On Thursday, May 16, Leiden University Libraries is organizing a workshop on early photography of the Middle East. In the workshop, curator Maartje van den Heuvel shows photos of three adventurous Dutch nineteenth-century travel and photography pioneers. They created beautiful photos and photo albums…

CERN has approved the construction and operation of SND@LHC, a neutrino detector at the Large Hadron Collider. It's a precursor for SHiP, a detector meant to detect dark matter. Leiden physicist Alexey Boyarsky is one of the initiators of both SHiP and SND@LHC.

There are times when an insolvency practitioner has to weigh his role in administering bankrupt estates. This was the message of Professor Reinout Vriesendorp's inaugural lecture that took place on 24 June 2016. According to Statistics Netherlands, 5,271 companies were declared bankrupt in 2015.…

Astronomers led by Simon Portegies Zwart used simulations to reconstruct how three stars were ejected from the star cluster R136, 60,000 years ago. The analysis reveals that five stars were involved in the event in the Tarantula Nebula.

Two Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) have been placed in front of the University Library in memory of the Jewish Cosman family. At the time of the Second World War, they lived in one of the houses where the library is now located.

Is scientific research useful? In his dissertation, Jorrit Smit argues that in order to answer this question one should not look at, for example, prominent scholars or influential organisations, but at places where knowledge exchange and co-creation take place. Promotion 6 May.

The Faculty of Humanities has shared a new spending reduction plan with its students and staff. Although the plans are less sweeping than previous ones, we still need to make painful decisions: the proposal to scrap the Bachelor’s in Italian Language and Culture, for example.

Scientists have developed a material that breaks one of the fundamental principles governing many physical systems. Ordinary materials transmit external forces equally, no matter where the pressure comes from. The newly developed material breaks this rule and could potentially be of interest in soft-robotics…

The Defence White Paper, titled ‘Strong, smart and together’, is debated in the House of Representatives along with the Defence Budget and raises concerns especially in uncertain times.

Whales in the vicinity of the city of Auckland, New Zealand consume large amounts of microplastics every day. A team of international researchers reached this conclusion after carefully examining whale poop. The team included Thijs Bosker, Associate Professor in Environmental Sciences at Leiden University…

For the first time, astronomers have observed in three dimensions that gas from spiral galaxies is blown upwards and downwards at high speed, far out of the galaxy. They thereby confirm the theory of galaxy evolution: that star-forming galaxies create intergalactic gas flows by discharging gas along…

Three researchers from Leiden University have received awards in the Quantum Technology programme within the National Growth Fund, organised by NWO in collaboration with Quantum Delta NL. Read more about these three futuristic projects.

The METIS instrument that’s being built for ESO's future Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in Northern Chile under the leadership of the Dutch Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) has reached an important milestone: the preliminary design has been approved.

Microscopic swimmers such as bacteria do not always swim alone. There are advantages to exchanging information and cooperating. Stefania Ketzetzi and colleagues now show in Nature Communications that human-made microswimmers, too, can cooperate.

Thanks in part to the persistence of a Leiden research group, cancer could be detected in the near future with just a single drop of blood. Not only can the diagnosis be determined at an earlier stage, but the blood test is also cheap, fast and patient friendly. The first results of this method seem…

Conducting fieldwork against a backdrop of public policy interests and professional reputations in your own place of residence adds a whole new level to the experience. As a researcher in this context, you are essentially caught in a game of piggy in the middle between the subjects of policy, the objects…

Scientists of the faculty of Governance and Global Affairs research completely different subject, among which terrorism, cybercrime and migration. In the upcoming weeks we will give the floor to several of our very best researchers. In this episode: migration researcher Alexandre Afonso.

Future users of the Aleida Nijland building were recently the first to have the opportunity to admire the design plan for the new building. During a user meeting, architectural firm De Zwarte Hond presented the design, and future users of the building were able to share their wishes and ideas for further…

‘Working in Leiden is a dream come true.’ Ákos Kovács studied in his birth country Hungary and worked in Germany, Denmark and Groningen. As professor of Microbiome Ecology at IBL, he immediately started working together with his new colleagues to make discoveries about the versatile bacterial species…

An organized overview of the current global fungal diversity, that is what Irene Martorelli and colleagues try to achieve with the new MycoDiversity Database (MDDB) she builds in collaboration with Naturalis Biodiversity Center. The new database will make it easier and quicker to observe which fungi…

How do galaxies form? That is what astronomer Mariska Kriek will be researching in the coming years. She received an NWO Vici grant of 1.5 million euros to study galaxies in the early universe. ‘This research uses new and unprecedented observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). These allow…

On April 19, Pax Initiative, a youth led NGO, held its first ever event at the Museon in the Hague. The event, “International Court of Justice Idealab: The Future of the ICJ” was a productive and inspiring discussion among students and young professionals on how the Court can reach the 16th Sustainable…

Het schilderij van Rein Dool waarop voormalig bestuurders van de Universiteit Leiden zijn afgebeeld, is verhuisd naar de Receptieruimte van het Academiegebouw.

Money, cultural anthropologist Coco Kanters concludes in her dissertation, is not an intangible or acultural phenomenon. It is a ‘product’ that arises from specific values and can be used for certain goals.

