historical role in slavery. What is the significance of this?

It is late June, and on a windy meadow north of Leiden known as the Vrouw Vennepolder a group of archaeology students just hit the last ice age. Considering this involves manually pushing a ground core to a depth of 10 meters, this is no small feat. Even so, the taking of ground samples in this, at…

Research using the ALMA telescope by scientists including Leiden's John Tobin and Steven Bos has produced the first images of the water snow line within a protoplanetary disc. Publication in Nature on 14 July.

For the first time ever, Leiden biologists have found that the ‘nose’ of spirochetes – worm-shaped bacteria – have a two-fold symmetry. A remarkable discovery, as the ‘nose’ of every other bacterium has been found to have a six-fold symmetry. First author Alise Muok wrote a popular blog about the findings…

How do children learn to see the world through someone else’s perspective? Max van Duijn, assistant professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), receives 24,167 euros from the Elise Mathilde Foundation and the Leiden University Fund (LUF). With this grant he will set up a…

December 2020 saw the crowning publication of the Landscapes of Survival project by Professor Peter Akkermans. Its main topic is human habitation in marginal environments like the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. ‘The people living here built their own society, and they would not have viewed it as…

Since the beginning of September, it is a fact: our faculty has a new strategic plan. The plan outlines what we will collectively commit to in the coming years. Is that important? For sure, say our directors Suzanne van der Pluijm (Operations) and Bart de Smit (Education). ‘The purpose of a strategic…

Are magnetic fields older than the first light? And how did they influence the development of our universe right after the Big Bang? Cosmologists from Leiden, Groningen, and Utrecht are now collaborating to investigate this.

Dialysis patients experience a range of physical and mental symptoms that interact and influence each otherIn her doctoral research, psychologist Judith Tommel wanted to find the optimum approach to help these dialysis patients improve their quality of life. ‘We need to make sure we avoid excluding…

The energy transition ranks high on the European policy agenda, but what does it take to get there? René Kleijn researches how we can extract, use and reuse raw materials in a responsible way. Since 1 March, he has been appointed professor of Resilient resource supply.

Starting your PhD during two major crisis in your country; it happened to Kamaran Palani, PhD student at the Dual PhD Centre and ISGA who lives in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. In spite of the difficulties in his county, Palani (34) stuck to his PhD-research about the fluidity…

Rapid developments in DNA techniques allow researchers to find out more and more about human genetics. An international group of scientists has drawn up five ethical guidelines to ensure that this DNA research is better regulated. Leiden archaeologist Marie Soressi – one of the signatories - explains…

The brain is a complex organ, and researching medicine to treat brain disorders is equally if not more complex. Elizabeth (Liesbeth) de Lange, Professor of Predictive Pharmacology, calls for a structured approach. ‘In effect, it's like playing Mastermind.’ Inaugural lecture on 22 March.

Leiden physicists have been awarded 1.5 million euros for developing a hybrid microscope that provided nanometer-resolution. 'The idea is to combine the resolution of electron microscopy with the pros of optical microscopes.'

We need to dispel the arrogant and misguided idea that modern humans are superior to earlier human species. It is thanks in part to all our predecessors such as Neanderthals that we are who we are today. This is what Marie Soressi, Professor of Hominin Diversity Archaeology, will argue in her inaugural…

Certain cichlid fish in Lake Victoria seem to have adapted super-fast to changing circumstances. Dr Frans Witte from the Integrative Zoology section has been awarded an NWO subsidy (approx. € 240,000) to carry out PhD research into the rapid changes apparent in this fish species.