Compared to its European neighbouring countries, the Netherlands undertake relatively few attempts to bring back women and children from Iraq and Syria. De Roy van Zuijdewijn explains why on Dutch NPO 1 radio.

The analysis of protein residues extracted from the storage containers of circa 50,000 year old bone-tools reveals Neandertal strategic selection of bovid ribs to make some of their “lissoirs”.

A pandemic of lianas is sweeping through tropical forests, reducing their ability to store carbon and limiting their role in mitigating climate change. Two recent studies from Leiden University highlight the issue. ‘We now understand why lianas are visible in satellite imagery.’

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.

A significant percentage of children who have spent a period in youth care institutions or foster homes since 1945 received inadequate protection from physical, psychological and sexual violence. Interventions by supervisory authorities in cases involving violence were inadequate.

Ominous witches, gruesome monsters, and hideous freaks: from Saturday 15 June, Kunsthal Rotterdam will be putting the spotlight on the shady depths of human imagination in the exhibition Hello darkness, my old friend. Seventy works on paper from the collection of the Leiden University Libraries confront…

On an excavation site in Oegstgeest Leiden University archaeologists discovered a very rare silver bowl from the first half of the seventh century. The bowl is decorated with gold-plated representations of animals and plants and inlaid with semi-precious stones. The discovery suggests the existence…

In a new video series for the Corpus Kids Academy, researchers Marieke Bos and Janna Marie Bas-Hoogendam explain how the adolescent brain develops and how anxiety works. 'We wanted to present the information simply, while still preserving the complexity.'

As from April 2023 all students at Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam will start using the eduXchange portal to register for a minor.

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.

It is time for the fifth lecture in the series Manuscript Mondays. We shall have two speakers. Jesse Keskiaho (University of Helsinki, Finland) will start with a talk about the soul. In the second talk Evina Steinova will tell us more about the medieval encyclopaedia. The talks will be followed by a…

Can students help make our cities more sustainable and resilient? The Resilient Cities Hub thinks so: during its knowledge café on 16 January, passionate students talked to municipal officials and pitched their master’s research. ‘In this way, the students learn to step out of the academic world and…

The ILS Lunch Seminar of April will take in a slightly different format, as we have the honour of receiving Dr Leandro Mancano from the University of Edinburgh. He will present his most recent monograph on the European Union and the deprivation of liberty.

Working during Corona brings along various challenges but also unexpected opportunities. Thijs Porck, university lecturer medieval English at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS), was asked to give a digital guest lecture for the University of Costa Rica and shares his experi…

Why do innocent people sometimes spend years in prison? EUREX is a registry of miscarriages of justice in Europe that ultimately led to exonerations. The aim is to prevent such mistakes being made in future. One of the initiators is Leiden legal psychologist Linda Geven.

For the first time, an international group of astronomers have seen the heat glow of two ice giant planets colliding. They could also observe the resultant dust cloud move in front of the parent star several years later. Led by Leiden astronomer Matthew Kenworthy, they monitored the star's brightness…

The walls of Paul van der Velde’s study at the International Institute for Asian Studies are full of neat rows of post-it notes. As organiser in chief, he is right in the middle of the upcoming ICAS 11, the 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars, which is returning to where it was first held…

This academic year saw the start of the Change Lab(oratory) project. Teaching staff from various departments worked on innovations in their master's courses: 'It’s a privilege to improve your teaching and get so many useful tips in the process.'

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been able to acquire an extraordinary Chinese manuscript at auction in Hong Kong. It concerns an Imperial Edict (dated 1582) from the Ming dynasty period, at one time part of the former collection of well-known sinologist and author of detective-novels Robert van…

Last Wednesday, a very special edition of the Lunch Seminars took place in a combined session between the research programs Interaction between Legal Systems and Reform of Social Legislation. Jason Beckfield, Professor in Sociology at Harvard University, gave a very interesting presentation on Social…

How can humans and computers learn from data? To research this, scientists often use so-called Bayesian methods. Although these methods are widely used, they also have limitations and are not always easy to interpret. In her dissertation Rianne de Heide describes some of these problems and introduces…

The largest international conference on English historical linguistics is coming to Leiden. From 7 June to 11 June 2021, the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) organises the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL-21). Due to Covid measures, the conference takes…

The ROBUST consortium, which is the initiative of the Innovation Center for Artificial intelligence (ICAI), has received 25 million euros from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to strengthen fundamental AI research. The Leiden interdisciplinary research programme SAILS is part of ROBUST.

Last Thursday, the April edition of the ILS Lunch Seminars took place. This well attended seminar featured criminal- and criminological issues from an Interaction between Legal Systems’ perspective, with presentations from Adriano Martufi and Marco Stam.

Interested in Area Studies? Then Leiden is the place to be! Join our Online Area Studies Week from 2-5 June to find out more. From Africa to Brasil and from Korea to Russia, Leiden covers all areas and fields, both in language, literature, history, politics and socio-economics. Join our live Q&As!

What do you do when a discovery in the lab shows real promise? Scientist Mirjam Huizenga founded a startup to develop a new treatment for nerve pain caused by chemotherapy. ‘The goal is to give patients a better option.’

