How do plant defense genes get activated?

On 1 June 2022, Tom Herrenberg defended the thesis 'Prosecutorial Discretion in International Criminal Justice'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. P.B. Cliteur and Prof. B.R. Rijpkema.

Artist and painter Marlene Dumas will give the Huizinga Lecture in Pieterskerk on Friday 6 December. In an interview with Elsevier Weekblad, she talks about the preparations, the inspiration that she derives from Pieterskerk and the story that she wants to tell during the lecture.

Our group operates at the cross-roads of different disciplines: molecular and cellular microbiology, biochemistry, structural biology and biophysics. The group harbors expertise in a multitude of molecular and cellular approaches including:

We study cell-fate decision-making using embryonic stem cells as a model system. Stem cells integrate a large number of cues to direct their development into a great variety of cell types.

The Press Freedom Monitor is set to be presented during this year’s World Press Freedom Day celebrations on 3 May. To mark this occasion, the interactive media museum Beeld & Geluid in The Hague will publish a three-part podcast series.

Leiden University Library holds two drawings and in the region of a hundred prints by Rembrandt, as well as works by his pupils and the staff of his studio. That explains why this self-portrait etching dating from 1631, his Leiden period, can be seen on the façade of the University Library.

The Corstens Commission that investigated whether there are any grounds for the rumours of antisemitism at the Faculty of Law has found no indication whatsoever for such expressions. This also applies to the professor in question. This is evident from the report that the commission chaired by Professor…

On 23 April, Sheila Haji defended the thesis 'The shadow side of positive organizational change: practitioners’ experience navigating dialectical tensions in appreciative inquiry'. The doctoral research was supervised by Jan Adriaanse, Mark Dechesne and Renee Heath.

In October, the Provincial Executive in Friesland reprimanded four civil servants who had signed an incendiary letter asking the government to adopt a more active climate policy. Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, feels that the Executive made a mistake.

In the public debate on the coronavirus, bold assertions from academics, doctors and other medical practitioners are often heard. For example, that the coronavirus would be no more deadly than the flu. Or that measures to combat the virus like wearing face coverings are unnecessary.

The Turn of the Soul: Representations of Religious Conversion in Early Modern Art and Literature

This thesis is a sample-based typological study of formal and semantic patterns in terms for a selection of referring (

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published Annemarie Samuels' article on the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. It's a detailed ethnographic account of the experiences of three Indonesian survivors.

Kathryn Emerson defended her thesis on 28 June 2016

Compact Cinematics challenges the dominant understanding of cinema to focus on the various compact, short, miniature, pocket-sized forms of cinematics that have existed from even before its standardization in theatrical form, and in recent years have multiplied and proliferated, taking up an increasingly…

On the 4th of September, Elisabeth J. Kerr successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Elisabeth on this achievement!

This thesis is concerned with the constitution of chiral responsive matrix assemblies that may undergo light-driven conformational changes and self-select vibrations to develop vibronic states for driving semi-classical coherent transfer with nearly 100% yield in a lossless NCAP process.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) constitutes a small subtype (~15%) of breast cancer, but causes the majority of breast cancer-related deaths.

Promotor: M. Ubbink, Co-promotor: G. Siegal

Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) have enabled the success of mRNA vaccines but remain limited in broader therapeutic use by challenges in delivery efficiency, targeting, and mechanistic understanding.

The Caribbean before Columbus is a new synthesis of the region’s insular history. It combines the results of the authors’ 55 years of archaeological research on almost every island in the three archipelagoes with that of their numerous colleagues and collaborators.

In navolging van Duitsland en het Verenigd Koninkrijk, wil de ministerraad een nieuw wetsvoorstel, om verheerlijking van terrorisme en steunbetuiging aan terroristische organisaties strafbaar te stellen. Wim Voermans, hoogleraar Staatsrecht, duidt de zaak in Dagblad Trouw.

On 3 May, World Press Freedom Day was held and the Dutch 2022 'Persvrijheidsmonitor' was presented. The safety of journalists in 2022 was the most important theme in the area of press freedom in the Netherlands. Tarlach McGonagle, Professor of Medial Law & Information Society in Leiden, and Otto Volgenant,…

This dissertation focuses on irregular patterns in Vedic Grammar and Poetry.

Special Issue in: Visual Anthropology, Volume 29, Issue 3, 2016

Kinase inhibitors are key therapeutic agents, particularly in oncology, yet their clinical efficacy is often hampered by off-target effects and limited understanding of their cellular target profiles.

In this thesis, I investigated the neurogenetic properties of Neotropical bat species. Bats represent the second largest mammalian order (Chiroptera) in the world, with Neotropical bats constituting about 13% of the total number of bat species.

Promotor: H.S. Overkleeft, J. Neefjes, Co-promotor: M. van der Stelt

PhD at Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens - France

Plant-microbe interaction resulted in different physio/chemical responses by host plant and interacting rhizobacteria.

This work describes the use of click-to-release chemistry to get spatiotemporal control over immunocytokine activity. Until now, immunocytokines (cytokines coupled to a tumor-targeting-moiety) remained active throughout the body, being able to bind their respective receptors, causing mild to severe…

Supervisor: Lizi Xia

eLaw is a research institute of interdisciplinary scholars who explore issues at the intersection of law, technology and society.

How De Haan is using language in general and his specific style of language in particular to provide truth, solidarity and justice for both the individual and the collective?

Uit onderzoek van Follow the Money blijkt dat burgemeesters demonstraties steeds vaker belemmeren en ontmoedigen. Follow the Money verwijst daarvoor onder andere naar eerder gepubliceerd onderzoek van universitair docent staats- en bestuursrecht, Rowie Stolk, waaruit blijkt dat sommige gemeenten niet…

Here I propose to study the relationship between autonomic pupil-synchronisation and trust, at the behavioural and neural level, and examine a targeted set of possible contextual moderators.

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.P. van Wezel, Co-Promotor: E. Vijgenboom

Vasiliki Kosta gave a presentation during the session ‘Building Academic Freedom’ taking place at Leiden University on 25 November 2025.

On 5 May we celebrate freedom, a basic human right that should not be taken for granted. We asked international students and staff what it means to them.

Investigating neurobiological endophenotypes of Social Anxiety Disorder

This dissertation examines whether a cochlear implant provides congenitally deaf born children with sufficient auditory input to acquire low salient and syntactically and semantically complex functional items such as personal pronouns compared to their hearing peers.

North, Middle and South America together constitute the single largest area in World Archaeology that is taught as a single focus. It is also the only major world area that saw societies develop from hunter-gatherers to early empires entirely independent from developments in Eurasia & Africa. It is,…

Baroque flautist Jed Wentz followed two years of dancing classes in order to develop the right feeling for the gestures required for the Baroque French opera genre ‘tragédie en musique’. In his dissertation, the links between gesture affect and rhythmic freedom in the performance of the tragédie en…

This programme starts from the idea that cultural discourse is one of the main engines of intellectual history and the history of ideas.

The Modern and Contemporary Cluster is the largest within LUCAS and home to more than 100 staff members and PhD candidates.

This liber amicorum is a tribute to Prof. dr. ir. Hans H. de Iongh, associate professsor at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) of Leiden University and guest professor at the University of Antwerp, on the occasion of his retirement on 27 October 2016.

This work sets out to investigate the form and function of the imperative in the Rigveda. The morphology (and, where relevant, etymology), syntax and semantics of the imperative are covered.