Get in touch about questions, events, collaborations, etc.

We are a diverse collective with members from different faculties and organisations. Select a faculty or organisation in the left column to search and connect with members. Have questions or want to become a member? Get in touch with the steering committee.

Leiden University has been an attractive destination for scholars ever since 1575. Our staff members welcome international colleagues to campus to discuss issues from the past, and how we should presently understand the past. ‘Leiden Conversations in History’ is a series of dialogues between historians…

The Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University is home to many experts on human evolution. The following staff members are part of the Leiden Human Evolution Collective.

The design for the METIS instrument for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is final. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has given the green light for production of all parts of the instrument. It is the first ELT instrument, designed and to be built under Dutch leadership, to formally pass the…

To what extent are, can, and should, human trafficking and human smuggling be(ing) seen as interlinked phenomena? What are the consequences of seeing the phenomena as either distinct or interlinked for the way in which migrants crossing intra-Schengen borders are treated.

Recent study led at the Leiden Observatory has observed Orion with unprecedented detail. New data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and other telescopes have been used to create this stunning image showing a web of filaments in the Orion Nebula. These features appear red-hot…

A team of European astronomers under Leiden leadership has discovered that dust particles around a star already coagulate before the star is fully grown. These agglomerated dust particles are the first step in the formation of planets. The research publish their discovery in the journal of Nature As…

This project aims to study the Aesopian fable from 1500 to the present day in its complex relationship between text, illustration and education, adopting a broad, transnational perspective.

ALMA has observed stars like the Sun at a very early stage in their formation and found traces of methyl isocyanate - a chemical building block of life. This is the first ever detection of this prebiotic molecule towards solar-type protostars, the sort from which our Solar System evolved. The discovery…

The Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden is the leading academic institute for Archaeology in the Netherlands, and one of the largest in the world. The Faculty is an international front-runner, in the top ten of the QS World University Ranking, at subject level.

On Wednesday 14 February 2024 Yorum Beekman successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

On 17 January 2024 Ying Wang successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

On 30 January 2024 Jurre van der Meer successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Every January, students of the Minor Sustainable Development have the opportunity to put what they’ve learned over the last few months into practice in a choice of exciting and practical courses called Area Studies. This year, for the first time, there was a choice of four locations: The Netherlands,…

Director General of ESO, Tim de Zeeuw received President of the Republic of Chile, Michelle Bachelet Jeria for a ceremony marking the first stone of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).

Latest technological developments in data mining and profiling.

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Hankemeier, Prof.dr. J.C.T. Eijkel (Twente University)

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

HomininSpace is an agent based modelling and simulation system in which fluctuating carrying capacity is the key attractor for hominin dispersal. A parameterized and spatially explicit reconstructed palaeo-environment models available energy in the form of secondary biomass using reconstructed climate…

PhD defence

This paper addresses the gap that explores how agencies might allocate their personnel so as to maximise performance with the personnel they have.

The Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry focuses on the preparation and processing of bioarchaeological remains for various biomolecular methods including especially isotopic, hormonal, and microscopic analyses.

This project explores how changes in diet helped early hominins expand from Africa into the colder and more seasonal environments of Europe.

On 25 January 2024 H.J. Pak successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

An international team of astronomers led by Matus Rybak (Leiden University) has proven, thanks to accidental double zoom, that millimetre radiation is generated close to the core of a supermassive black hole. Their findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Celebrating 20 years of Environmental Research and Education in Northern Cameroon

This header image was once elected Image of the Week by De Volkskrant and won second place in the LION Image Award. The research behind it is no less successful if we’re counting prizes. Last August, group leader Tjerk Oosterkamp was awarded an NWO Projectruimte grant, and now NWO-TTW grants him an…

In the 16th and 17th centuries, many Northern-Netherlandish artists drew outdoors to train their hands and eyes, and to record landscapes and nature. In her inaugural lecture on 21 March 2022, Yvonne Bleyerveld, Professor by Special Appointment of Art on Paper and Parchment, draws our attention to a…

Building a lively Humanities Campus with renewed and sustainable buildings surrounded by a green outdoor space.

This thesis studied in depth the energy use and CO2 emissions of the industrial sector in China.

On Thursday 11 January 2018, Xiang Li defended her doctoral thesis: “Collective Labour Rights and Collective Labour Relations of China”. The supervisors are Professor Guus Heerma van Voss and Professor Barend Barentsen.

An international team of astronomers including Leiden scientists publishes the image of a young star with a surrounding dust disk that is still being fed from its surroundings. The phenomenon around the star SU Aur may explain why so many exoplanets are not neatly aligned with their star. The European…

Physicists have manipulated light with large artificial atoms, so-called quantum dots. Before, this has only been done so well with actual atoms. It is an important step towards light-based quantum technology. Publication on August 30th in Nature Communications.

On Thursday 30 May 2024 Corrie van Maris successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Isis on the Nile. Egyptian gods in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt

This handbook provides a resource for those already familiar with some kinds of micro-particles who wish to learn more about others, or for those just starting out in the study of microremains who wish to have a broad understanding about microscopic archaeology.

In this thesis, the role of mast cells in atherosclerosis and novel therapeutic strategies to inhibit atherosclerosis progression are discussed. The first part of the thesis specifically focuses on the relation between mast cells and advanced human atherosclerotic plaque characteristics.

The HARVEST project explores the dietary choices that our hominin ancestors and relatives made, by recovering information on what they consumed, and how factors like environmental variation, intrinsic biology, and development of food processing technologies could have influenced their decisions.

Cardiovascular disease is a major global burden and atherosclerosis is the main underlying pathological process.