Persian stories with beautiful miniatures, letters on papyrus from Egyptian traders and medicinal manuscripts translated from Greek and edited in Arabic. Studium Generale organizes a lecture series on the world-famous manuscripts from the Middle East collection of Leiden University Libraries (UBL).…

In prehistoric times there was a huge wave of migration, from the steppes in Russia and Ukraine to West Europe. The newcomers’ genes began to dominate. Archaeology research in Leiden into burial mounds in the Veluwe and Utrechtse Heuvelrug areas of the Netherlands yielded this spectacular conclusion.…

Learning how to work with people from different disciplines, that’s what Master Honours Challenges are all about. In teams, students address a challenge for an organisation or society as a whole. Two participants tell us what made their course stand out. ‘It was at times uncomfortable, but exhilarat…

A recent study in Ecological Economics, led by Leiden environmental scientist Bertram de Boer, states that the European Union could lower its environmental footprint by carefully selecting the countries from which it imports goods. The publication was picked up by Science for Environment Policy, a news…

Leiden Archaeology students may write their master's theses on the recently acquired collection skeletons from the city of Arnhem. We interviewed osteoarchaeologist Dr Rachel Schats, who is very happy with the news:

'What do people do with snake venom?' That's the question 11-year-old Joep asked in Dutch TV show Willem Wever. Leiden Professor of Evolutionary developmental zoology and snake venom expert Michael Richardson answers the question in his laboratory.

Nearly all university buildings at the Leiden Bio Science Park will be open and operating again as of Wednesday 24 May. Last night a team worked hard to restore the power to the buildings in phases and this was successful. Students and staff can work and study there again.

For almost ten years now Lamin Sow, a cleaner working at the Kamerlingh Onnes Building, has been collecting discarded pens he comes across throughout the day. When he returns to his home country he takes the pens with him as gifts for children.

Professor of Predictive Pharmacology Elizabeth de Lange has received an Honorary Doctorate from the Faculty of Pharmacy of Uppsala University. She will be honoured during the Uppsala Winter Conferment Ceremony on 31 January 2020.

A delegation from the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) arrived in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, on 23 February for five days. 'We need to discuss the immediate situation with all parties, but above all we need to address the root causes of the crisis,' explained Abdel-Fatau Musah, Ecowas…

Hugo de Groot, one of history’s most famous legal scholars, was already studying arts and law in Leiden at the age of 11. How did his career take off from that point and who inspired him?

Thinking up solutions for global issues such as environmental pollution and poverty. This is what young people from all over the world will be doing at the One Young World summit from 17 to 20 October in The Hague. Follow Leiden students Jennifer Pfister and Thomas Gevers who will be reporting on their…

From COA to the police and from the Red Cross to a ministry, in the coming months, students from the Leiden Leadership Programme (LLP) will have the opportunity to work on real solutions for partner organisations. In December partners and students met for the first time. 'It is a great opportunity to…

The most important group of medieval manuscripts from the Special Collections of the University Libraries of Leiden (UBL), the Codices Vossiani Latini, is now available in open access via the Digital Collections. The 324 Latin manuscripts copied in medieval Europe, along with 48 post-medieval manuscripts,…

The winner of the highest scientific distinction in mathematics, an explanation for wine tears and much more mathematical theory and application. From 8 to 12 July, 550 mathematicians will meet in the center of Leiden to discuss differential equations.

Leiden University has secured an impressive 12 European exchange grants. This is good news for students, lecturers and researchers from home and abroad.

Multidrug-resistant pathogens and worldwide pandemics are increasing, making infectious diseases more prevalent. To develop new treatments, deeper knowledge of the interaction between bacteria and human cells is required. Ariane Briegel recently became a Medical Delta professor and studies such path…

Which plant species grow where - and why? In a new study in Nature Ecology & Evolution, an international research team presents the world's first global vegetation database which contains over 1.1 million complete lists of plant species for all terrestrial ecosystems. Leiden professor of Environmental…

Leiden astronomers and ecologists are developing an instrument that lets people measure the quality of surface water with a smartphone.This international citizen science project, MONOCLE, is a collaboration between scientists and local people in Tanzania, Brazil and four European countries.

Disinformation has become a popular subject of study and debate. A plethora of publications and policies have emerged, aiming to analyse and curb the negative consequences of unwanted communication.

With roadworks to widen the A1 motorway near Deventer (province of Overijssel, the Netherlands) now complete, a substantial dispute has arisen between the Municipality of Deventer and the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat, RWS). The municipality is demanding…

Nederland Circulair! is organising the week of the circular economy, for the second time. This is a great setting for Leiden University to promote several of the university’s circular initiatives. We will kick off with an initiative by alumna Noortje Schrauwen: Raw material beachcombing.

After studying Life Science and Technology, David Louwrier conducted his PhD research at LUCAS about bioart and societal debates around biotechnology. Now that his PhD thesis has been submitted, David is developing educational material about the societal aspects of the biobased economy.

In the latest newsletter of the Leiden Bio Science Park you can find information about participating in a new European Research Project, the 25th Lab Career Event and the 'Kennisfestival 2009'!