Following news reports about racist comments made by Rotterdam police officers in a WhatsApp group, racism within the police force is back in the spotlight. ‘Dealing with this issue is a matter of urgency’, says Professor of Immigration Law Peter Rodrigues.

Plants produce an astonishing variety of secondary metabolites (SMs) which are thought to play vital roles in the fitness of plants through ecological interactions.

Promotor: Prof.dr. P.G.L Klinkhamer

In this thesis, I focused on studying the above- and belowground interactions of J. vulgaris from a plant-soil feedback (hereafter, PSF) perspective. I investigated the temporal variation of negative PSF and examined the effects of root-associated bacteria on plant performance and aboveground herbiv…

Microbiome composition of the spermosphere and the rhizosphere of wild and modern bean accessions grown in an agricultural and a native soil from Colombia was characterized by metagenomics and cultivation-dependent approaches.

The plant hormone auxin regulates plant growth and development through polar cell-to-cell transport-generated maxima and minima. PIN FORMED (PIN) auxin efflux carriers determine the direction of this auxin flow through their asymmetric placement on the plasma membrane (PM).

On 13 June, Professor Christa Tobler spoke about indirect discrimination at the Vilnius Gediminas Technical University in Lithuania.

By growing in a soil plants change the biotic and abiotic properties of the soil in which they grow.

Supervisor: P.J.J. Hooykaas Co-Supervisor: R. Offringa

We showed that constitutive and inducible chemical and morphological defenses against Western flower thrips differ between tomato and chrysanthemum plants.

PhD defence

Promotores: Prof.dr. T.H.W. Bäck, Prof.dr. M. Bongards (Cologne University)

In this project, we will study the genetic and environmental drivers of woodiness and stem lignification at the level of plant‐to‐gene‐to‐molecule.

Salicylic acid (SA) is a plant hormone, which is involved in the defense responses to pathogens and to abiotic stress, and in the regulation of plant growth and development.

Monica Kaminska, Dennis Broeders and Fabio Cristiano have contributed a chapter to the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CyCon 2021), which gathers 20 articles from the law, technology and strategy domains.

Promotor: C.A.M.J.J. van den Hondel, Co-promotor: Sandra de Weert

How can we make agricultural production systems more sustainable as the worldwide demand for healthy, safe food continues to grow? How can we develop healthy new food crops that have higher yields while requiring fewer harmful chemicals?

Lecture

The AT-Hook Nuclear Localized 15 (AHL15) gene belongs to a plant-specific gene family of DNA-binding proteins. Overexpression of AHL15 in Arabidopsis thaliana delays developmental phase transitions whereas its loss of function causes a slight acceleration.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Memelink

Promotor: G.R. de Snoo, Co-promotor: H.H. de Iongh, C.J.M. Musters

On 15 December 2022, the following thematic report of the European Equality Law Network was published: Christa Tobler, Indirect discrimination under Directives 2000/43 and 2000/78, for the European Commission, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union 2022.

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F. Smets, Co-promotor: T.R. van Andel

Multicellular giant algae Chara species have been widely used in physiological studies for decades.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office Oost-Nederland, the Police in Oost-Nederland and the municipality of Steenwijkerland failed in their handling of a case involving discrimination in Giethoorn. This is the opinion of experts, including Professor Peter Rodrigues, in Dutch investigative journalism programme…

This thesis investigates the relations between metabolism and anatomy through the use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

Despite being prohibited by law since 1971, race discrimination continues to exist in the Netherlands. Why is this?

How were the Russians, under early modern conditions, able to incorporate this distant, undeveloped and, because frequent nomadic attacks, dangerous territory? And what role did the Kolyvan-Voskresensk plants play in this process?

The disappearance and reappearance of species of plants in the Netherlands is a normal phenomenon. In the period from 1981-2000 the number of plants to have disappeared was considerably lower than previously, whereas the number of species rediscovered is much higher. Climate change may be the cause.

Every day we make use of devices, services and apps which contain algorithms that could be discriminating. These range from Facebook to self-driving cars, from the Tax Authorities to a rotating door.

The Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law organises an annual conference on various topics of equality and discrimination law. The 12th such conference took place from 2 to 4 July 2025 at the Faculty of Law of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana

Promotor: Prof.dr. L.J. Slikkerveer

Once again, excuses were offered by the Rotterdam Police Department following a racist incident, and a guarantee of better behaviour in future. The reason was an arrest in which excessive force was used and a person involved was called an offensive, racist name by an officer.

Restoring a natural plant environment on exhausted agricultural lands and in nature areas is difficult. We can speed this up by steering the soils towards the desired situation. This is what Martijn Bezemer, newly appointed Professor of Ecology of Plant-Microbe-Insect interactions at Leiden University’s…

Plants, are sessile organisms, have developed strategies to adapt to changes in their environment, in part by altering their growth and development.

The judicial authorities are looking into the possibilities for prosecution for the slogans that were projected on the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam on New Year’s Eve. Not an easy task, according to legal experts. When do we consider something to be ‘discrimination’?

Amorphophallus decus-silvae, or the ‘penis plant’ as it is known, has just flowered at the Hortus botanicus. It flowered for two days, and then the pollen, which the male flowers produced was collected. As far as the plant experts at the Hortus can tell, this was just the third time that this species…

In its ruling this week, The Hague Court of Appeal made short work of how the Dutch Border Police allow the colour of a person’s skin to be taken into account when selecting people to check. According to Maartje van der Woude, this ruling reaches far beyond the border police. ‘This is a problem for…

On April 19, 2018, the University of Vienna organized an international conference on the topic of equality bodies.

Latest technological developments in data mining and profiling.

At almost midway through, the “Stoeplanten” (Pavement Plants) citizen science project has been very successful. This research was initiated by Nienke Beets, who while working for the Science Communication and Society research group and Hortus Botanicus, gave her contribution to the Stoeplanten proje…

During this semester, the University of Vienna offers the 19th lecture series on Gender Studies. On 21 November 2017, Christa Tobler, Professor of European Law at the Universities of Basel (Switzerland) and Leiden, gave a lecture on the subject of multiple discrimination, including also sex.

In this article, Eamon Aloyo argues that university supervisors should not use student evaluations of teachers as a measure of teaching effectiveness.

This dissertation aims to provide insight in ethnic prejudice in Chinese-Dutch children and the ethnic socialization context they are exposed to through three social-contextual factors, i.e., parents, children’s books, and the COVID pandemic.

The Netherlands is losing plant species that rely on pollination by insects. Leiden environmental scientist Kaixuan Pan demonstrates this after analysing 87 years of measurements from over 365,000 plots. The news is alarming for our biodiversity and food security. ‘75 per cent of our crops and 90% of…

Just like every other organism on Earth, plants’ ultimate goal is to survive and reproduce. In order to achieve this, they must make trade-offs between where and how to allocate their finite set of resources. Whether they put their resources and energy into their growth, reproduction or maintenance,…