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Promotor: J.N. Kok, Co-promotor: F.J. Verbeek

China is a one-party regime, yet elections are held for the local congresses. PhD candidate Wang Zhongyuan investigated how the Communist Party uses this democratic instrument to strengthen the authoritarian regime. PhD defence 31 January.

What do scholars do when they talk about virtues (impartiality, accuracy) or vices (dogmatism, prejudice)?

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is among the cancers with the highest mortality rate, despite a relatively low incidence.

Learn about PhD research at Leiden University’s Institute for Philosophy: information for current and prospective candidates, supervision, and academic development within the Faculty of Humanities.

Two Cleveringa books from Theo ten Kate's law library were donated to Leiden University by grandson Sebastiaan ten Kate on 24 November. They are the dissertations of W. Hugenholtz and J.G.L Röder, both PhD students of Rudolph Cleveringa. Ten Kate: 'The University is the right place for the books. Here,…

It is time for the international community to put a stop to war crimes – especially against medical personnel, argued international chair of Doctors Without Borders Joanne Liu in her Cleveringa lecture.

On December 3, 2024, Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey delivered a Cleveringa Lecture in Vienna. Cramsey was the special guest of the Dutch Ambassador to Austria, Mr. Peter Potman.

Navigation Lab Leiden has launched a study on the effects of the navigation training program we have developed, called Wayfinder. Milan van der Kuil is the main researcher on this project and studies how navigation ability can be improved in patients with acquired brain injury.

Metamaterials have properties that depend on their shape and architecture. Researchers at AMOLF, Leiden University and Tel Aviv University have found a new way of designing these metamaterials and their properties by deliberately incorporating small errors. They publish their results today in Nature…

Subproject of

Arnold van der Valk on Food Council MRA.

The effectiveness of the skin barrier underlies the outer layer of the skin: the stratum corneum (SC). However, in several skin diseases this barrier is impaired. In two inflammatory skin diseases, atopic eczema and Netherton syndrome, an increased level of monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) has been…

On 9 January 2019, Marieke Wierda defended her thesis 'The Local Impact of a Global Court: Assessing the Impact of the International Criminal Court in Situation Countries'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. C. Stahn en Prof. dr. L.J. van den Herik.

In this article, Ben de Jong, research fellow at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, examines the relationship between double agents and their handlers.

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…

This collaborative project aims to explore the history of the concept “barbarism” in Europe from the 18th century to the present, with a particular emphasis on the role of literature and art in the concept’s shifting functions.

The Vallesian, 11.1-9 Ma, was a special time in the Vallès-Penedes basin near Barcelona, where a biodiversity hotspot existed. Europe had a subtropical climate, with rhinos, forest giraffes, lions, hyenas, flying squirrels and primates.

A deceptively simple, complicated paper

This dissertation provides a comprehensive overview of the grammar of Bantawa, a Kiranti (Rai) language spoken in Eastern Nepal.

This book is the first systematic analysis of the changes in the use of goods and services by households of Black South Africans since the early nineteenth century.

Students Sjors Keijzer and Kasper van Alphen won the finale of the Student and City film competition on 29 June. Their promotional film puts Leiden on the map as the best student city.

From 6-9 July, a group of young students from Edith Stein College, Rijswijk Lyceum and the Johan de Witt School travelled to New York City as part of the Van Aartsen Honours Program to present their visions of the UN to the Permanent Mission of The Netherlands. Read Alanna O'Malley's report of the t…

The three-day conference will be held at the Ministry of Antiquities in Cairo from the 29th of September until the 1st of October 2019 with the title: The Walking Dead II: The Making of a Cultural Geography. It is organized by the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities (RMO) and Leiden University.

For the first time, astronomers have managed to take a photo of a supermassive black hole and its shadow. They used the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a worldwide network of eight radio telescopes that together form a virtual telescope the size of the earth. The news was presented in six press conferences…

The way genes are folded determines their activity in our body. Leiden biophysicists are now the first to unravel this structure molecule-by-molecule. Publication on December 1st in Nature’s Scientific Reports.

