This academic year, seven (teams of) teachers will receive a Grassroots or Grass shoots grant. Here you can read about their projects.

Are you considering preparing a Kiem application? Learn from those who came before you! Here you find the recommendations and insights from colleagues who previously realised a Kiem project.

Around seven per cent of children have difficulty learning their mother tongue because they have some form of developmental language disorder (DLD). World DLD Day on 15 October called attention to this disorder. Development psychologist Neeltje van den Bedem explains why this is important.

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.

Researchers have discovered the most distant Milky-Way-like galaxy yet observed. Dubbed REBELS-25, this disc galaxy seems as orderly as present-day galaxies, but we see it as it was when the Universe was only 700 million years old. This is surprising since, according to our current understanding of…

Astronomers led by Leiden PhD candidate Richelle van Capelleveen have, for the first time, discovered an exoplanet that has carved a bright gap in the protoplanetary disc around its star. This rare observation provides new insights into how young planets shape their surroundings.

A patent for what may be a potent, new antibiotic. And: a clear overview of promising approaches to overcome a crucial resistance tactic employed by bacteria. In the span of one week, two researchers from Leiden are receiving their PhDs, each of them on an important step in the battle against bacteria…

Leiden scientists lead COLIBRE, a groundbreaking set of cosmological simulations. By including key missing physics, cold gas and cosmic dust, they offer the most realistic picture yet of how galaxies formed and evolved since the dawn of time.

For the first time, astronomers have observed in three dimensions that gas from spiral galaxies is blown upwards and downwards at high speed, far out of the galaxy. They thereby confirm the theory of galaxy evolution: that star-forming galaxies create intergalactic gas flows by discharging gas along…

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 shock wave triggered by one of the five galaxies making up the iconic Stephan’s Quintet appears to be less disruptive than previously thought, with the shock likely being cushioned by dust particles in the surrounding gas. This is according to the analysis of the first scientific observations of…

The members of the Board of ALTEX Edition, the ALTEX Editorial Board and ALTEX Editorial Office elect the winner of the annual award out of all main articles published in the previous year; articles including members of the Board of ALTEX Edition or ALTEX Editorial Office as first authors are excluded.…

An international team of scientists, including Xander Tielens of Leiden Observatory, has used space telescope Hubble and the ALMA observatory to show that UV radiation from massive stars can prevent planets from forming. The researchers publish their findings on 1 March in the journal Science.

Teachers at Leiden University are experts in their field and passionate about educating students in their discipline. It is also important that they can work effectively as a member of a team, together with colleagues and students, and that they feel committed to our organisation. We will therefore…

How can parents avoid passing on stress and mental health problems to their children? Professor of Stress-Related Psychopathology Bernet Elzinga develops simple interventions to help both parents and young people. For her research, she has been awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest academic honour…

The annual commemoration of the nation’s war dead on Dam Square and at Waalsdorpervlakte, the Dutch apologies for historical slavery and the Cleveringa Lecture itself: our relationship with history is often ritualistic, Cleveringa Professor Frank van Vree will say in his inaugural lecture on 27 Nove…

As an experiment, student Alicia Cai relied solely on AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude for supervision while writing her thesis. What lessons were learned?

With the holidays just around the corner in this dark month of December, when we light candles as a symbol of warmth and hope, we would like to take a moment to reflect on this past year. We have accomplished a great deal together but the year has been difficult at times.

Nearly 19,000 runners lined up at the start of Leiden Marathon on Sunday, among them students and staff from the university. For some this was their first race, for others a highlight of their year. This year, in celebration of our 450th anniversary, they ran in a special jubilee t-shirt.

We, the Executive Board and deans, have recently heard from different sources that the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues to evoke strong feelings of tension, anxiety and insecurity within our university community. We take this very seriously and so are once again addressing you all.

Plants not only sense when they are touched, but they can also adapt to it. For example, by strengthening or defending themselves. But how do plants do this? The Green TE (Green Tissue Engineering) consortium has been granted a Gravitation grant of almost 23 million euros to investigate exactly this…

If you’re experiencing too much work pressure, talk about it to your colleagues and your manager. This is the only way we can jointly work towards a solution. How do you raise the issue of work pressure? And what can you do to prevent work pressure from getting out of hand?

