Vasiliki Kosta acted as one of two expert mentors for the working group on academic freedom in the ‘Our Rule of Law Academy’.

On Wednesday September 26th, theoretical physicist Sean Carroll will give an Ehrenfest colloquium. It is part of a lecture series that has been running since 1912 and was founded by physicist Paul Ehrenfest.

How do bacteria sense and adapt to their environment? Ariane Briegel, Professor of Ultrastructural Biology, is intrigued by this question. Using new techniques, she produces three-dimensional images of bacteria that provide us with new clues about their sensory system.

Lecture

The two-year Research Master in Asian Studies equips you with advanced and in-depth knowledge of a region and discipline within the field of Asian Studies.

The car we buy is made out of thousands of components, which are produced using different types of materials. These materials need to be sourced from different places, sent to production facilities and assembled. Once the car is dismissed, the components need to be taken care of by either reusing, recycling…

On the 6th of December, Céril van Leeuwen has won the Jaap Doek Children’s rights thesis award for her thesis ‘The right to be heard restricted: is this desirable in the civil law proceedings?’ This award, for the best master thesis in the area of Children’s Rights, is annually granted by Defence for…

Study information

Meet the newest Full Professor at the Leiden Observatory: Joe Hennawi. All the way from Santa Barbara, California, Hennawi will strengthen the astronomy institute. In Leiden, he will use his recent ERC Advanced Grant to study how supermassive black holes come into existence.

A 35-year-old uranium crystal will not disclose its secret: what causes a dramatic phase transition at 17.5 Kelvin? Thanks to a new artificial intelligence approach, half of the possible explanations are excluded, but the definitive answer remains to be found. 'It is very frustrating', says physicist…

The corona crisis has had a major effect on research. Sarah de Rijcke, Professor of Science and Evaluation Studies, and her group research the effects of performance evaluation on the work of ocean scientists. The majority of the fieldwork was supposed to be carried out on ships and at marine labs throughout…

Hester Bijl, the Rector Magnificus of Leiden University, was handed a ‘shockingly long list’ of names of missing Iranians in her office at the Administration and Central Services department on 13 December 2022.

'Education has always been something I am very interested in,' says the passionate Michiel Hogerheijde. He was already chairman of the astronomy programme committee and has been teaching for many years. Since 1 October, he is also the new Programme Director of the astronomy bachelor. 'I really enjoy…

Conference

Eyserheide. A Magdalenian Open-Air Site In The Loess Area Of The Netherlands And Its Archaeological Context.

The Faculty of Science forges new research collaborations with the Institut Teknologi Bandung in Indonesia in the fields of tropical diseases, e.g. tuberculosis and medical biotechnology.

The Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University is host to the NWO programme,

Speech Prosody 2024 includes three workshops.

Leiden University linguist Lisa Cheng speaks two Chinese languages, as well as English and Dutch. She is a strong supporter of the European Commission's wish that every European citizen learns to speak several languages. ‘Speaking three languages is not that difficult.’

Lecture

On November 8, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) named Wessel Kraaij as one of the 2017 Distinguished Members. ACM Distinguished Members have made a significant contribution to the field of computing, computer science or information technology. This year, worldwide 43 scientists received…

People can be easily mislead with graphs. But they don’t necessarily stay misled, the research shows.

For the first time researchers have succeeded in placing a layer of graphene on top of a stable fatty lipid monolayer. Surrounded by a protective shell of lipids, graphene could enter the body and function as a versatile sensor. The results are the first step towards such a shell, and have been published…

On April 20, sixty participants will take part in LION’s triannual meeting for high school physics teachers, to deepen their knowledge of physics and astronomy and to explore new teaching methods. This edition marks a special occasion, as it is the last meeting organized by Bert van der Hoorn, who will…

On Thursday 14 March, the Europa Institute held its fifth ‘Meet the Author’ event.

Darinka Piqani visited the Law Faculty of the University of Tirana (Albania) on 16-20 January 2023 and lectured on the transparency and the right to information in EU law. These lectures were held in the context of the Research Expertise from the Academic Diaspora (READ) Fellowship that Dr Piqani holds…

Paper dr. Anna Scott discussed in one-day conference on Pianism in the Long Nineteenth Century, featuring scholarship and interviews from across the globe.

With great sadness we share the news that Prof. Harold Linnartz passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on Sunday 31 December 2023. We are all in shock, and our thoughts are with his wife and children, other family, and friends. Harold was at the heart of our institute, as a researcher, as a supervisor,…

The African Studies Centre Leiden presented the last book by its renowned colleague Prof. Stephen Ellis (1953-2015), This Present Darkness: A history of Nigerian organised crime, on 9 June. The book was published posthumously. Former colleagues and friends paid tribute to Ellis, who was regarded as…

‘The climate crisis is the greatest threat we face,’ says Leiden University environmental scientist Paul Behrens. ‘And yet, there is hope. In the near future, I think we will wonder why we didn’t make these changes earlier.’

The philosophers at the Institute for Philosophy develop new perspectives and insights not only on topical themes such as immigration and climate change, but also on more fundamental philosophical questions.

To truly understand complex regions such as the Middle East and Asia, you have to know their culture, history and local societies inside out. Driven by curiosity for other cultures, the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) provides an understanding and analysis of current and historical…

Exhibition, Sound installation

VVI Research Talk 2023-2024

Photosynthesis is the origin of life on earth, but it is a phenomenon that is still barely understood. Take, for example, the extremely efficient mechanism of electron transport. Leiden researchers demonstrate for the first time where one particular cause of this might be found.

Knowledge and culture subproject 4:

The municipality of Leiden aims for circular construction, but how do you reconcile that with the growing demand for housing? For the Kennisatelier Duurzaamheid, master's students from Industrial Ecology are investigating whether the municipality can build enough houses up to 2030 and still use half…

The relationship between academia and democracy is a complicated one. Should policy makers listen to scientists or to citizens? That is the dilemma Valérie Pattyn and Johan Christensen will discuss with a panel of experts during the academic conference EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF).

The sustainable production of hydrogen could potentially be made more efficient by adding a cleverly chosen salt to the process. Researchers at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC), in collaboration with physicists at the University of Twente, have discovered that the type of salt present in the…

Patients with the same illness often receive the same treatment, even if the cause of the illness is different for each person. This represents a new step towards ultimately being able to offer every patient more personalised treatment.

What is Leiden University doing to reduce energy consumption and move away from fossil energy? Where can you find information about energy? And what changes can you make yourself?

Kaarle Wirta is one of the four PhDs in Cátia Antunes’ ERC Research Project 'Fighting Monopolies'.

On Friday 16 February 2024, Rudolf E. de Jong passed away unexpectedly in Cairo. Since 2012, he was the director of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC), which he skillfully managed for 12 years. He was laid to rest in Amsterdam on 27 February. Rudolf was 65.

On 12 June 2020 the ESIL Interest Group ‘EU as a Global Actor’ and City Law School London organized a Workshop on ‘The European Union’s External Action and International Law: A View From the Outside’. The event was convened by Jed Odermatt (City Law School) and Ramses A. Wessel (University of Groningen)…

Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) has just launched its COVID Radar app. Users of the app are asked to regularly complete a short questionnaire about their health, regardless of whether they are ill or not. This will give the researchers a good idea of the current spread of coronavirus in the…