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: development researcher David Ehrhardt.

Face masks and gloves designed to protect us are, in fact, dangerous for the animals around us. Scientists from Leiden warn that throughout the world, on land and in the water, animals are ingesting corona waste, or getting entangled in it. The two biologists are asking for everybody’s help to better…

Tom Breukel analysed some 250 stone axes from the Caribbean and reconstructed their biographies. This increases our knowledge of production and trade in the period around the arrival of Columbus. PhD defence on 18 April.

There seem to be genes that influence how our brains develop over time. A large international consortium has discovered this with an extensive study. The results of the study were recently published in Nature Neuroscience.

Mini organs-on-chips allow us to study how diseases develop and how drugs work. Although the technology is not new, it is becoming increasingly advanced. PhD candidate Bart Kramer hopes it will eliminate animal testing in the future.

On 10 March 2017, Professor Karel Luyben (TU Delft) welcomed the ‘Metabolomics GO FAIR Implementation Network’ as community initiative to start the European Open Science Cloud. The network aims to implement the FAIR data principles in the field of metabolomics in Europe.

Majorana particles have been getting bad publicity: a claimed discovery in ultracold nanowires had to be retracted. Now Leiden physicists open up a new door to detecting Majoranas in a different experimental system, the Fu-Kane heterostructure, they announce in Physical Review Letters.

An incredible quantity of archaeological reports are stored in digital archives. If you want to search for information in them, you have to do this manually. And that is a real chore. Archaeologist Alex Brandsen has now used deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to develop a search engine…

Two researchers at the Faculty of Archaeology have received a Veni award from the Netherlands Organisation for Academic Research (NWO). This award offers promising young researchers the opportunity to further develop their ideas for a period of three years.

Since the beginning of September, urban criminologist Marianne Franken has been the linchpin of a special partnership between Leiden University, the municipality of Leiden and the police. As a PhD candidate she will spend four years conducting research into how safe the people of Leiden feel.

A consortium, led by Erik de Maaker (CADS, Leiden), has under the NWA scheme (Dutch National Science agenda) been awarded 98k€ for Localizing Global Garment Biographies, a two-year project to research the different ways by which users and producers attach value to garments.

An international partnership of brain researchers from 35 research centres - from the US to China - including the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), has collected resting-state functional MRI data from more than 1400 healthy volunteers and put the information online so that it is available…

On Thursday 3 November Leiden University will celebrate the official opening of two wall formulas in the city centre. As of now, Snell’s law and the Lorentz force formula shine on two walls in the heart of Leiden. They are part of a project to display at least ten groundbreaking formulas with a Leiden…

Bacteria and fungi on organic dairy farms are significantly different from those on conventional farms. That was discovered by postdoc researcher Sofia Gomes and her supervisors Nadia Soudzilovskaia and Peter van Bodegom in collaboration with the Louis Bolk Institute and Naturalis Biodiversity Centre.…

Universe in a Box has been recognised for its educational value by Scientix — the European Network of Science Education. Universe in a Box is the low-cost, inquiry-based astronomy education resource of Universe Awareness (UNAWE). On Friday 22nd May this resource was awarded the Scientix Resources Award…

We are pleased to invite abstracts for a conference on ‘Advancing Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights in a Polarised, Digitalised, and Unequal World’ to be held at Leiden University on 4 and 5 September 2025, in collaboration with Netherlands Network for Human Rights Researh (NNHRR).

Researchers from Leiden and Delft have found a way to look inside early-modern bookbindings. An x-ray technique has allowed them to search for remains of medieval manuscripts hidden inside the bindings. After the Middle Ages many manuscripts were recycled, their pages pasted inside bookbindings to provide…

This year, two Leiden physicists have earned a prestigious ERC Starting Grant. With a budget of 1.5 million euros, this is one of the largest individual grants for scientists.

On August 27 – 31 2019, PhD candidate Maria Vasile participated in the IUAES 2019 Inter- congress in Poznan, Poland entitled "World Solidarities" and shares some of the insights from presentations she attended and found particularly relevant to the Food Citizens project.

Research and design are two activities that are becoming increasingly important in the Dutch subjects O&O (‘research and design’) and NLT ('nature, life and technology’). The dissertation of Tessa Vossen (ICLON and Faculty of Science) indicates that teachers and students understand the importance of…

Leiden researcher Dr Ben Zonneveld has determined the size of the genome - the amount of DNA per nucleus - of wild tulips. His conclusion is that there are more than 87 wild species. Various possibly new species have been discovered.

In the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia the soursop family (Annonaceae) can be found. The genus Uvaria is a part of this family, but it has not yet been described entirely correctly. That is what Annas Rabbani will be studying during the next four years as a PhD student at the Hortus botanicus…

For already two years, Vincent Niochet has been affiliated with the Leiden Faculty of Archaeology as an external PhD candidate. Now, he has been awarded an NWO PhDs in the Humanities grant, allowing him to continue his research as a paid PhD staff member. ‘The past two years have been quite challenging,…

In 2018 the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) was launched in the UK. The aim of this programme was to help laboratories work more sustainably and efficiently. The initiative got a Dutch spin-off in 2021. Since then, a couple of the laboratories at the Leiden Faculty of Science have…

Thanks to fanatical lobbying various groups of citizens and traders had a lot of influence on the initial success of the Dutch colony in Brazil. This is the conclusion of Leiden PhD candidate Joris van den Tol, who defended his thesis on 20 March.