Leiden University’s Committee on External Collaborations – Human Rights and Conflict Zones advises the Executive Board to suspend student exchange programmes with Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University until further notice.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Vidi grants to Leiden researchers.

Gert Oostindie, Professor of Colonial and Postcolonial History, has been made an Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau. He was awarded the royal honour by Leiden mayor Henri Lenferink after giving his valedictory lecture, ‘The future of the colonial past’, in the Academy Building of Leiden University…

It was the Night of Discoveries on Saturday 16 September: a summer encounter between art and science. Leiden researchers from various disciplines inspired the public with their quest to understand our world.

The night side of exoplanet WASP-43b, to the surprise of astronomers, does not appear to contain methane. It is likely that extreme winds do not allow enough time for methane to form in detectable amounts. This is the conclusion of an international team of scientists, with Leiden and Amsterdam contributions,…

People already diagnosed with a mental disorder before the COVID-19 pandemic did not show a disproportionate increase in symptoms afterwards. This is one result from the first systematic review of longitudinal studies following their study population from before to during the first eighteen months of…

An international team of astronomers including Leiden professor Ewine van Dishoeck has observed the benzene molecule (C6H6) in a planet-forming disk around a young star for the first time. The observations tell us more about the forming of planets in this disc, like our own Earth. The scientists publish…

It has only recently been discovered that single-celled organisms (bacteria and archaea) also have histones—proteins that structure DNA. Now, Leiden PhD candidate Samuel Schwab has found that the histones in these organisms are much more diverse than previously thought. Schwab and his colleagues describe…

To understand the universe as a whole, simulations on a cosmic scale are required. An international team of astrophysicists, led by Leiden University, is today making one of the largest cosmological datasets ever available for free. It comprises more than 2.5 petabytes of simulation data.

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.

Astronomers have found complex organic ice outside the Milky Way for the first time. The discovery shows that the building blocks of life could arise early in the universe - and under a variety of conditions, said Leiden astronomer Will Rocha.

During the Opening of the Academic Year 2024-2025, we asked guests for their wishes and ideas for Leiden University's anniversary year in 2025.

Cancer immunotherapy represents a significant breakthrough in cancer treatment. However, tumors have numerous mechanisms by which they evade destruction by the immune system. It is therefore necessary to decipher and reverse these mechanisms in order to improve immunotherapies.

An international team of astronomers led by Violeta Gámez Rosas (Leiden University) has observed a supermassive black hole hidden in a ring of dust. This discovery fits the idea that the so-called active centers of galaxies are much more similar than observations show, because the viewing angle from…

Academics are increasingly facing threats, harassment and hate speech following public appearances. The Dutch universities – united in the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) – is now adopting a number of national measures, from a zero-tolerance policty to psychosocial help for vic…

Whereas the Netherlands Court of Audit used to conduct an investigation once a year, the average civil service organisation now has a few per year to contend with. Is so much going wrong nowadays? Not at all, says Professor by Special Appointment Sjoerd Keulen. ‘It’s one of the methods that makes democracy…

Eight Leiden University research teams recently received €15,000 each to take their research to the next level through Una Europa. Dario Fazzi, one of the selected researchers and professor of Transatlantic Environmental History, shares how Una Europa helps him expand a Leiden-based project into a international…

They were eagerly awaited: four letters from five ministers that should provide clarity on how to get us out of the nitrogen crisis. Nitrogen expert Jan Willem Erisman explains the plans. And says whether they will get us out of the nitrogen crisis.

A standing ovation. A wave and a smile from the president. A final selfie. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed students in the Netherlands for the first time on Tuesday morning via a livestream in The Hague. He did so in front of two packed lecture halls at both Leiden University and The…

The demonstration at and occupation of our Wijnhaven building on 6 May had a deep impact on our community, including the Executive Board. The university is therefore holding two meetings to reflect on what happened and discuss how we can address this.

No fewer than 55 applications were submitted for a Kiem seed grant, an initiative for developing new interdisciplinary, interfaculty research partnerships and encounters. The draw took place on Monday for the allocation of 22 seed grants. The Executive Board was so impressed with the number of applications…