Ionic liquids are important in scientific research because they can apply a lot of charge over a surface. Leiden physicists have now found that the charging process of ionic liquids purely depends on opposite charges attracting each other. Chemical reactions are sometimes involved, but not essential.…

Since mid-October Marina de Regt (VU Amsterdam) resides at NVIC as our 2025 NWIB Visiting Professor. Nearing the end of her time in Egypt, she shares here her experiences of the past months.

At the end of October, the Steering Committee, headed by Dean Mark Rutgers, gave the green light for the development of the new Faculty Strategic Plan for 2021-2026. How does this process go?

Smooth platinum electrodes roughen and wear when subjected to repeated cycles of oxidation and reduction, which causes nanometer-scale mounds to grow. Leiden chemists Leon Jacobse and Marc Koper, together with physicist Marcel Rost, discovered the exact details, using a unique tunneling microscope.

Documenting and preserving rock art in the Pakistani Himalayas; this was the aim of the ‘Karakorum Rescue Project’ to which students at the Honours College Archaeology contributed. A Leiden exhibition visualises the project: ‘There is something magical about it.’

The person who cried out at Dam Square on Remembrance Day in 2010. For Michiel van der Wolf this marked the rise of a new phenomenon: that of ‘confused people’. Because since that Remembrance Day, the number of reports of ‘confused people’ in the Netherlands has increased rapidly in the statistics.…

Ben Wielstra strives to unravel the evolution of balanced lethal systems. On 1 February he started his own lab at the Institute of Biology Leiden. Wielstra is one of five researchers at Leiden University who has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2018 by the European Research Council. ERC Starting…

The brightness peak of the ring around M87's supermassive black hole has shifted 30 degrees counterclockwise in a year. This is shown by new images released by the Event Horizon Telescope consortium.

Kerstin Fischer and Angus Johnston were exchange students in Leiden in 1995. Sparks flew when they met at a Leiden International Student Club party, but then they lost touch. They met again 19 years later and the flame was rekindled. A Leiden love story – with a bit of a delay.

On Tuesday 10 March 2015 - 10h Ernst Worrell, professor at the University of Utrecht with a chair on

Microorganisms that temporarily ‘go to sleep’ play an important role in the evolution and survival of a population. Mathematician Shubhamoy Nandan conducted research on the effect of this characteristic called ‘dormancy’ in a novel mathematical model.

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

Different groups can have different memories of the same historical event. This can lead to conflict but does not have to. How is this, and how can countries and people reconcile with the past?

A new two year MA track was launched at the Europaeum Spring School in Oxford on May 18th 2013.

On Monday 28 March, Salina Ben Ali visited our University to tell her emotional story. She told about how her 19 year old son was recruited by IS, left for Syria and died there 'as a martyr'.

Recently Professor Joanita Vroom’s book Feeding the Byzantine City was published by the prominent academic publishing house Brepols. This volume is the fifth in a series called Medieval and Post-Medieval Mediterranean Archaeology, of which she is the editor. ‘This series aims to offer new perspectives…

On an excavation site in Oegstgeest Leiden University archaeologists discovered a very rare silver bowl from the first half of the seventh century. The bowl is decorated with gold-plated representations of animals and plants and inlaid with semi-precious stones. The discovery suggests the existence…

Psychologists Fenna Poletiek and Erik de Kwaadsteniet have received a grant from the FNV trade union to research people’s attitude to work if they receive a basic income. How do they plan to find answers?

As of July 1st, 2006 prof. dr. Richard D. Gill has been appointed professor in Mathematical Statistics at our institute, holding the position previously fulfilled by Prof. Sara van de Geer who went to Zurich. He has been at Leiden before, from 1986--1990 as extraordinary professor at a chair held by…

Barbarism: from the 18th century to the present.

In this article, Bart Schuurman and Sarah Louise Carthy conduct further research into the understanding of the causes of terrorism by assessing differences and similarities between left-, right- and jihadist extremists and terrorists. The article draws on the Analysen zum Terrorismus, one of the most…

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), one of the largest families of membrane proteins, are responsive to a diverse set of physiological endogenous ligands including hormones and neurotransmitters.