Archaeologist Victor Klinkenberg examined an old Assyrian settlement in Syria, near to the IS stronghold Raqqa. 'Social life was more important than military life.' PhD defence 27 October.

The powerful Dutch East India Company and West India Company were summoned before the High Court more often than historians have assumed. The complainants varied from competitors, to the Companies' own staff and even poor citizens. This is what Leiden historian Kate Ekama has discovered. PhD defence…

The year 2023 saw the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the Wagner Group rebellion and wildfires and floods as all the weather records were smashed. Our most-read stories were about the climate crisis and the elections: here’s the list.

On 27 september historian Adam Zamoyski held a captivating lecture on his new book Napoleon: the Man behind the Myth. During this lecture, which was an initiative by Polen in Beeld and the Central and Eastern European Studies Center, Zamoyski answered the question: ‘what were the Napoleonic Wars really…

Connecting worlds, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. In that respect, a huge amount happened at Leiden University in 2023.

Connecting scientific fields, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. What did the university achieve in 2024? A small sample.

In Sci-Fi comic book Resist NOW!, wondrous adventures will illustrate possibilities to combat antimicrobial resistance. But the comic book will only be produced if enough money is raised to make the project into reality.

The Catholics were by no means pitiable victims over the two centuries that they had to practise their religion underground, Caroline Lenarduzzi writes in her PhD dissertation. They managed to keep their faith alive from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. PhD defence 25 October.

The interdisciplinary, English-taught minor ‘Violence Studies’ looks at violence from very diverse scientific perspectives. What are the benefits from this approach? Students and lecturers evaluate: ‘This minor’s a goldmine’.

Astronomers led by Simon Portegies Zwart used simulations to reconstruct how three stars were ejected from the star cluster R136, 60,000 years ago. The analysis reveals that five stars were involved in the event in the Tarantula Nebula.

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,…

On 11 March, pharmaceutical company Janssen received approval to launch its corona vaccine on the European market. This made Janssen the fourth company to be given the green light by the European Medicines Agency. As Lead of the Janssen Campus in the Netherlands, Biology alumnus Bart van Zijll Langhout…

Historians have long known that Catholics played a significant role in the Revolt of the Netherlands (1520-1635). But what did the Revolt mean to individual Catholics? Professor of Early Modern Dutch history Judith Pollman has published a book on the subject.

This article studies the securitization of immigration in the United States of America (U.S.), through the analysis of the National Security Strategies (NSS) published between 2002 and 2017, using a two-layered analytical framework that combines securitization theory and agenda setting theory.

PURPOSE: To determine the effect of elasticity on the skin permeation of ketoprofen from surfactant-based vesicular formulations and elastic liposomes.

This doctoral research project in design seeks to shed a light on legibility in the context of visually impaired beginning readers.

Patterns of paleomobility in the Caribbean were studied through an inter-disciplinary approach using a combination of archaeological, osteological, mortuary, and isotopic data.

On March 12th, Jonathan Brown succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Jonathan on this great result.

PURPOSE: In the present study we investigated the root-cause of an interference signal (100-200 nm) of sugar-containing solutions in dynamic light scattering (DLS) and nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA) and its consequences for the analysis of particles in biopharmaceutical drug products.

Promotor: Prof.dr. E. Smets, Dr. M. Stech

Promotors: Prof.dr. P.G.L. Klinkhamer, Prof.dr. P.M. Brakefield

In this dissertation, Dutch secondary school teachers’ attitudes, knowledge, noticing skills and reasoned practices regarding culturally responsive teaching in a multicultural classroom context, were examined.

The excavation of three Bronze Age barrows and surrounding landscape at Apeldoorn-Wieselseweg

Using object assemblages to reconstruct activities, modes of deposition and abandonment at the Late Bronze Age dunnu of Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria.

This thesis was embedded in the APELAFICO project and focussed on investigating effects of sound from North Sea offshore wind farms on pelagic fish and harbour porpoise.

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.P. van Wezel

Clustered Neighbourhood Settlements of the Central Anatolian Neolithic ca. 8500-5500 Cal. BC

Announcement of the publication of Vamping the Stage: Female Voices of Asian Modernities, the first book-length study of women, modernity, and popular music in Asia (University of Hawai'i Press, 2017).

The role of grave sets in Corded Ware and Bell Beaker funerary practices

Promotor: G.R. de Snoo

This study looks at population response to government containment strategies during initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in four high-trust Northern European countries–Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden–with special emphasis on expressions of governmental trust.

This subproject examines how memories of flight and persecution shaped new social and religious identities in the Netherlands.

The main goal of the research described in this thesis was the development of new photoactivated chemotherapy (PACT) ruthenium(II) complexes bearing a non-toxic photolabile ligand.

Ms. Monica Klasing Chen defended her thesis on 16 December 2020

The current resurgence of whooping cough is alarming, and improved pertussis vaccines are thought to offer a solution. Outer membrane vesicle vaccines (omvPV) are potential vaccine candidates, but omvPV-induced humoral responses have not yet been characterized in detail.

Tero Alstola defended his thesis on 21 December 2017

This dissertation presents the synthesis and evaluation of antibody recognition for various capsular polysaccharide (CP) fragments of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus).

The haplolepideous mosses (Dicranidae) comprise about 4000 species distributed over a wide range of habitats, with great gametophytic and sporophytic morphological variation. Their monophyly is well supported by the results of several molecular phylogenetic studies, which shed light on their relationships…

The aim of this thesis was to develop aluminium salt-based nanoparticles that may ultimately be used as adjuvant in human vaccines.

A multi-disciplinary approach to past lifestyles and cultural practices

This book surveys a distinct human phenomenon in the history of the ancient Near East: individuals who were born males but, under various social and historical circumstances, their masculine identity was considered ambiguous. They bore specific titles and were engaged in cult or palace administration.…

This subproject examines the development of memory cultures, the meaning of memories of the Dutch Revolt, the multimedia aspect of the creation of a local memory culture, which artefacts were used to keep memories alive and the differences between local memory cultures in the Repubilc and the Southern…

Long Island, an islet of Antigua in the northern Lesser Antilles forms the major source for flint in the Lesser Antilles. A survey by Hofman, Hoogland and van Gijn in 1989 has indicated the presence of various raw material sources. Test-excavations at the major flintknapping site of Flinty Bay show…

One of the ways of understanding another culture better is to examine what people experience when they read a text, or look at an image. Leiden experts have a lot of knowledge in this field, for example on culture in ancient Japan.

Essays dedicated to Frans Wiggermann

Here we share findings into the effectiveness of the Designing Your Life education at Leiden University. Our study indicates that DYL education has a positive effect on students’ confidence and competencies.

‘It became very clear that Brazilian legislative policy was frail, obsolete and unreliable,’ says Felipe de Paula. He defended his dissertation on the limits and possibilities of legislative policy in Brazil on Tuesday 27 March 2018.

Growth hormone profiles are pulsatile and highly variable between individuals, limiting the implementation of mathemathical models to quantify an individual's secretion.

The National-Socialist Movement in the Netherlands - the NSB - remained the only legal party in the Netherlands during most of the Second World War.