The archaeology domain produces large amounts of texts, too much to effectively read or manually search through for research. To alleviate this problem, we created a search system (called AGNES), which combines full text search with entity and geographical search.

In the Special Issue of Matatu: “Power to the People?” Patronage, Intervention and Transformation in African Performative Artspaper, Annachiara Raia seeks to investigate the manifold relationships between traditional and contemporary, oral and written Swahili poetry, in the utendi and mashairi forms…

Researchers and clinicians at Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) are about to begin a milestone clinical study. It will be the first time a stem cell gene therapy developed in the Netherlands is used in a clinic. The therapy will be used to treat children with SCID, a rare disorder where children…

Our previous meta-analysis (Swart et al., 2019) had shown that feedback targeting text comprehension given when students perform a reading task positively influences learning from text. So far, differences in the effects of feedback were explained by design features, such as the timing and richness…

Promotores: Prof.dr. W.J.G.M. Peijnenburg & Dr. M.G. Vijver

On 7 May 2020, Jolanda van der Vliet defended her thesis 'The International Legal Protection of Environmental Refugees. A human rights-based, security and State responsibility approach'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. N.J. Schrijver and Prof. J.J.C. Voorhoeve.

Despite substantial progress in understanding tuberculosis (TB), the eradication of the TB epidemic is still far from reach.

Fish climbing trees, storks taking care of their parents… Premodern textual and visual culture presents us with a fabulous bestiary that reveals ingenious and rich reflections on the animal kingdom.

Across Europe, the need for a more dynamic governance and a better societal integration of research and innovation is increasingly appreciated. Internal drivers of change (such as the digitalization of science) and political will to better align with societal needs and concerns are bringing about aspirational…

Up to 50% of all children and adolescents growing up worldwide are exposed to at least one form of childhood adversity (CA), which is one of the strongest predictors for later-life psychopathology.

The growing popularity of corporate self-regulation to address supply-chain issues puts Corporate Social Responsibility and specifically codes of conduct, at the centre of attention. In this article, Jaroslaw Kantorowicz, Sarah Vandenbroucke and Yvonne Erkens analyse supplier codes of conduct of multinational…

As robotics advances in the field of emergency response, firefighting robots – or 'firebots' – offer promising improvements in safety and operational efficiency. However, to ensure these technologies truly benefit society, non-technological factors must be considered from the outset.

Dissolving microneedles are a subgroup of microneedle types that completely dissolve within the skin. During this dissolving process the vaccine, stored in the needle matrix, is released into the skin.

Political institution (like the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament) generate large bodies of text. These great amounts of text can impossibly be read by a researcher. Contrary to human researchers, computers are able to read thousands of documents a day. In this research project…

This PhD project investigates how language models can be used to extract structured knowledge from text in a way that is accurate, robust, and applicable to real-world use cases.

Can the conditioning paradigm be used for checkpoint inhibition cancer treatment?

This dissertation provides a comprehensive overview of the grammar of Bantawa, a Kiranti (Rai) language spoken in Eastern Nepal.

This article examines to what extent bureaucratic responsiveness depends upon the source, the content and the salience.

The programme focuses on the medieval dynamics of intellectual life in the Rhineland and the Low countries, nowadays divided over five countries (Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands) but one cultural region in the later Middle Ages.

A combination of two potential drugs gives hope of a 'super blockage' of an over-active immune system, Leiden researchers report in Nature. The breakthrough came from the crystallisation of a membrane protein.

New and reemerging infectious diseases call for innovative and efficient control strategies of which fast vaccine design and development represent an important element.

Corneal transplantation is one of the most common human organ transplantations worldwide. Although the 1-year survival rate is as high as 90%, more than half of transplantation patients suffer various types of corneal rejection, such as epithelial rejection, chronic stromal rejection, and endothelial…

Researchers from Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have discovered how malaria parasites escape the immune system of mosquitoes. The so-called QC enzyme changes proteins on the outside of the malaria parasite such that the immune cells are unable to recognise the parasite. As a result, the parasite…

On Wednesday 13 December, Melanie Fink will defend her doctoral thesis ‘Frontex and Human Rights: Responsibility in “Multi-Actor Situations” under the ECHR and EU Public Liability Law’. The defence will take place at 10.00 hrs at the Academy Building of Leiden University, Rapenburg 73. The supervisors…

The research described in this Thesis was aimed at designing and synthesizing nature-inspired compounds as part of TB vaccine discovery.

PhD defence

Microneedle-based vaccination has several advantages over vaccination by using conventional hypodermic needles.

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are central components of the innate immune system, functioning as pattern recognition receptors that detect microbial- and damage-associated molecular patterns and initiate antimicrobial and inflammatory responses.

Leiden has a long history in the treatment of blood cell cancer. Research to find better therapies never stands still. One of the potential treatments currently being worked on is a ‘living medicine’.

Treatment with special stem cells seems to be a good option for suppressing the immune system in organ transplants. Researchers are trying to learn from processes that take place in the human body during pregnancy.

Just published:

How do plant defense genes get activated?

Lecture

Because of their large surface area and immunological competence, mucosal tissues are attractive administration and target sites for vaccination.

Vaccination via the skin or the mucosae

PURPOSE: The aim of the study was to develop a cheap and fast method to produce hollow microneedles and an applicator for injecting vaccines into the skin at a pre-defined depth and test the applicability of the system for dermal polio vaccination.

The function of TLRs in innate immunity has aroused worldwide attention soon after its discovery. Because of the broad functions of TLR2 in innate immunity, the drive for the development of TLR2-targeted vaccines or therapeutic treatments has accelerated in the last decades.

Cardiovascular disease is a major global burden and atherosclerosis is the main underlying pathological process.

Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease affecting millions of people world-wide.

How were ideas about politics and society distributed in ancient China? Hilde De Weerdt, Professor of Chinese History, investigates this using new digital methods. We speak with her about networks, big data and digital humanities.