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 Thursday, December 12, 2024, historian and terrorism expert Beatrice de Graaf will deliver the 53rd Huizinga Lecture at the Stadsgehoorzaal in Leiden. Under the title "We Are the Times: History in Times of Crisis", De Graaf will explore how history is used during crises to give meaning to the times.…

On 25 September, lights throughout Leiden will be turned off for the Seeing Stars event. What makes the urban night so special? We asked university lecturer Sara Brandellero, who researches cities, night and migration.

How can we best tell the current generations about some of the darkest parts of our past? To answer this question, researchers from Leiden are working with the Gedeeld Verleden, Gezamenlijke Toekomst foundation on public programmes about the Dutch history of slavery.

How would you convert Egyptian hieroglyphs into Latin script? And what is actually the correct translation of dishes on a Vietnamese menu? On Saturday 28 January, high school students from all over the Netherlands will come to Leiden to ponder a series of language-related puzzles. Their goal? To win…

René Kleijn holds an MSc in chemistry and a PhD in Industrial Ecology both from Leiden University. He is now an associate professor at Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) at Leiden University.

Dita Auzina is a Postdoc researcher at the Faculty of Archaeology.

Joeri Reinders is an Assistant Professor of Climate and Earth Science at Leiden University College (LUC) in The Hague. His research focuses on the impact of climate change on hydrological extremes, particularly flooding and droughts, and explores the interaction between climatic variability, flood risk,…

The research of Francesco Buda is focused on the application and development of state-of-the-art computational tools to simulate key processes in photosynthesis by modelling, providing a novel theoretical interpretation for the efficient photo-induced charge separation in proteins and artificial mimics…

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Jos Raaijmakers is Head of Department of the Microbial Ecology Department at NIOO KNAW and collaborates on various projects with the Institute of Biology Leiden.

Central to the research of Lies Bouwman is the aim to gain understanding of transition metal complexes and their properties and reactivity at the molecular level. She then uses this understanding to ‘teach’ metal complexes to perform new catalytic reactions.

Huub de Groot aims to understand the fundamentals of direct energy conversion by proteins, complexes, membranes and cells in natural photosynthesis for the chemical design of responsive matrices for direct energy conversion with high yield by artificial photosynthesis.

Dennis Hetterscheid tries to understand and mimic bioinorganic multi-electron processes that are relevant to our future energy infrastructure. The research of Dennis Hetterscheid is carried out both in the MCBIM and CASC research groups of Leiden University.

The goal of Geert-Jan Kroes is to achieve the ability to predict the outcome of dissociative chemisorption reactions of small molecules on transition metal surfaces. This requires an accurate modeling of the molecule-metal surface interaction and of the reaction dynamics, including energy dissipatio…

Although there is considerable evidence that nature in the city is beneficial to both people and animals, we still do not have an overall picture of those benefits. To rectify that, a Leiden PhD candidate and a student – armed with a cargo bike – are using The Hague as a life-size laboratory.

Fifteen knowledge institutions and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science have signed the covenant for Open Science NL. Leiden University has also joined the covenant, via the Universities of the Netherlands. This marks the start of the Dutch Research Council’s and brings the transition to open…

Music lovers are welcome at this free open-air concert celebrating 450 years of Leiden University, on Sunday 6 July. This special jubilee edition of the Rapenburg Canal Concert will feature a unique orchestra made up of our students, staff and alumni, performing on a floating stage.

Gilles van Wezel is a molecular biologist by training, with strong affinity for global regulatory processes that control the major processes in the bacterial cell. This led him via the control of protein synthesis (PhD thesis), via carbon catabolite repression (postdoc), to the two current main subjects:…

Didactics

Michael Richardson is a British citizen who carries out research in developmental biology. He was appointed in 2000 to the van der Leeuw chair of evolutionary developmental biology at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. His active research focus is: fundamental developmental biology (the evolutionary…

Carlos Felipe obtained his PhD degree at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), where he also obtained his M.Sc. degree in Industrial Ecology. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering from Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia.

Rutger Hoekstra is an associate professor at CML who is an expert on environmental input-output modelling and beyond-growth debates. He leads the WISE Horizons project which works on metrics and models for sustainable and inclusive wellbeing (brede welvaart in Dutch). In 2019, he published his latest…

Lecture

Conference

Finally we know for sure that there is a black hole at the centre of our own galaxy. Today, astronomers unveiled the first ever photo of Sagittarius A*, a super-massive object at the centre of the Milky Way. This picture could only be taken thanks to the cooperation of telescopes worldwide.

Alexander Geurds is Dean and Professor at the Faculty of Archaeology.