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…

For thousands of years, beavers had a big influence on the Dutch ecosystem and the people that lived there. This is the conclusion of research by archaeologist Nathalie Brusgaard.

The euro crisis of 2010 has shown that the Eurozone lacks economic cohesion and that EU fiscal integration is needed for a stable euro. But can this integration exist without clashing with the national constitutional interests of the Member States? Frederik Behre looked into this matter in his PhD-thesis…

An environmental and palaeo-economic reconstruction.

To what extent are the rights to street children violated en how can their rights be protected?

Four bachelor’s students in archaeology have embarked on a month-long field school in Aruba. They will work with Harold Kelly, a local archaeologist at the National archaeological museum of Aruba, and with the research team of Island(er)s at the Helm.

The Villa Son Sard archaeological project aims to determine the boundaries of the Roman and post-Roman villa at Son Sard on Mallorca. While the team was excavating in the summer of 2023, several news outlets covered the findings.

Mediterranean archaeologist Dr Anita Casarotto has been awarded a grant of € 5,800 from the Byvanck Fonds for her research on unlocking important data for regional archaeological investigations in the Mediterranean. In collaboration with Leiden University and the KNIR (Royal Netherlands Institute in…

Joanita Vroom's term as Head of the Department for World Archaeology runs out on March 1, 2023. Quentin Bourgeois will succeed her. In this interview, we look both back on the turbulent last three years and ahead at what the future has in store for the department. ‘I am very proud of the World Archaeology…

On on 29 January 2024, it was announced that Aylin Alexa Zainea has won the Thesis Award from the Dutch Data Protection Authority. She wrote her thesis for the Advanced Master programme on Law and Digital Technologies hosted by eLaw, Center for Law and Digital Technologies. Her thesis entitled ‘Automated…

The Municipality of Oss is a household name in the world of Dutch archaeology. For fifty years, Leiden archaeologists, in collaboration with residents of Oss, have been uncovering the history of the municipality. 2024 is the archaeological year of Oss! In a series of interviews we look back on fifty…

A multi-disciplinary approach to past lifestyles and cultural practices

A study of early medieval reopened graves

William Pestle and Jason Laffoon recently published a new article entitled 'Quantitative paleodietary reconstruction with complex foodwebs: An isotopic case study from the Caribbean' in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

Political scientist Corinna Jentzsch received an NWO Veni grant for her research on the conditions of collaboration between militias and state forces and its consequences for safety and political order.

In families where more than two people assume the role of parent, not all of these parents have legal status. This causes problems, particularly with inheritance law, says PhD candidate Michelle Michels.

Seminar

On 10 December 2024, the European Parliament played host to an insightful presentation of ‘Protecting Democracy in Europe: Pluralism, Autocracy, and the Future of the EU’, the new book by Tom Theuns, Assistant Professor at Leiden University. Hosted by MEP Thijs Reuten (PvdA/S&D) and his team, the event…

The Directorate-General for the Environment of the European Commission has granted the project entitled “Initiating A Public Dialogue on Environment Protection in the Context of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Negotiations” to a consortium led by The Institute for European…

From Caspar Reuvens to the royal grave in Oss, and from ancient images in the Hortus to a table from Naturalis. The National Museum of Antiquities is 200 years old, and throughout this whole period there have been close contacts between museum and university. Curator Annemarieke Willemsen explains this…

The Faculty Council is the most important co-participatory body of the Faculty of Archaeology. Its members represent staff and students in meetings with the Faculty Board, and they can have a profound impact on the Faculty's policies. We speak with the council's chair, Merlijn Veltman, about the goals…

Niels Laurens recently started as the new Director of Operations at the Faculty of Archaeology as well as the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs. We sat down with him for an interview on his background, his drive, and his take on archaeology. ‘My main drive is to enable researchers and lecturers…

This dissertation is concerned with the study of the less than twenty remaining precolonial Mesoamerican codices. By considering these rare and fragile pictographic and hieroglyphic books from the cultural biography perspective, many different aspects of these books can be studied.

Tracking early human behaviour through plant processing and -exploitation.