Every year the international leadership course of the Leiden Honours Academy, the International Leiden Leadership Programme (ILLP), attracts master’s students from all over the world. In June, this year’s 25 students will get their certificates, but that is not the most important part, according to…

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.

Research conducted at Leiden has established that guts-on-chips respond in the same way to aspirin as real human organs do. This is a sign that these model organs are good predictors of the effect of medical drugs on the human body. Publication in Nature Communications on 15 August.

Three Indonesian students participated in the Leiden summer school Crises in Biology. ‘In the end, we were all just one big group.’

When alumnus Jonathan Katzman started his master's programme in Russian and Eurasian Studies, he didn't foresee how useful those skills would be in the near future. Now, he manages a refugee centre for Ukrainians who have fled their war-torn country.

Are you looking for some listening material for the upcoming long weekend? Staff members and alumni of the Faculty of Humanities have been creating various podcasts over the last few months. A selection is shown here:

'With this artwork, I want to give the audience a glance into my overstimulated brain and that of other people with autism', says Jasmijn den Hoed. The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences is exhibiting her artwork 'Overstimulated' in the restaurant near the blue wall during Autism Week 25 March…

If you had something important to write down in ancient times, you would usually write in Greek in the eastern Mediterranean. University lecturer Joanne Stolk has been awarded an ERC grant to explore the kinds of spelling mistakes that were made in these scripts. And, more importantly, what improvements…

As part of Leiden University’s aim to be a safe and healthy environment for all staff and students, several activities and lectures were organised in an action week around suicide prevention. Dedicated benches were also placed at several university buildings, including at the Faculty of Humanities.

Cut marks on the bones of bears show that people in North-West Europe used bearskins to keep warm 300,000 years ago.

On 1 January Minna Valjakka was appointed Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory from a Global Perspective. Valjakka sees her appointment as 'extremely topical' because of the discussions about the decolonisation of the arts: 'Art teaches us not just about art, but also about contemporary…

Twice a year, Gert Renkema, Head of Financial Economic Affairs at FGGA, shares insights about the processes and financial matters for our faculty.

Using a clever experiment, PhD candidate Shengxiang Yang discovered how gold electrodes convert water into oxygen. He is the first to unravel the mechanism of this reaction. Yang published his results in the journal ACS Catalysis.

Bacteria temporarily live without their cell wall if dangerous viruses are near. A remarkable feature, as the cell wall is a sturdy barrier against threats. Still, the discovery has a logical explanation ánd might be of a consequence for fighting pathogenic bacteria, according to Véronique Ongenae,…

Do all graduates in the humanities pursue a career in education? What does support for incoming students look like in Leiden? And what makes a language study so enjoyable? These and more questions were answered during an information session organised specially for twenty deans from West Brabant.

Birds around airports are more aggressive and sing as if they have hearing loss. Collaboration between researchers of Manchester Metropolitan University and the Institute of Biology Leiden has led to surprising new findings about the impact of anthropogenic noise on birds around airports. Publication…

In 2019, Federico Cappadona was one of the first students to enroll in the new master’s specialisation Applied Archaeology. He recently graduated and he is happy to share his experience.

The city centre of Leiden is covered in them: wall poems. When roaming around, you come across poetry written in the Latin alphabet, but also in scripts that might be more difficult to understand for the average person living in Leiden. In a new series of videos, Tijmen Pronk talks more about this.

Where does Dutch come from? Newly appointed Professor Alwin Kloekhorst looks for an answer to that question in millennia-old languages from Anatolia, the Asian part of present-day Turkey. 'A new interpretation in one of the Anatolian languages can have consequences for dozens of other languages.'

Seven International Studies students are at the helm of Reach & Teach, a student platform that uses language lessons and social activities to promote the integration of holders of residence permits and asylum seekers in The Hague. Elsa Varela Put chairs the project and explains how it came into bein…

Leiden University has six top bachelor's programmes according to Keuzigids universiteiten 2025, a consumer guide to university programmes. This puts Leiden in fourth place of the broad-based universities.

At the International Online Conference 'Fair Medicine and Artificial Intelligence' organised by the University of Tübingen (Germany), Hadassah Drukarch, junior researcher at eLaw, gave a presentation on how current algorithmic-based systems may reinforce biases in healthcare. This topic forms part of…

Research master's student in history Jesse Dijkshoorn collaborated on a transcription system for medieval texts. ‘It’s nice to make the Middle Ages accessible to people.’

Always wanted to find out what zero gravity is like? Now's your chance! In December 2017 a Dutch student team will be conducting experiments during a parabolic flight, and they're looking for healthy volunteers. You do have to meet a number of strict conditions, says the team leader.

A cover over your drink in the pub, deodorant as pepper spray or headphones to avoid hearing catcalling: many women use everyday objects to feel safer in public spaces. Student Anne van der Linden made an online exhibition about this.

The Greek alphabet dates back to the eighth century BC. At least, that is what science assumed for a long time. Associate Professor Willemijn Waal is going to use a Vici grant to investigate whether the Greek alphabet may be centuries older, and was initially written only on perishable materials.