Ester van der Voet received the International Society Award in Industrial Ecology. She is awarded this price for her outstanding contributions and leadership in the field of industrial ecology, and her tireless efforts to promote sustainability and resource management. The ceremony took place on the…

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.

Four students of the MSc Industrial Ecology have recently been selected to participate in the accelerator programme of the EIT Climate-KIC, which helps sustainable start-ups. The four students use coconut husks to develop sustainable boards, which can be used to make furniture.

Three directors of PostNL have been arrested in Belgium, suspected of human trafficking among other things. Abuses also exist in the Dutch parcel delivery sector. Why does the Netherlands act less firmly?

Metal production is not only energy-intensive and a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but is also associated with other impacts affecting human health and ecosystems.

How is generative AI changing the way we learn, communicate, and make sense of the world today? As AI tools become part of everyday life, they don’t just produce text but shape meaning, influence trust, and impact how we find and share information. This project explores how people use, experience and…

Leiden University has set up two committees to consider issues that are the focus of much attention within our community and society at large. They are the Knowledge Security Committee and the Fossil Fuel Industry Collaboration Committee. Former dean Joanne van der Leun will chair both.

How do individuals make decisions? What determines the quality of group decisions? When and why do people cooperate with others? How does intergroup competition evolve?

Prof. dr. Arnold Tukker will be appointed on 1 October 2013 as Chair of Industrial Ecology at the Faculty of Science of Leiden University. He will work at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), and also become the new director of this institute.

Aleydis Nissen published a feature article on the South Korean electronics industry in Eos magazine. The Pascal Decroos Fund sponsored this article.

Connecting Agriculture, Crafts, Construction, Transport, and Resilience Strategies

How to make educational innovations practical for teachers

This remarkable statement appears in Yi-Wen Cheng’s dissertation on state monopoly and forms of competition in the Chinese tobacco industry. Cheng presents her conclusions and looks back on her fieldwork. ‘I had to accept a lot of drinks in order to establish a network of contacts.’

On 1 July 2020, Niek Strohmaier defended his thesis 'Making Sense of Business Failure'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.A.A. Adriaanse en dr. H. Pluut.

How can the concept of Critical Making be expanded into a general approach that ties the critical methodology of artistic research, and the established concepts of artistic autonomy, together with contemporary creative-technological development?

Aleydis Nissen, one of our colleagues from Belgium, created a feature article with photos for Knack magazine (Roularta Media Group). The Pascal Decroos Fund sponsored this article.

Plants could be regarded as small chemical factories, which produce chemical substances via photosynthesis. If we can imitate photosynthesis in an artificial system, we can make clean fuels and materials out of sunlight and CO2. Huub de Groot is very close to designing a system of this kind.

This minor focuses on how our thoughts, emotions and behaviour are influenced by other people, and how we influence other people.

Simona Demková, Assistant professor at the Europa Institute of Leiden University, publishes her book ‘Automated Decision-Making and Effective Remedies: The New Dynamics in the Protection of EU Fundamental Rights in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’.

Lecture, European Union Seminar

Mining for natural resources harms the environment. But we desperately need them, for both the development of countries and the transition to a sustainable energy system. Professor of Sustainable Resource Use Ester van der Voet researches how we can reduce the environmental impact of natural resources…

What was the environmental impact of the industrial mining revolution that transformed southern Africa? Specifically, what was the impact of industrial mining when viewed from a more than human multi-species perspective?

How do authorities and citizens construct meaning in the aftermath of jihadist terrorist attacks through the use of frames, rituals, and symbols. What does this reveal about the communicative impact of terrorism?

This book offers a concise and accessible introduction to debates about expertise, policy-making and democracy. It uniquely combines an overview of recent research on the policy role of experts with discussions in political philosophy and the philosophy of expertise.

The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) of Leiden University and Art Institute West Den Haag are pleased to announce their close collaboration in the second season of the public series In the Making. This series, dedicated to the practice of research in the arts, will consist of seven public…

Brain activity changes as people age, which can lead to cognitive decline. By measuring and comparing brain data from mice and humans, the researcher will investigate how the brain’s noise levels change with age and affect choice behavior.

Advanced biotechnology allows us to select or alter the genetic makeup of human embryos. What limits do we impose on biotechnological intervention in nature and the human body? And whose call is that?

The International Criminal Court’s response to contestation by African states parties

Bacterial biocatalysis constitutes a sustainable alternative for high-value chemicals production by enabling the utilization of renewable feedstocks.

The expanding population and economic activity are driving up global energy consumption. Simultaneously, there is an urgent need to transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources to mitigate the climate crisis, primarily caused by fossil fuel combustion.

Both play and politics have the potential to create worlds in which new rules apply, meanings are created, and possibilities emerge for collaboration, strategy and creative solutions. In this sense, play and politics have always been very much alike. But what happens to this kinship in a post-digital…

Our students and staff have strong feelings and deep concerns about the ties between Dutch universities and the fossil fuel industry. It’s a thorny issue and as a university we’re keen to chart our course for the future, but we cannot do so alone. I therefore hope to be able to discuss the matter with…

PACES is an innovative, inter-disciplinary and multi-level research project that asks, How do changes in society, individual life experiences and migration policy shape decisions to stay or to migrate over time and across countries? And how can this knowledge inform future migration policies and gov…

Our project focuses on the analysis of decision-making processes in the European Union (EU) and explores how approaches and tools to understand decision-making found in both the Natural and the Social Sciences can be linked, knowledge between these traditions exchanged and synergies utilized. To explore…

The ability to create objects and structures with our hands has been essential to human development. This ability is something modern society is at risk of losing. Leiden archaeologists gather knowledge about ancient processes of ‘making and creating’ over the centuries, knowledge that helps our current…

We are doing all we can to save energy at the university. Find out how you as a member of staff or student can do about energy and help reduce CO2 emissions.

Müller, Braun & Fraussen examine the conditions under which commissioners appear in the news and which communication strategies they pursue.

In science, it is of vital importance that multiple studies corroborate the same result. Researchers therefore need to know all the details of previous experiments in order to implement the procedures as exactly as possible. However, this is becoming a major problem in neuroscience, as animal studies…