During the Faculty Staff Meeting of August 28th, Corinne Hofman spoke about her time on the Faculty Board. “I look back on a rich decade in which I have seen the Faculty, and the University as a whole, change at a rapid pace.”

The Faculty of Archaeology is running a funding scheme to assist small-scale projects that contribute to diversifying archaeological practice in all domains, including classrooms, laboratories, museums, and the field. We discuss the grant with two representatives from the Diversity Committee: Tuna Kalaycı…

Large-scale forest fires started by prehistoric hunter-gatherers are probably the reason why Europe is not more densely forested. This is the finding of an international team, including climate researcher Professor Jed Kaplan of the University of Lausanne and archaeologist Professor Jan Kolen of Leiden…

From 2020 to 2023, Professor Miguel John Versluys and his research group will participate in an international consortium co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union in the framework of the international project “Alexandria: (Re)activating Common Urban Imaginaries”. This ERC project…

On 28 June 2024, Dr Kristof Gombeer spoke on State jurisdiction and the protection of people at sea at the 81st Biennial Conference of the International Law Association (ILA) in Athens, Greece.

Industrial sites are built for safety, but are they prepared for security breaches? As concerns grow over threats to national security, these sites are a target. The Securdomino project built a tool to prevent malicious attacks and rethinks how we define security.

The map application includes information from old and new buildings archaeological projects. This makes it possible to investigate whether water facilities (wells, cisterns) and waste facilities (cesspits, sewers) were the privilege of Leiden’s wealthy elite in the late 16th and 17th centuries or whether…

Indigenous Latin American artifacts have attracted the interest of Europeans since the earliest moment of contact between Europeans and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The ERC-funded BECACO project uses an innovative multidisciplinary framework to investigate the provenance of ethnographic and…

With the aid of physics and a minuscule magnet, researchers have discovered a new structure of telomeric DNA. Telomeres are sometimes seen as the key to living longer. They protect genes from damage but get a bit shorter each time a cell divides. If they become too short, the cell dies. The new discovery…

Plant biologist Pingtao Ding, assistant professor at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), has received a 2.4 million European grant from the European Research Council (ERC). This ERC Starting Grant for promising young researchers allows him to unravel the molecular mechanisms by which plants resist…

A technique originally developed for satellite imaging can now be used to recover pictographic texts from underneath the surface of a five hundred year old Mexican manuscript.

The central research question focuses on identifying shifts in the urban social network in terms of private, semi-public and public space by means of mapping the spatial distributions of wells and cesspits in the town of Haarlem in the course of the pre-industrial period (1200-1800). Shifts may be indicative…

Gianclaudio Malgieri, Associate Professor at eLaw Leiden, was invited as a speaker at the Annual Conference of the European Academy of Law (ERA), on 21 March in Brussels.

All first-year bachelor’s and master’s students at the Faculty of Archaeology have been assigned a student as a mentor to help them find their way around their new city and degree programme. These mentor groups, with ten to fifteen students, will also give students the chance to get to know one another.…

Children have the right to play and relax. Games, social media and video platforms are attractive new ways to do that. However, hardly any online games are designed specifically for children, nor do they factor in children's rights.

Are you an interdisciplinary researcher working on or with heritage? Do you struggle with faculty fragmentation and finding relevant colleagues to collaborate with? How can we at Leiden facilitate interfaculty knowledge exchange? These were some of the questions which inspired eight Leiden University…

On 13 October 2023, Tuvana Aras, PhD Candidate at the Europa Institute and the International Institute of Air & Space Law, took part in the Second Max Planck Law Conference for Young European Scholars hosted by the Max Planck European Law Group in Frankfurt, Germany.

Influenza CD8(+) T-cell epitopes are conserved amongst influenza strains and can be recognized by influenza-specific cytotoxic T-cells (CTLs), which can rapidly clear infected cells. An influenza peptide vaccine that elicits these CTLs would therefore be an alternative to current influenza vaccines,…

Somali archaeology in Somaliland takes centre stage in a BBC World Service radio programme and a China Global Television Networks (CGTN) programme, both presented by archaeologist Sada Mire.