On Thursday 10 January a number of prizes were presented to researchers and students.

What is ‘teaching excellence’ in Higher Education? Which different teaching excellence training, promotion and reward schemes exist across Europe? How can a common European teaching scheme look like? The e-NOTE project led by Leiden University with the participation of Charles University and other partners…

Latin America matters! With its rich history, culture, its impressive resilience and creative innovation in the face of such a diverse array of challenges, Latin America can indeed show the way forward inspiring for positive change. Working together with Latin American institutions, our researchers…

Psychologist Floor van Meer won the first Trial & Error Award for her research on the effect of being distracted while eating on eating behavior. This award from the Journal of Trial & Error (JOTE) honors the often underappreciated aspect of research: learning from errors. For her publication, Van Meer…

Prof. C. Bakels is an archaeobotanist who devoted most of her career researching farming, its (pre)history and influence on the landscape. Born in 1942, she got her first appointment as a lecturer at Leiden University in 1968. On Monday 16 April, we celebrated her 50th work anniversary.

Scientific research, heritage management and public outreach intertwined.

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…

Elif Naz Kayran and Anna-Lena Nadler have received the European Political Science Review (EPSR) Prize for early career scholars.

On the 6th of December, Buurtlab 070 and the Leiden University Green Office (LUGO) hosted an event at the Spinozahof in the Stationsbuurt, bringing students and local residents together to explore energy (in)justice through the serious game Sunjust.

Heritage Quest is a large-scale citizen science project in the field of archaeology that allows anyone to contribute to scientific research. It is the first large-scale archaeological citizen science project in The Netherlands and one of the few of its kind in the world. As part of the Cultural Heritage…

Leiden University has written an advisory report at the request of the Ministry of Justice and Security on a legislative bill to improve legal protection in youth protection. The report acknowledges the improvements that the proposed legislation would bring, but also provides criticism.

How can you increase the effectiveness of inspectors using responsible artificial intelligence (AI)? This is the question the Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence (ICAI) Lab AI4Oversight is tackling. By developing algorithms and methods, they try to provide optimal support for, for example,…

Research conducted by the University of Leiden and the University of Curaçao found that the rights of undocumented children in Curaçao, mostly from Venezuela, are severely under threat, which does not trigger rigorous actions by the Curaçaoan and Dutch authorities.

Gelderland Heritage and Leiden University’s Faculty of Archaeology have won the European Heritage Award / Europa Nostra Award 2022 in the ‘research’ category with the Heritage Quest citizen science project. ‘Heritage Quest has shown that citizens can play an active role in protecting cultural heritage…

On Tuesday, September 17th, the Dutch king, Willem-Alexander, will present the plans of the new government of the Netherlands. This government’s aspirations, led by the party (PVV) of right-wing nationalist Geert Wilders, are mostly defined by budget cuts. One of the sectors receiving such budget cuts…

Cancer treatments often have an impact on people’s sexual health, but doctors and nurses do not discuss topics such as sexuality and intimacy with patients as a matter of course. This is what Esmée Krouwel, a physician-researcher at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), has discovered. With her research…

During eye contact, people tend to mirror the pupil size of the person they are conversing with. This social mechanism is related to the trust an individual has in the person they are talking to, according to research by psychologists at Leiden University. Publication in PNAS.

Neanderthals used careful techniques to hunt their prey at close range. This is the conclusion of an international team of archaeologists, including researchers, in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. Publication 25 June.

Like spoken languages, sign languages evolve organically and do not always have the same origin. This produces different ways of communication and annotation. Manolis Fragkiadakis wrote his PhD thesis on this.

During the ‘intelligent lockdown’ in the Netherlands this spring, the respondents in a Leiden study reported a mild increase in their stress levels. This extra stress could have a negative effect on families, particularly if parents already had psychological problems before the corona crisis.

Leiden University celebrates its 444th anniversary in 2019, and a special age requires a special logo. The logo for the celebration was designed by Clara Lezla, a student at the Royal Academy of Art The Hague.

Next year in July Leiden University will receive around 1,500 Asia experts from around the world, for the 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 11). This is the world's biggest Asia meeting. Besides an academic programme, the convention also offers an extensive cultural programme for…

For her bachelor’s thesis, Molecular Science and Technology student Madouc Bergers synthesized her own molecule that can inhibit the breakdown of sugars. Although most students do not even manage to make one building block, Madouc made three. Partly because of this, she has been nominated for the Science…

A perfect world, who doesn't want that? But what is perfect is debatable. What is great for one person is disastrous for another. PhD student Zeynep Anli took a closer look at dreams for the future by looking at gender-separated utopias.

The Indonesian government has been trying to enforce marriage and divorce laws for some time. These efforts are encountering resistance from both local communities and the Indonesian Supreme Court. PhD candidate Al Farabi investigated where this resistance comes from.

