Jordy Bouwman and future Sterrewachter Reinout van Weeren have been awarded a Vidi subsidy to set up or expand their own line of research.

The subsidy funds new research into the: Economies of Destruction. The emergence of metalwork deposition during the Bronze Age in Northwest Europe, c. 2300-1500 BC.

Paul Adriaanse, together with eight other candidates, has been nominated in the administration law category for the title ‘Magna Charta Lawyer of the year’. The public will vote to decide the winner

NWO has granted a 4-year subsidy to the project The Popular Culture of Illegality, ellaborated in collaboration between the University of Amsterdam, University Utrecht and Leiden University. This research focuses on the esthetic representations and practices in visual, musical and symbolical forms of…

Eleven talented Leiden researchers with several years of research experience have been awarded a Vidi subsidy to set up or expand their own line of research. One of them is LIAS researcher Lara Weiss.

Michel Orrit has received an NWO-TTW Open Technology Programme grant. He will use it to image single molecules without the need for fluorescence.

The Van Bergen Fund provides financial support to study associations of Leiden University for initiatives that promote contact between Dutch and international students. A good plan will receive a subsidy from the Van Bergen Fund.

How did changes in the composition and exploitation of princely domains in various principalities of the Low Countries influence the development of ‘modern’ public finance systems, including the notion of public debt?

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2017, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

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Als nieuwe hoogleraar Ontwikkelingspsychologie pleit Anna van Duijvenvoorde voor meer samenwerking in de wetenschap. Daarom moedigt ze jonge onderzoekers zich aan te melden bij een netwerk. ‘Het biedt je een bredere blik op de wetenschappelijke wereld.’

As Director of Education, Marcellus Ubbink learned to work together with many different people. For him, the social aspects are one of the key areas in his new role as Scientific Director of the Leiden Institute of Chemistry. Who is this new manager and what can we expect from him?

Changes to halt further biodiversity loss are more urgent than ever and feasible, says IPBES, the United Nations biodiversity panel. In two reports released this week, the panel calls on governments worldwide to develop coherent policies that address biodiversity, climate change, water, food and health.…

On 29 June 2017, Carl Mair will defend his PhD dissertation “Taking Technological Infrastructure Seriously”. The defence will commence at 13.45 hrs, in the Academy Building of Leiden University, Rapenburg 73. The supervisors are Professor A. Schmidt and Professor G.J. Zwenne.

Prof.dr. Annelou van Gijn has obtained a Marie Curie subsidy for research on wetland activity patterns in Mesolithic Northwest Europe. This funding has been used to employ the researcher dr. Aimée Little. The project will commence in November 2011.

Around 150 international scholarship students at Leiden University were invited to Leiden's Town Hall on Wednesday 16 November. They were each presented with a certificate by deputy-Mayor Paul Dirkse to mark their study time in Leiden.

The Leiden Institute of Physics has been awarded three out of twelve available grants from the FOM Projectruimte. Principal Investigators Milan Allan, Stefan Semrau and Carlo Beenakker all receive around 400,000 euro for their research.

‘Criminal law is still an inequality machine’, argues Folkert Jensma in his fortnightly column for Dutch newspaper NRC. After attending the conference ‘Ongelijkheid en de Strafrechtpleging’ ('Inequality and the criminal justice system'), he concludes that ‘nothing has changed’ since his time as a st…

Last week Esther Kentin participated in the Second Meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-Ended Expert Group on Marine Litter and Microplastics organized by UN Environment in Geneva.

Biologist Freek Vonk had already appeared in the Time Warp programme, where he was shown milking a snake for its venom, which he needed for his doctoral research. On Friday 18 September, he explained his fascination for snakes to Matthijs van Nieuwkerk in ‘De wereld draait door’, a Dutch news and entertainment…

For the second time in six months, Hans-Martien ten Napel has been invited to write the opening essay for a series of international blog posts.

Last week Esther Kentin participated in the Second Meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-Ended Expert Group on Marine Litter and Microplastics organized by UN Environment in Geneva.

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) comprises several units. Eight Divisions for Sciences develop new research programmes, assess subsidy requests and monitor projects that NWO finances. ALW- Earth and Life Sciences is one of NWO’s eight Divisions for Science. Professor Melly…

Minister Jet Bussemaker (Ministry of Education, Culture and Science) will open the new headquarters of NIMAR (Netherlands Institute in Morocco) in Rabat on 1 March, in the presence of Mayor of Rotterdam Ahmed Aboutaleb and Rector of Leiden University Carel Stolker. The institute has been part of Leiden…

Plants not only sense when they are touched, but they can also adapt to it. For example, by strengthening or defending themselves. But how do plants do this? The Green TE (Green Tissue Engineering) consortium has been granted a Gravitation grant of almost 23 million euros to investigate exactly this…

This header image was once elected Image of the Week by De Volkskrant and won second place in the LION Image Award. The research behind it is no less successful if we’re counting prizes. Last August, group leader Tjerk Oosterkamp was awarded an NWO Projectruimte grant, and now NWO-TTW grants him an…

This project studies travel writing about the Dutch East Indies written between 1800 and the end of the Second World War. By analyzing both Dutch travel texts and Indigenous travel texts in Javanese and Malay, it presents a new, double-voiced perspective on (the historiography of) the Dutch colonial…

Poland votes for a new president in a first round of elections on Sunday. Lecturer Jan Meijer points out: ‘The result will have a lot of impact on Donald Tusk's liberal government and its plans for reforms.’

