The Grotius Centre, in collaboration with Duke Law School, will be hosting the Duke-Leiden Institute in Global and Transnational Law from 16 June to 17 July 2019 in The Hague, the International City of Peace and Justice. Applications for the second edition are now open!

For nine years, Mirjam de Baar was vice-dean at the Faculty of Humanities. On Monday 17 March, she took her leave in the Academy Building. ‘You have worn out two deans, two vice-deans, four business managers and six assessors.’

Lecture

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A new volume, co-edited by Nadine Akkerman of the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, shows how ladies-in-waiting, by 'creatively manipulating their gender', often played a major role in shaping the political climate of Europe in the early modern period.

Nadine Akkerman and her co-applicant David van der Linden (University of Groningen) are thrilled that “Signed, Sealed, & Undelivered 2.0: Revealing Hidden Letters” was awarded an Internationalisation in the Humanities grant from NWO.

Bribing a politician to gain influence or making sure friends end up in powerful positions: Brazilian energy companies use these power strategies daily.

The rise of AI will transform the role of doctors, claims Professor of Intensive Care Medicine Sesmu Arbous. Her academic chair focuses on integrating technology into patient care.

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga from Leiden University has been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant of 1.5m euros enables talented early-career scholars to start their own pioneer project, lead a research team, and implement their best ideas at the frontiers of their…

Mapping sanitary infrastructure in large urban societies in the Low Countries, 1200–1900

Green spaces boost mental health—especially in busy cities. A new study from Leiden and Stanford University reveals how nature benefits urban well-being and offers low-cost ways to make city life healthier for everyone.

Disruption to the gut flora can affect your mental health. How could this knowledge be used to prevent stress-related disorders? This is what psychologist Laura Steenbergen will investigate with the aid of a project grant from the Leiden University Fund (LUF) and the Gratama Foundation.

Do you want to be successful at stopping smoking? If so, the main thing is that you should see yourself as a non-smoker. Psychologist Eline Meijer has discovered that smokers who are unable to do this are more likely to resume smoking. This is more common among smokers from a lower socio-economic background.…

As a psychologist and pilot, Bert Busscher is interested in the phenomenon often termed as fear of flying. Busscher discovered that the heart rate of a person undergoing a therapeutic flight shows how much they still suffer from fear of flying. The post-flight heart rate can even predict whether the…

AI, data and algorithms are developing at breakneck speed, while legislation inevitably lags behind. But laws and regulations are essential – look no further than the Dutch childcare benefits scandal.

This project unites these two perspectives by taking a deep dive into the microstructure of historic Dutch bones. We will study human skeletal remains curated at the Faculty of Archaeology by micro-CT scanning them at LUMC facilities. With detailed micro-CT scans, we can examine bone quality in the…

From molecular ping-pong to cassava in the Amazon, and from extraterrestrial life to special antibodies. Twenty-five researchers from Leiden University have been awarded a Veni grant from the NWO. A grant of up to 250,000 euros will give them the opportunity to further elaborate their own ideas over…

A global perspective on the nature and evolution of nationalism, from the early modern era to the present.

PhD defence

Four master's students from Leiden University participated in this year’s edition of the International Migration and Refugee Law Moot Court, hosted by Antwerp University. Following the verbal rounds held between 21 and 22 March, the team went through to the finals, achieving second place overall.

Les Cottés is one the rare site in western Europe with occupations in sequence by the very last Neandertals and the first anatomically modern humans.

Lecture

Since the 16th century, religious concerns have motivated the study of Old English and its speakers. In the 19th century, scholars turned to the study of Old English literature in particular to find traces of pre-Christian, ‘Germanic’ religion, as discussed in Eric G. Stanley’s seminal work The Search…

This project investigates how the first generation of Dutch printed books (the incunabula, 1473-1501) affected late medieval spirituality, religious practice and visual culture in the Low Countries.

The most famous monument of the Dutch Golden Age is undoubtedly the Amsterdam Town Hall by architect Jacob van Campen inaugurated in 1655.

How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

It is often claimed—in both scholarly and popular sources—that guide dogs for the blind are a modern innovation. But as this project demonstrates clearly, guide dogs also existed during the medieval period.

A subject like history is all about the past. That often involves scrolling through old documents, but in the Research Master's in History, Professor Dario Fazzi takes a different approach. His students work with Virtual Reality.

Op 9 juni jl. vond in de rechtenfaculteitskamer van het Leidse Academiegebouw een workshop plaats over tradities en aanpalende concepten, zoals politieke cultuur, spelregels en constitutionele conventies. Tijdens de bijeenkomst presenteerden en bediscussieerden juristen, historici, politicologen en…

Receiving positive support and seeing yourself as being a quitter may help smokers quit, say Eline Meijer and colleagues. The health psychologists published their study in Social Science & Medicine.

To relieve a patient's pain, it can be effective to induce expectations. This finding is promising for optimising the effectiveness of treatments, conclude Kaya Peerdeman and colleagues in their article in PAIN.

If you imagine in advance that something is not going to hurt, this could mean you experience less pain. This discovery was made by health psychologist Kaya Peerdeman during her PhD research on the placebo effect. PhD defence 7 February.

PhD defence

A team of researchers from Young Academy and the Huygens ING/NL Lab has brought a three-century-old fragrance to life based on a recipe by Constantijn Huygens. The fragrance makes the past more tangible and can help people experience history differently.

For a long time it was thought that there were few or no female spies in history. However, nothing could be further from the truth. In her book Invisible Agents, Nadine Akkerman reconstructs the stories of the many British women spies in the 17th century.

Nadine Akkerman has received a subsidy of two million euros from the European Research Council (ERC) for research into 16th and 17th century English manuscripts. Akkerman: ‘Working with handwritten texts and unravelling their mysteries is one of my passions, and it’s especially rewarding when this work…

Monika Baár received a two-month residential fellowship by the Brocher Foundation, an organization located in Hermance (near Geneva) which supports research in the medical humanities.

The Wall Street Journal reviews historian Eric Storm's new book 'Nationalism: A World History', which examines the complex history and development of nationalism and nation-states.

The ERC project Rethinking Disability has been selected to participate in the ERCcOMICS scheme which exploits the power of visual storytelling to innovate the way in which European science is communicated.

The ERC-funded project Rethinking Disability was featured in the Fȇte de La Science which was held on 11 October 2019 at Sorbonne University in Paris.

Monika Baár is among the 17 scientists who have been invited to participate in the 6th edition of the European Parliament's MEP-Scientist Pairing Scheme which takes place in Brussels between 28 and 30 November, 2017.

82 years ago Queen Wilhelmina fled to England. Henk te Velde tells about her on the Australian radio show 'Nightlife'.

Lecture

In this project diverse aspects of the duchesses’ roles in the complex and dynamic relations between town and crown are studied on the basis of systematic research in the account books of four cities (Ghent, Bruges, Leuven and Mechelen) in the Burgundian Netherlands (ca. 1430-1503).

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?

1000 Years of World History in 100 Old Maps.