Dr Mamadou Hébié, Associate Professor of International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, served last week as legal counsel in the world’s first advisory proceedings concerning climate change before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), on the one hand, and…

Thijs Bosker and Paul Behrens, Professors in Environmental Sciences at Leiden University College in The Hague, have received funding from the Leiden University Fund and the Gratama Foundation to work on developing a set of Local Actions: tangible and practical exercises that students can engage in…

A circular economy in which all resources are reused is a prerequisite for a sustainable world. As EU president, the Netherlands can give a firm impetus to this economic shift. This is the message of Leiden Professor of Industrial Ecology, Arnold Tukker, in his inaugural lecture on 26 February.

A large research group involving Leiden University as corresponding Host Institution has been awarded a major European grant, the ERC Synergy Grant. This for research on how Europe developed after the fall of the Roman Empire with special attention to the yet underexplored but undoubtedly important…

This summer, everyone from Leiden locals to day trippers and tourists can take a guided tour of the prettiest University buildings in the centre of Leiden. Our exclusive Summer Tours offer a glimpse behind the scenes at the Academy Building, the P.J. Veth building and Bibliotheca Thysiana: buildings…

In June the Final Festival took place, the closing event of the 'Social Science Lab'. New participants of Honours College Science and Society presented their solution for a current social problem.

Amid rising polarisation and discrimination, lawyer and human rights activist Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You wants to show in her Cleveringa Lecture on 26 November how dangerous exclusion is.

The 18.8 million euro NWO Zwaartekracht grant for quantum software which Amsterdam, Delft and Leiden landed collectively, means for Leiden University among others the appointment of two new permanent scientific staff members, who will each form their own research group, divided among Computer Science,…

Inviting a navy officer to talk about piracy, inspiring critical thinking and offering to help with finding internships. Students appreciate that and therefore nominated Anita van Dissel, who teaches Maritime History, for the Lecturer of the Year Award.

Sophia Hendrikx started her PhD project at LUCAS in March 2015...

What rules should regulate AI, who should make them, and how will they be enforced in the digital arena?

Generations of Leiden students and academics have done archaeological research into the early medieval history of Oegstgeest. This makes this old settlement one of the best-documented sites from that era. In a new book Leiden researchers take stock.

On 12 and 13 September 2019, the Institute of Tax Law and Economics from Leiden University hosted 29 PhD researchers from around the world to engage into collective discussions at the Multilateral Cooperation in International Tax Law seminar.

Writer and columnist Nicolien Mizee will be Leiden University’s new writer in residence from autumn 2023.

Two researchers from the Institute of Political Science were recently awarded prizes. Claire Vergerio received the Francesco Guicciardini Prize for her book on the historical origins of the primacy of the state in international law ('best book in the historical international relations category'). In…

Publication by: Anouk Wezel, Sabine Welten, Wida Razawy, Max Lagraauw, Margreet de Vries, Eveline Goossens, Martin Boonstra, Jaap Hamming, Ekambar Kandimalla, Johan Kuiper, Paul Quax, Yaël Nossent and Ilze Bot. Annals of Surgery. 2015;262:841-848.

We are excited to announce the Just Peace Festival 2025, a vibrant platform for dialogue, collaboration, and action on the pressing global challenges of peace and justice!

How do you integrate minorities into a society, and what kind of influence does this have on the collective identity? These questions may seem modern, but they have been relevant for a long time. The new Eurasian Empires research group studies how integration and formation of identity took place in…

On 1 September 2017, Aurelie van ’t Slot passed the assessor’s baton to Olivier Fajgenblat. As the new Humanities assessor, this third-year student of Film and Literary Studies will promote students’ interests in the Faculty Board. Let’s introduce this ambitious Belgian student.

On August 18, 2022, Henk Bodewitz, distinguished Indologist and emeritus professor of Sanskrit at Leiden University, passed away in his hometown of Utrecht.

In the context of the 2021 Day of General Discussion of the UN Committee on Rights of the Child, this time dedicated to alternative care, Defence for Children in collaboration with Leiden University has contributed with a paper on the 2019 Dutch Inquiry Committee on Historical Child Abuse in Alternative…

Only one out of six professors in the Netherlands is female. At the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) female professors are in minority as well. However, we are proud to have three female professors at the IBL. Amongst others, their photo portraits are currently on display in the Senat Room of the academy…

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…

The Palaeolithic period extends from the earliest stone tools (and in Europe, earliest occupation) to the beginning of the current warm period.

The international World Cultural Council (WCC) has awarded Nadine Akkerman, Victoria Nyst and Alicia Schrikker with Special Recognition Awards given to young scientists at the university organising the award ceremony. Leiden University organises the 34th WCC award ceremony this year.