The scaling up of municipalities means that local authorities are too often losing sight of citizens. This warning was given by Job Cohen on 30 November on his departure from Leiden University as Thorbecke professor. ‘The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations has got some work to do.'

In an Advance Online Publication biophysicist John van Noort and others show using magnetic tweezers that DNA is folded in compliant helices of chromatin. This allows enzymes access to the DNA needed for gene expression. Van Noort's research group made the discovery in close partnership with researchers…

It came as a shock to many people: one million plant and animal species are threatened to become extinct. But this number isn’t the most relevant aspect, argue Alexander van Oudenhoven, Koos Biesmeijer and three other experts in Dutch newspaper Trouw. ‘It is more important to realise that the fate of…

Leiden evolutionary biologist Maurijn van der Zee has co-operated on an enormous international project to describe the genetic material of the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum. The more than 100 authors involved in the project have published their findings in the online magazine PLoS Biology.

The New Scientist magazine has selected two young Leiden scientists for its Top 25 Young Talents in the Netherlands and Flanders: historian Karwan Fatah-Black and neuropsychologist Mariska Kret. Who will be the winner? You can vote for one of them!

Leiden social and organisational psychologist Carsten de Dreu has been awarded a Spinoza Prize, the top science prize in the Netherlands. We talked to him about his passion for group processes, Leiden University and his dreams for the future. ‘A Spinoza opens up a world of possibilities.'

From painful joints to intense fatigue: a third of rheumatism patients suffer serious effects from this chronic condition and rely long-term on medication. Leiden psychologists are to receive a subsidy from the Netherlands Arthritis Foundation to investigate whether placebo techniques can help patients…

From cities that sometimes deviate from national foreign policy to the direct influence of geopolitics on local developments, PhD candidate Pieter Jeroense, director of VNG International, examined seventy years of the internationalisation of Dutch municipalities and observed notable trends.

Last week, the first seven professionals successfully completed the new Leiden Legal Technologies Programme (LLTP). They received their certificates during a festive ceremony. Smiling faces all around for founder Jaap van den Herik, Programme Director Nikol Hopman, and The Hague alderman Saskia Bruines.…

What is the influence of the 2016 ban on free plastic bags on the environment? Industrial ecologist Stefano Cucurachi received a LUF grant of €75.000 to answer this question.

Four Leiden researchers have each been awarded a consolidator grant of up to 2 million euros by the European Research Council (ERC). They carry out research on a diverse range of subjects, from gender stereotyping in the field of science to making sugar molecules.

Sjaak Neefjes, professor of Chemical Immunology at the LUMC, has been awarded a Spinoza prize of 2.5 million euros. His colleague Ton Schumacher, professor of Immunotechnology affiliated with Leiden University, the LUMC and the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek cancer centre, has been awarded the Stevin prize,…

Het NIMAR is een instituut van de Universiteit Leiden dat studenten van verschillende studierichtingen de mogelijkheid biedt om zich te verdiepen in de Marokkaanse cultuur.

Leiden physicist Maarten Kruithof has discovered how our DNA is infallibly able to fold itself and to unfold again. In his dissertation he demonstrates how DNA is folded in a single long, very flexible spiral.

The red carpet treatment of expats, terrorism studies and women professors who took over the Senate Chamber. These are the best read articles of 2018.

Last week, the Ravenna School of Law hosted the UNESCO conference on World Heritage between Education and Economy: A Legal Analysis, at which Freya Baetens presented her paper entitled The new generation of EU Free Trade Agreements: heralding the end of public financial support to maintain cultural…

An international team of astronomers has found an unexpected link between dark matter and visible stars in stellar systems. This discovery may even cause us to reconsider our understanding of gravity. They published on their discovery in 'Nature' on 1 October.

Leiden research on psychology and archaeology will boosted by two subsidies. Both research projects focus on children.

Travel grant call for applications open to people who were identified as female at birth or who identify as female at the time of application for externally-funded Ph.D. students (not funded by any outside source such as ERC, NWO, etc.) and/or staff members (postdoc, docent, UD, permanent/non-permanent…

Researchers led by Professor of Chemistry Marcellus Ubbink have recently published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) about the dynamics of an important redox enzyme. This work was accomplished thanks to an NWO VICI subsidy granted to Professor Ubbink.

Professor Willemien den Ouden has been appointed as the new Academic Director of the Institute of Public Law starting 1 September 2017. She will take over from Professor Wim Voermans who has held this position for the past seven years.