Rather than one key and one strong lock, biology often uses tens or hundreds of weaker links to bind parts together, such as cells membranes. This allows for selectivity and also reversibility: the binding can also be undone. Researchers first caught this phenomenon using spheres or colloids, and published…

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

Leiden and South Africa have long standing historical ties in the field of mathematics. These ties have now been strengthened thanks to an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility (ICM) grant. Four researchers from Pretoria are now visiting Leiden. ‘No matter how good we are at dealing with Teams and…

Protostars, data science, and the James Webb Space Telescope—Adriaan Janssen’s curiosity knows no bounds. As a double bachelor’s student in Physics and Astronomy, he has truly found his calling, underscored by his nomination for the title of Leiden Science Young Talent 2024.

PhD defence

The EU is struggling with labour shortages. Migrant workers and asylum seekers would be able to fill this gap and solve many of these problems. But, says economics professor Olaf van Vliet, the pros and cons regarding this dilemma need to be explicitly addressed. 'Now the message in campaigns focusses…

Yann Ryan recently joined the Institute for History as a postdoctoral researcher within the starting grant project 'Quiet Rebels? A Social History of Political Rhetoric’ under the supervision of Anne Heyer. Below, he introduces himself.

Neighbourhood newspapers, newsletters and Facebook groups: Leiden residents have dozens of ways to keep each other informed about news in their neighbourhood. Students from the pre-master's programme in Journalism and New Media mapped out all these different media and asked themselves: what is the future…

Mining for natural resources harms the environment. But we desperately need them, for both the development of countries and the transition to a sustainable energy system. Professor of Sustainable Resource Use Ester van der Voet researches how we can reduce the environmental impact of natural resources…

Europe is expected to experience a greater frequency of severe floods. Paul Hudson discusses the challenges of flood management The Conversation.

The nine suspects from Hilversum accused of beating Carlo Heuvelman so badly on the night of 14 July last year that he later died will hear their sentences on Friday. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) had demanded that one of the suspects be sentenced to 10 years in prison, and two others eight ye…

During the 2024 Frontiers in CardioVascular Biomedicine (FCVB) conference, which was held from April 12-14 in Amsterdam, Esmeralda Hemme from the BioTherapeutics division received the award for best moderated poster.

Many deepfake porn videos are going around appearing to feature popular Dutch presenters, actors and politicians. These videos are banned, and yet they’re still being circulated. Dirk Visser, Professor of Intellectual Property Law, explains why: ‘There are enough rules telling us that deepfakes aren’t…

Got an hour to spare over the long weekend? Then listen to an episode of the new podcasts that have seen the light of day at the faculty in recent months.

Lecture, CHiLL series

From time to time, manuscripts that have remained hidden for centuries turn up in library collections and archives. In the archives of the 17th-century Bibliotheca Thysiana at the Rapenburg in Leiden, kept in the Leiden University Library, Rotterdam researcher Erik-Jan Bos discovered a hitherto unknown…

Luca Giomi has the first results of his ERC consolidator grant. He discovered that epithelial cells move collectively but in different ways, depending on the scale you look at. It is hexatic at small scales, and becomes nematic at larger scales: it is a multiscale order. This collective movement of…

Leiden physicists Alexandre Morin and Samadarshi Maity study self-organisation and flocking phenomena. They shed light on flocking, which helps to understand how it is possible that birds in a flock don't collide. With plastic microbeads, they create an experimental setup and they developed a mathematical…

Associate professor Rens Tacoma has won the 2021 Research Prize for Historical Sciences. The prize is awarded annually by the Italy Studies Working Group for the best scholarly publication in the field of Italy Studies in Dutch or Flemish academia.

Waarom laaien er rellen op in het Verenigd Koninkrijk, aangespoord door de extreemrechtse British Defence League? Jorieke Manenschijn sprak met EenVandaag over hoe de beloftes van Brexit aan de woede hebben bijgedragen.

Dr Jake Benson, who completed his PhD in Persian Studies at Leiden University in 2024, has been awarded a prestigious international prize for the best dissertation in manuscript studies.

Dr Peter Webb (LIAS) has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant for his project Geo-Poetic Analysis of Pre-Islamic Arabia (GeoPo).

For the first time, an international team of scientists led by Leiden Observatory and SRON can explain the extreme jet streams observed around the equators of all the giant planets using a single model.

From the First World War until the height of the Cold War, actors from the decolonizing world sought to build connections with international peace movements. These efforts produced new networks and practices of solidarity while also exposing tensions over the centrality of decolonization in global struggles…

Research

For decades, the trade in pocketbooks prescribing how to be a good Muslim flourished in East Africa, but in recent years the number of books in circulation has been declining. University lecturer Annachiara Raia is the recipient of an Impact Explorer grant to revive this tradition, in cooperation with…

Starting this academic year, the regular Performance and Development interview (ROG) has for academic staff been replaced by an annual interview. A survey will be held in early December to evaluate this pilot.

Lionel Laborie recently joined the Institute for History as a lecturer in Early Modern History (18th Century). He introduces himself.

The Faculty Board awarded 16 starter grants to young assistant professors for their research proposals.

Last July saw the start of the new master programme Cosmopolis Advanced, an initiative of the Institute for History at Leiden University in partnership with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta. The Cosmopolis Advanced programma, led by prof.dr. Jos Gommans and coordinator dr. Lennart Bes, provides…

The final meeting which took place on Wednesday 6 September marked the end of the third cohort of master students’ time participating in the The Hague Southwest Thesis Workshop. During this last meeting, master students presented their research results to residents and stakeholders from The Hague So…

Professor Mirjam de Bruijn will research digital warfare in the North African Sahel with an NWO Open Competition grant. The focus of the research will be on Fulani social networks in war and cultural violence.

It will be a summer filled with conferences at the Faculty of Humanities in Leiden. In the coming months, there will be something for everyone at the university, especially in the field of languages and cultures of Africa and the Middle East.

Spatial technology such as virtual reality can help patients who have difficulty with spatial cognition, for instance if they keep on losing their way. In her inaugural lecture, neuropsychologist Ineke van der Ham will talk about the importance of avatars, the patient experience and room for innovat…

Young people influence one another to take greater risks, although it's not quite that cut and dried. This is what development psychologist Jorien van Hoorn discovered. Peers also have a positive influence on one another, an aspect that has so far been under-researched. PhD defence 12 January.