Knowledge on how to adjust a drug dose in special patient populations such as (prematurely born) neonates or children, obese individuals or critically-ill patients, is not only crucial for novel compounds, but also for existing drugs which are often used in an off-label manner in these special patient…

What are the genes and molecular mechanisms involved in bacteria-mediated plant drought tolerance?

How can the emergence of primary justice systems be facilitated and furthered?

Southern Crossings: Indian activists and the Afro-Asian movement in the early Cold War era

How do we approach education that facilitates creative confidence for students that leads to innovative solutions to society’s present day and future sustainability challenges? This education research project tackles a sustainability dilemma faced by households in everyday life viz.

Hegemony and World Order explores a key question for our tumultuous times of multiple global crises.

Death, fire and identity in North-West Europe

Early Modern Medievalisms: The Interplay between Scholarly Reflection and Artistic Production

Marten Soolmans (1613-1641) studied law in Leiden at the same time that Rembrandt lived in the city. Rembrandt painted Soolmans and his wife Oopjen in 1634, after all three had moved to Amsterdam. This remarkable portrait of the sumptuously dressed Soolmans can be seen at the Kamerlingh Onnes Building,…

How did learned natural historical inquiries into the underwater world develop in eighteenth-century Europe?

This interdisciplinary project explores the promise and perils of human rights as a suitable framework for addressing the challenges posed by the governance of digital platforms.

The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.

Can positive peer feedback break the cycle of negative self-relevant cognitive processes and reduce self-reported anxiety in early adolescents?

Following its foundation in 1575, Leiden University was quick to incorporate Roman goddess Minerva in its coat of arms. This explains why Rembrandt’s Minerva from 1635 can be seen on the façade of the Academy Building, which has been in use by the University since 1581. This is where, in the Senate…

What are the career prospects after the PhD?

Are UN sanctions regimes in need of further formalization in terms of substantive design, procedural architecture and with a view to regulating and governing the interplay with other regimes?

Almost three years after receiving her honorary doctorate, Dr Graça Machel returned to Leiden University. Over the course of two days she spoke with students, researchers, and other interested persons, about human rights – particularly those of women and children – in a world in which these are continually…

Aesthetic formations and cultural repertoires give meaning to our reality in ways that are never neutral. Focusing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and its global interlocutors, this project brings together a team of scholars from Leiden University who bring in inter-disciplinary, inter-area…

The research programme Statistical Science is concerned with the analysis and interpretation of masses of data, the quantification of uncertainty using probability models, and the development and benchmarking of algorithms and methods with these aims.

A mere day after setting foot ashore in the Bahamas on October 13th 1492, Christopher Columbus notes the broad foreheads of the inhabitants of the Americas. These permanently altered cranial shapes are deliberately created through the application of pressure to the head of the infant in the first years…

How to strike a balance between the sometimes conflicting stakes of individual, public and private data-producers and data-processors?

This research intends to study the why, what, how and the possible outcome of internationalisation in higher education institutions of fine art and design.

To what extent and in what manner can experimental video be used to reclaim the capacity for telling one’s own story, on one's own terms, speaking in tongues outside the linguistic framework of immune system discourse?

How do urban residents in Brazil and the Netherlands (The Hague and Leiden) perceive the cultural benefits of urban forests? How are these benefits spatially distributed across cities? How do socio-demographic factors shape these perceptions, and do these differences vary between countries?

Can a virtual character’s friendly non-verbal responses stimulate eye-contact in individuals with varying levels of social anxiety?

What is the optimal way to utilise intermediate assessment in improving study behaviour and study success?

In this special edition of Information Polity there is a focus on the transparency challenges of using algorithms in government in decision-making procedures at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels.

Researchers at Leiden Observatory study the fundamental physics that creates structure in the Universe. These processes collect matter into galaxies and gas into stars. With the use of powerful telescopes and advanced calculations and computer simulations, Leiden astronomers seek to understand the origin,…

Research into the development of privacy-friendly care games for children.

This project focuses on vocational teachers’ professional development in work placement. Teachers’ learning motivation, learning experience and learning outcomes within work placement will be explored in depth.

More than 600 staff members and students of Leiden University did not survive the war. Two of them were Caroline van Loen and Elsa Oppenheim .

Which basic characteristics and skills and knowledge influence the use of and actions based on real-time student data presented on a teacher dashboard in primary education?

Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on Eastern Cuisine and Western Foodways

This paper examines cyber intelligence in the context of national and international security.

This five year research project aimed to investigate the role of minor central places in the economy of Roman Central Italy.

This project looks at material culture to better understand the character and organization of Roman colonial society in the Republican period, with a focus on the colony of Aesernia (founded 263 BC) in Samnium (modern-day Molise, Italy). What impact did the foundation of the colony have on precolonial…

Playing the piano with your forearm, plucking the strings, sawing through the piano: pianist Luk Vaes's doctoral dissertation covers all the techniques of play for which a piano is NOT designed. His defence ceremony will consist of three concerts and a public defence. 'Musicians were using the interior…

Research in and through art is an inseparable part of the artistic or design practice of the researcher. Consequently, research-in-art (as opposed to research-about-art, such as art history) does not have a set goal or expected result, nor are there predetermined general procedures. The outcome of the…

The emergence of the Köprülü household that imprinted its stamp on the latter half of the seventeenth century in the Ottoman Empire. What is the power struggle they carried out against Ottoman dynastic power?

How do different communities of residents in The Hague perceive and manage food waste in relation to citizenship (rights and responsibilities)?

The Faculty of Archaeology

Landscapes of mobility in the northern Chilean altiplano: from chiefly networks to colonial markets (AD 1100-1800).

The year 2019 is the 444th anniversary of the University’s ‘birth’ and the 350th anniversary of painter, draughtsman and engraver Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). Reason therefore to celebrate both 444 years of Leiden University and Rembrandt Year. But what was the connection between Rembrandt, the most…

The Liveable Planet programme assists scientists and local communities in taking up a collective responsibility to develop in a sustainable way. This is done together with a lot of scientist from various disciplines.

The main question of this research project concerns the extent to which light verbs in West Germanic languages participate in processes of language change.

Leiden University is building on its future in Leiden. As a means to achieving this aim, the University will be investing in excess of 100 million euros over the coming years in constructing the new accommodation for the Faculty of Humanities at Witte Singel and Doelensteeg. The University aims with…

Develop a tool to assess land tenure, access to land and, and land tenure conflict in Timor-Leste

During the 1980s and early 2000s, authors like Alex Schmid and Andrew Silke demonstrated the paucity of first-hand insights being used to study terrorism and the consequences this had for the reliability of the findings beings presented. But to what extent have these issues endured?

Our project focuses on the analysis of decision-making processes in the European Union (EU) and explores how approaches and tools to understand decision-making found in both the Natural and the Social Sciences can be linked, knowledge between these traditions exchanged and synergies utilized. To explore…

During international training-sessions for judges on the JudgeCo project by the end of 2014, the LLS-team received several questions on the meaning of a protocol within the framework of international insolvencies. It appeared to be an obscure phenomenon. The LLS team promised to conduct a study on the…