Nowadays, most Europeans speak a language belonging to the Indo-European language family. However, very different languages were spoken on our continent before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. The EUROLITHIC project tries to find answers to the question which languages these were and where they came…

Artistic research has come of age, and with it the Orpheus Institute. Founded twenty years ago, the Institute’s purpose from the start has been to pursue research through the practice of musicians.

We are interested in understanding the mechanics of soft materials, of which biological materials are prominent examples.

Barrie Sander identifies different categories of risks and concern of relying on artificial intelligence technologies to confront climate change.

To what extent is creative ownership in contemporary (graphic) design practices changing now that we are co-creating with machines? And can machines have copyrights, too?

The IEG specialisation prepares you with knowledge and understanding of the key concepts and theories of management, decision-making processes and implementation in EU and international institutions.

The programme consists of four fields of study which are outlined below.

With the powerful electron microscopes at NeCEN we study abnormalities in cells of blood vessels in cardiovascular disease, the interaction between pathogens and hosts in infectious diseases, molecular processes that cause cancer and the interaction between drugs and target proteins. Drug development…

Leiden University provides ambitious students with the most recent and innovative areas of knowledge, and offers them the freedom to develop their own area of expertise.

This is the most recent Green Team! We're so excited to gather new members and make a difference at the FSW faculty. Join today!

The Guava Platform, which is at the centre of this PhD thesis, was initiated in 2014 as a conceptual framework of my art practice and research. The aim of the Guava Platform is to research and create possible techniques of art-actions that are part of my quest to continue to live in the conflicted landscape,…

This research cluster is a part of the Institute of Political Science’s research programme ‘Institutions, Decisions and Collective Behaviour’. Its members study the design and functioning of Dutch political institutions as well as attitudes and behaviour of political elites and citizens.

In this dissertation, a corpus of 595 seventeenth-century letters (mainly private ones) written between 1664 and 1672 is examined from a sociolinguistic perspective.

This PhD project investigates how grammatical features and lexical elaboration in Fulfulde Juguureere reflect aspects of cattle culture.

Leiden University opened its doors in 1575 – the very first university in the Netherlands. The law faculty was involved from the start and so in 2025 we, too, celebrated our 450th anniversary.

Comparative and Dutch Politics is one of the three organisational clusters of the Institute of Political Science.

On Wednesday 24 September 2025 Marija Šerić successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

INTERDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIUM

The LUCDH foster the development of new digital research by awarding a number of Small Grants each year. As in previous years the LUCDH received a large number of excellent grant applications for Research and Personal Development funds. Congratulations to the recipients of this year's research award…

We bring science to your home! Join our online study called Biological Motion study!

What are the patterns and processes of human mobility in the pre-colonial circum-Caribbean as revealed by burial populations and what are the underlying motives and socio-cultural principles on both micro- and macro-scales?

Would you like to do something for the victims of the war in Ukraine? Several actions have been set up to help the people in Ukraine. Read below what you can do.

In his dissertation Gabriel Paiuk explores the variable ways in which what is heard is formed. To address this, he postulates a novel concept of sound image in a post-anthropocentric context in which both mind and material artefacts are instances across which the image occurs, rather than hosts on which…

How do first-hand narratives of war of commanders in the front line relate to the official narrative of the Eighty Years’ War?

Bacteria in the teeth tell us a lot about nutrition and disease in our ancestors. It also tells us more about the immune system. This provides clues for treating modern diseases and allergies. For a long time archaeologists were irritated by tartar on the teeth of excavated skulls. They thought that…

Update : March 2020 A.J. Mills

The aim of the research project is to get insight in the biostratigraphical age and the palaeoecological setting of the Schöningen sites and hominin behavior and subsistence during the late Lower Palaeolithic.

How did colonial law work to turn people into property? This project argues that colonial ideas about households and domestic authority were critical to legal processes of enslavement in the early modern Dutch empire. Using colonial court records from Dutch Brazil, Suriname, and the Moluccas, the project…

On this page you find all the ways through which the Institute of Psychology aims to foster Open Science.

At LUCIS we offer a varied programme of scholarly meetings (conferences, workshops) which reflect our multidisciplinary and comparative view on Islam and Muslim societies in past and present.

Below you can find lists of Leiden-based and international organizations working on Central Asia, and an overview of useful resources on Central Asia.

As far back as 1575, Leiden University researchers have been leaving their mark on the world.

A neural network mimics how our brain works. Evolutionary algorithms use the principle of natural selection to solve complex problems. This kind of 'natural computing' is being used to improve the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease or the production of steel.

What is better for waste recycling: a plastic, paper or ceramic cup? A bio-based or fossil-based coating? Waste sorting at the source or at a recycling facility? Ask ten experts and you will get ten different opinions. We can all agree on one thing: doing nothing is not an option. Thus, Leiden University…

Whereas when we started the first Project the chief aim was pure research, to find out more about the past in a region, now we see that the countries of Europe are faced with the great problem that there are far too many archaeological sites for them to deal with by excavation, but yet some kind of…

This project’s aim is to critically assess current homicide data sources in order to develop a proposal for long-term EU-level monitoring of DRH.

Archiving Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeological Fieldwork Data from the Eastern Mediterranean (600-2000)

The research project MAXCAP: Maximizing the integration capacity of the European Union: Lessons and prospects for enlargement and beyond starts with a critical analysis of the effects of the 2004-2007 enlargement on stability, democracy and prosperity of candidate countries, on the one hand, and the…

What was the name, the appearance, development and the playing technique of the cello in the Low Countries between 1600 and 1800 and what music was composed for it?

Conference

The majority of scientists, from archaeologists through to zoologists, collect enormous volumes of data. Their massive databases contain large amounts of information which is difficult for humans to filter. With a solid grounding in statistics and computer science, we can develop algorithms for analyzing…

In July 2022, Leiden hosted the ESOF conference.

Leiden University has been promoting studies on Latin America and the Caribbean for a long time.

Leiden University offers ambitious students the latest knowledge and the freedom to develop their own area of expertise.

The university is making its campuses future-proof with measures for climate adaptation and biodiversity. You can read in the Sustainability Implementation Agenda 2023–2026 how we harvest rainwater, limit heat stress and make more room for greenery.