PhD defence

Inaugural lecture

Cookware handles, electrical plugs, brake pads. Unlike other plastics, these ‘thermosets’ cannot simply be melted down and reshaped, making them difficult to recycle. Chemist Roxanne Kieltyka and her team are now exploring a way to make these materials recyclable, potentially transforming the way we…

From 3 to 13 December you can see the exhibition Plastic Justice at the Kamerlingh Onnes Building. Esther Kentin, coördinator of the Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic, saw the exhibition at the Plastic Health Summit and initiated a collaboration with the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.

After years of lobbying by environmental activists, a deposit scheme for small plastic bottles is to be introduced on 1 July 2021. One of the leaders in the fight is alumnus Merijn Tinga. The university will have collection points for plastic bottles and is also supporting the Plastic Spotter citizen…

On paper it is recycled, but in reality enormous quantities of plastic waste from the Netherlands end up in Asian seas. Researchers from the Leiden Institute of Environmental Sciences charted the fate of plastic food packaging waste from the Netherlands. They published their results on July 8 in the…

Roberto Arciero is part of RESPIRE project (Research Educational and Storytelling Project in Italian Remote Ecosystem), an international and interdisciplinary research team led by Martina Capriotti (University of Camerino) that received the National Geographic Meridian grant. Among the different topics,…

Leiden PhD candidate Jo-Anne Verschoor discovered that nearly twenty percent of the bacterial strains she studied could degrade plastic, though they needed some encouragement to do so. ‘Bacteria are just like people,’ says Verschoor. Her research was published in the journal Communications Biology,…

A group of biology students are working on a solution to the world’s plastics problem by getting bacteria to make biodegradable plastic.

We all know smoking is bad for our health. But we might not have known that the cigarette filters that litter our streets also impact the environment. Esther Kentin is a lecturer at Leiden Law School. She is raising awareness of the University’s cigarette butt problem.

What motivates citizens to participate in a citizen science project on plastic pollution? And does that motivation change over time? Liselotte Rambonnet tried to answer these and other questions with her research on the Clean Rivers (‘Schone Rivieren’) project. Rambonnet is a PhD student at the Institute…

Martin van Hecke en Anne Meeussen publiceren in het tijdschrift Nature over mechanische metamaterialen. Ze hebben een nieuwe klasse multistabiele materialen ontdekt. Dit is gebaseerd op ribbeltjes plastic.

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…

Countries that import plastic waste recycle an average of at least 63 percent of it. This is surprising, as we previously believed that the vast majority was incinerated or ended up as litter. This was discovered by PhD candidate Kai Li and his colleagues from the Institute of Environmental Sciences in…

Micro- and nanoplastics cause stress to crops such as lettuce and carrots, PhD candidate Laura Julia Zantis found. This can lead to reduced growth and a lower nutritional value. Biodegradable plastics have this effect too, likely because of chemicals they release during degradation.

Over the course of the 20th century, politicians increasingly came to rely on experts. Their language was peppered with terms like ‘policy pathways’ and ‘evaluation frameworks’. This made debates more abstract and less ideological.

Leiden researchers have discovered an enzyme that helps bacteria feed on everyday plastics. This common enzyme could play a crucial role in future research and eventually in addressing the global plastic crisis. The study was published in Nature Communications.

Nano-plastics cause malformations. Meiru Wang, researcher at the Institute of Biology Leiden, looked at the extreme effects polystyrene nano-particles could have, using chicken embryos as a model. Her results were quite alarming. Especially as nano-particles are everywhere. In the air, floating through…

Leiden Law Cast is a podcast made by Leiden Law School, Leiden University, for everyone who wants to learn more about current legal issues.

What looked like an ordinary coot’s nest turned out to be a five-star location with a remarkable backstory. Beneath a jetty on the Rokin in Amsterdam, biologist Auke-Florian Hiemstra discovered a true time capsule — complete with face masks from the COVID era and a Mars wrapper dating back to the 1994…

An image has great powers of persuasion. It is said that ‘a picture is worth more than a thousand words’. But these days, images can easily be manipulated with severe consequences. ‘Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the value we attach to images’, says Elize de Mul, whose PhD thesis deals with ‘digital…

Lecture, Studium Generale

Auke-Florian Hiemstra is the Leidsch Dagblad Person of the Year 2022.

The university is launching a campaign to focus extra attention on our smoke-free university locations. The University is using aptly named cigarette barrels to try to show clearly just how many cigarette filters are being saved from the environment. How harmful are these cigarette filters to the e…

Nanoplastics can accumulate in developing hearts, according to a study by biologist Meiru Wang from Leiden University. Her research on chicken embryos sheds new light on how these tiny plastic particles pose a threat to our health.

Leiden academics Remco Breuker and Auke-Florian Hiemstra stand to win the title of Person of the Year.

The cargo lost at sea as a result of the MSC Zoe disaster should be considered environmental pollution and information about it should be made public. This was the case made by Leiden Law School’s Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic (LAPP). Following their investigation, the government has finally decided…

Canal Watch (De Grachtwacht), which has been cleaning canals since 2018, has received the Dutch Research Council (NWO) Communication Initiative Award.

Defending your PhD research in front of nearly 300 elementary school students: that was the challenge faced by PhD candidates Jo-Anne Verschoor and Marinka de Willigen during the VUURVLIEGEN competition organised by the Centrum JongerenCommunicatie Chemie (C3). After an exciting competition, the children…

Toen in 2019 honderden afvalcontainers in de Waddenzee vielen, wilde de overheid geen informatie vrijgeven over wat er in de containers zat. Vijf jaar later weten we eindelijk meer, nadat hoogleraar Esther Kentin beroep deed op de Wet Open Overheid.

This week, the cooperation between the Zwerfinator and Leiden University was in the news because of loose labels on deposit bottles. NOS news reported that the Zwerfinator submitted an enforcement request to the Inspectorate. The Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic (LAPP) is supporting litter waste…

PhD defence

At the entrance of the Van Steenis building you may now visit an exhibition on material culture. Unexpectedly, it does not display pottery or tools, but building materials. And recent ones at that! Check out the exhibition on Legos lost at sea, conceived and assembled by PhD candidate Maia Casna. ‘These…

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

PhD defence

Rebecca Schaefer received the new science communication grant for the SNAAR Festival in December 2020. With the festival, Schaefer wants to make music and science accessible to a wide audience. How exactly? That's what she tells in this issue of Humans of Psychology.

How can parents avoid passing on stress and mental health problems to their children? Professor of Stress-Related Psychopathology Bernet Elzinga develops simple interventions to help both parents and young people. For her research, she has been awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest academic honour…

How can you do your bit for sustainability? Students from Leiden University have launched an interactive website with 150 sustainable initiatives in and around The Hague. The website Sustainable The Hague makes it easy to find a sustainable shop, restaurant or community initiative in your local area…

Some thirty Leiden students balanced on SUP boards for the Supping for Sustainability Lustrum activity. Together with alumnus Merijn Tinga, better known as the Plastic Soup Surfer, they paddled their boards through the Leiden canals and waterways, fishing plastic waste out of the water.