Nirajan Kafle defended his thesis on 15 October 2015

Why do black holes emit thermal radiation? And how does a closed quantum system thermalize?

This book contextualizes the use of terror as part of wider movements of political contention, demonstrating that terroristic innovation occurs as part of wider historical processes rather than in a vacuum.

Multiple stars, that is two or more stars composing a gravitationally bound system, are common in the universe.

Can international organisations be held responsible for violations of international law by peacekeepers in a peacekeeping operation?

Doctoral Thesis

Besides the Hortus being a beautiful place where visitors can relax and learn more about plants, we also facilitate botanical research. At the botanic garden, our ‘Living Botany’ research group investigates (plant) biodiversity and the relationship between plants and people.

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of…

This thesis is about the study of hydrocarbons via infrared spectroscopy.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.K. Richardson, Co-Promotor: F. Witte

We study expressions of emotion and social decision making across species.

The increasing competition in the automotive industry requires the tailored, swift development of technologically sophisticated vehicles. Therefore, the computationally expensive state-of-the-art simulation technologies are combined with optimization algorithms. An example of a real-world optimization…

Slavoj Žižek is one of the most prominent public intellectuals of the left. His central claim holds that “today, it is more crucial than ever to continue to question the very foundations of capitalism as a global system”.

Published on 26 February 2021.

This thesis focuses on the X-ray spectral analysis of merging galaxy clusters and the plasma code development for future high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy observations.

The Department of Archaeological Sciences seeks to achieve the highest standards of excellence in science-driven education and archaeological research across the globe and across all periods.

Antimicrobial drugs constitute a fundamental part of modern medicine. The global rise in antimicrobial resistance poses a major threat to global health.

Promotor: Koen Kuijken Co-promotor: Henk Hoekstra

Liu Puning defended his thesis on 25 April 2018.

This publication brings together two contributions born of different intentions but which are both dedicated to Hellenistic pottery of the Alexandria region.

Promotores: Prof.dr. G.W. Canters, Prof.dr. T.J. Aartsma

Bioarchaeology covers the study of all biological remains from archaeological sites.

Promotor: R. Gill, Co-promotor: P. Massart

This monograph by Robert Ross provides a detailed narrative of the Kat River Settlement in the Eastern Cape of South Africa during the nineteenth century.

Today, 189 out of 193 officially recognised nation-states have a written constitution, and 75% of these have been ratified since 1975. How did this worldwide diffusion of constitutions come about?

At a time of urgent threats to both the planet and multilateralism, Brian McGarry (Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies) has published a new volume on the past and future of international environmental law.

On Friday 7 March 2025 Adam Knight successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Promotor: E. F. van Dishoeck, Co-promotor: C. Walsh

This thesis investigates how quantum, quantum-inspired, and hybrid quantum-classical computation can enhance key points of the automated machine learning (AutoML) pipeline under the constraints of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices.

In this thesis, we use low-frequency and high-frequency radio observations to address the following questions regarding quasars: is the radio loud/quiet quasar dichotomy real?

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics states that a measurement collapses a wavefunction onto an eigenstate of the corresponding measurement operator.

High-angular-resolution observations of the circumstellar material have uncovered numerous and very diverse substructures in protoplanetary discs, raising the question of whether they are caused by forming planets or other mechanisms.

The bacterial cell wall is a nearly universal structure that offers protection and gives the cell its shape. However, environmental stressors, such as cell wall-targeting antibiotics and hyperosmotic conditions, can induce bacteria to shift to a wall-deficient state. It is unknown whether the lack of…

The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.

In this article, Dimitrova, Gürkan and Koops presents a general framework for capturing and systematicallyanalysing critical junctures and degrees of change in EU policies.

Promotor: W. Jaffe, Co-promotor: K. Meisenheimer

This book covers the story of Greece and its central role in our understanding of European civilization, from the Palaeolithic era (400,000 BP) to the early modern period (1950 AD).

The high velocity tail of the total velocity distribution of stars provides essential insight into fundamental properties of the Galaxy.

COUNTERRR examines domestic responses to jihadist armed groups in Africa, analyzing variation in state repression, community resistance, and the evolution of security across Mali, Nigeria, and Mozambique.

The living plant collections form the heart of the Hortus botanicus Leiden and serve as a vital resource for scientific research. By studying these collections, researchers can explore biodiversity in a unique way and conduct experiments on living material.

The MSc program Evolutionary Biology focuses on important factors for the evolution of organisms. It prepares you for a research careers at universities, research institutes, or biotechnology sector. It’s also possible to combine training in biological research with training in communication, education…

Key research articles, reviews and books of the Chromatin group.

On 29 January 2019, Robbert J. van Eijk will defend his Ph.D thesis, in which he investigates the online advertisements that seem to follow you.

The Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for BOLD Cities uses multidisciplinary big data research to help find solutions for urban problems. ‘BOLD’ stands for ‘Big, Open and Linked Data’. Data science is one of the Centre’s main disciplines.

Three projects with Leiden researchers are to receive a subsidy from NWO for the construction or renovation of large-scale research facilities. They will be working on electron microscopy, an X-omics initiative and an X-ray telescope. The projects are part of the National Roadmap for Large-Scale Scientific…

Yuchen Lian defended her thesis on AI and language evolution at Leiden University.