Het onderzoeksproject heeft als doel ouders te helpen hun kleuters gezonde eetgewoonten aan te leren door het bevorderen van sensitieve voeding tijdens de fase wanneer peuters kieskeurig met eten worden.

At the beginning of March 2020, the Dutch Taskforce for Applied Research (SIA) awarded Daan Weggemans of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs a research grant. The Taskforce is part of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

With the help of software that mimics a human brain, ESA’s Gaia satellite spotted six stars zipping at high speed from the centre of our Galaxy to its outskirts. This could provide key information about some of the most obscure regions of the Milky Way.

For hundreds of years, children in Ancient Egypt learned to read using The Satire of the Trades, a text in which a father gives advice to his son through descriptions of different professions. PhD candidate Judith Jurjens investigated how this worked in practice.

To truly help citizens, professionals sometimes need to dare to deviate from the rules. That was the main message during the meeting on ‘rebellious professionals’ in healthcare and well-being, held on 15 October in The Hague.

Darinka Piqani is one of the researchers in the interdisciplinary research project 'The Challenge of Enforcing Rule of Law in International Organizations: Winning the Public and Resisting Populist Attacks'

LUCSoR alumnus Bas van Rijn was awarded the Fritz Stolz-Preis on 7 June 2024 for his PhD Dissertation “The Experimental Culture of Afterlife Research: Attempts by Spiritual Animal Magnetizers to Prove Life after Death”.

Dr Moritz Jesse (Associate Professor at the Department of European law) spoke at a symposium organised at Oxford Brooks University. The symposium, which took place in October 2022, dealt with the question in how far integration of economic immigrants can be facilitated by the Law and the application…

Language is a little bit like owning a mobile phone. We use it all the time, but we don’t really understand how it works. Where is language located in our brain? Do all humans have language? These and many other questions will be answered by professor Marc van Oostendorp in the MOOC Miracles of Human…

At the transition of the Neolithic to Bronze Age, a societal clash took place between a male dominated oligarchy (also known as the patriarchy) and the matriarchy. The latter managed to exploit vulnerabilities in the 'bro-code' to reboot society's operating system.

As Real As You Want is a group exhibition focusing on navigating the virtual and real spaces, experiences and conversations.

Two AI research projects receive funding; one in the field of oncology and one in the field of cardiology.

Elina Zorina presented her work-in-progress on “Distinctiveness in the Parliamentary Arena: Consequences for Vote Choice” during the GTGC lunch seminar on the 1st of May. Please find the abstract below:

Leiden Scientists are getting prepared to tackle future epidemics. A group of scientists led by Dr. Alireza Mashaghi has used innovative engineering approaches to make the first “Lassa Hemorrhagic Syndrome on-a-Chip”. World Health Organization has listed Lassa fever among diseases that pose the greatest…

In Vietnam, foreign trade and culture are pervasive. Therefore, the need arises for students to learn more about cultural differences and intercultural communication. Tran Tran’s (PhD at ICLON) research focused on improving training in intercultural communication in Vietnamese higher education. Defence…

On December 12th & 13th composer and doublebass-player Christopher Williams will defend his thesis Tactile Paths to obtain his doctoral degree.

The Executive Board has appointed Professor Harold Linnartz as Professor of Laboratory Physics with effect from 1 June 2011. Linnartz has worked since 2005 as senior lecturer at the Leiden Observatory.

ACPA alumna Dr. Itandehui Jansen is currently working on a new experimental film. The project researches sustainable filmmaking approaches, while exploring Indigenous Futurisms through film practice. The project is a continuation of Jansen’s research for the AHRC scoping project Sustainable Materials…

New research project “(Musical) Improvisation and Ethics”, recently awarded 1.7 million Euros by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)’s Young Independent Researcher Group program.

At the conference Surrealism and Scotland on 23 and 24 March, Janice McNab will share the paper ‘Surrealism and the making of Mother’.

Based on the results of a language-switching experiment, PhD candidate Fatemeh (Simeen) Tabassi Mofrad MA and Professor Niels Schiller have discovered that the traditional categorisation of brain areas is not sufficient. They published their research findings in the scientific journal NeuroImage.

From prow to stern, this little boat measures 30 micrometers, about a third of the thickness of a hair. It has been 3D-printed by Leiden physicists Rachel Doherty, Daniela Kraft and colleagues.

Within the scope of Leiden European City of Science, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) presented the quadrennial Lorentz Medal to Daan Frenkel in the Academy Building yesterday. The ceremony was in collaboration with the Lorentz Center and was attended by Robbert Dijkgraaf, Minister…

Thomas Hansen is the recipient of the 2020 KNCV-Backer Prize for best organic chemistry thesis in the Netherlands.

The newly launched NWO funded research project ‘Bridging art, design and technology through Critical Making’ aims to interrogate Critical Making by experimentally applying it to a broad range of artistic practices.