Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Lecture

Automated government decisions can be cost-effective. But using algorithms also makes understanding the reasons behind decisions particularly complicated. Dr Melanie Fink, Assistant Professor at Leiden Law School, has received a Veni grant to fund her research into this.

More papers, more grants, more students: constant growth is still the gold standard at universities. Neuroscientists Anne Urai and Claire Kelly argue that this mentality obstructs us in resolving such complex societal problems as the climate crisis. Their alternative? The university as a doughnut.

The European Space Agency (ESA) introduces the members of the European Center for Space Law (ECSL) on its website through interviews with its members. One of those members is Tanja Masson-Zwaan.

Lecture, LIAS After-Lunch Talk Series

The people who lived in Saqqara, City of the Dead in Egypt, died thousands of years ago, but they are not all that different from us. This is what a study by the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, The Netherlands concludes. If you wanted to prove that you had good taste in ancient Egypt then…

PhD defence

Over the past few months, Urban Studies students have been helping to think about the realisation of the Humanities Campus. To test their knowledge in practice, the future urban specialists gave advice on several different aspects, including thermal energy storage and the new central campus building…

In this 'Educatip's column, psychology teachers share their key insights about work. This time: course coordinator Evelien Broekhof received support from teaching assistant Vincent during the last term. ‘I have more room in my schedule now that I don't have to do everything alone anymore.’

A European team of astronomers, led by Leiden-based researcher Konstantinos Migkas, has uncovered a large filament — a long, thread-like structure — of hot gas connecting four clusters of galaxies. This filament is made up of what scientists call the warm-hot intergalactic medium.

The brightness peak of the ring around M87's supermassive black hole has shifted 30 degrees counterclockwise in a year. This is shown by new images released by the Event Horizon Telescope consortium.

Lecture, European Union Seminar

The mission in Uruzgan Province in Afghanistan was a formative experience for Dutch soldiers in which many lessons were learned. But most of those lessons have already been forgotten.

On Monday 9 May, IIASL alumnus Adrian Young gave a very satisfying cross-disciplinary session between law and the arts, on the preservation of heritage in space.

Many protoplanetary discs in which new planets are formed are much smaller than thought. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) scientists of the Leiden Observatory looked at 73 protoplanetary discs in the Lupus region.

When we think about ancient Egypt, the first things that come to mind are usually mummies and sarcophagi. According to researcher and Rijksmuseum van Oudheden curator Lara Weiss, that impression is unjustified. She made an audio tour for the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden that focuses on living Egyptians…

LUC historian Jacqueline Hylkema unmasks forgeries from the early modern Dutch Republic in the research project "Mapping the Fake Republic".

While investigating 16 years of images of young stars from a retired astronomical camera, Leiden master's student Sam de Regt discovered that two of those stars were still enveloped in birth clouds. Never before has anyone captured these two stars in so much detail. He publishes his data-cleaning method…

Stories of resistance in the Second World War are widely covered in Dutch historiography: Hannie Schaft, Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, and Professor Cleveringa are some of the best known. But these accounts largely focus on the Dutch domestic perspective. On the other side of the world, a complex colonial…

Connecting worlds, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. In that respect, a huge amount happened at Leiden University in 2023.

PhD defence

In Sci-Fi comic book Resist NOW!, wondrous adventures will illustrate possibilities to combat antimicrobial resistance. But the comic book will only be produced if enough money is raised to make the project into reality.

Sex and power are closely linked, and this was certainly true in the former Dutch colonies. PhD student Sophie Rose investigated how sexual and love relationships influenced eighteenth-century power structures there. 'You can see that there was constant fighting over who stood where in the social hi…

Opening

In Bronze Age Europe many bronze objects such as axes, swords and jewels were deliberately left at specific spots in the landscape. PhD research by Leiden archaeologist Marieke Visser shows that these practices were expressions of people’s relationship with the world around them. ‘It was a completely…

The decolonisation war in Indonesia was violent partly because the Dutch military operated on the conviction that ‘an uprising had to be forcibly suppressed.’ This what historian Christiaan Harinck from the KITLV discovered in his PhD research.

Interactive meeting

Diplomauitreiking

Connecting scientific fields, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. What did the university achieve in 2024? A small sample.

Astronomers led by Simon Portegies Zwart used simulations to reconstruct how three stars were ejected from the star cluster R136, 60,000 years ago. The analysis reveals that five stars were involved in the event in the Tarantula Nebula.

The war between Ukraine and Russia is playing out not just on the battlefield but also on the geopolitical playing field of gas. Conflicts at the start of this century about this energy source were, says PhD candidate Ilia Barboutev, a precursor to today’s war.

The interdisciplinary, English-taught minor ‘Violence Studies’ looks at violence from very diverse scientific perspectives. What are the benefits from this approach? Students and lecturers evaluate: ‘This minor’s a goldmine’.