The Netherlands is losing plant species that rely on pollination by insects. Leiden environmental scientist Kaixuan Pan demonstrates this after analysing 87 years of measurements from over 365,000 plots. The news is alarming for our biodiversity and food security. ‘75 per cent of our crops and 90% of…

At LUCL, researchers aim to contribute to a comprehensive and informed perspective on the human past.

At LUCL, researchers aim to contribute to a comprehensive and informed perspective on the human past.

D. Fontijn, Quentin Bourgeois & Arjan Louwen (eds) (2012). This publication describes the history of “barrow landscape” near Echoput in Apeldoorn. Two burial mounds were examined and it became clear that our prehistoric predecessors carefully managed and maintained the open area for a long time, before…

2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the first United Nations World Conference on Women (Mexico City, 1975), a process that led to the creation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995). The Global Transformations and Governance Challenges Programme organised a roundtable to reflect on…

Leiden archaeologists investigate how people in the past impacted their environment. Together with scientists, environmental scientists, and humanities experts, they use this information to draw conclusions about the present – and show what we can learn from it for the future.

This thesis focuses on two processes involved in fighting infections: metabolism and immune cell motility and navigation.

Through the Chastelain-Nobach LUF fund, Classical and Mediterranean archaeologist Tymon de Haas has received a grant for his research on the ecological impact of Roman expansion. He will use this grant to further expand on the case-study that was made possible by the Byvanck LUF fund earlier this ye…

Members of the collective explore what it means to be ‘human’, in the past and present, from a range of different perspectives and inter-disciplinary approaches.

Today’s socio-economic challenges aren’t new. In the centuries after the retreat of the Roman state people with different backgrounds and with different ways of life somehow managed to build and maintain a complex economic system in northern Gaul that would produce the ruling dynasties of Europe. By…

Han Meyer, Carola Hein, Paul van de Laar and Sabine Luning, argue that in the current moment of major crises these ship channels necessitate radical reconsideration.

This dissertation focuses on the systematic vowel alternations displayed by the Proto-Germanic n-stems. The fact is, that many of these nouns now appear to have preserved the ablaut system of the Indo-European proto-language spoken some five millennia ago. In this respect, the n-stems are truly comparable…

Promotores: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok, Prof.dr. C.A. Mandemakers, Co-Promotor: G. Bloothooft

This thesis surveys the intersection of computed tomography (CT) and machine learning (ML), treating CT as an ill-posed inverse problem shaped by object properties, imaging physics, and data limitations.

Optical projection tomography (OPT) is a tomographic 3D imaging technique used for specimens in the millimetre scale.

PhD candidate Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart has received the Stichting Elise Mathilde Fonds grant from the Leids Universiteits Fonds (LUF) to work on a research project focusing on the landscapes of the Second World War. ‘We will combine citizen science with deep learning to uncover traces of the c…

The use-wear analysis of domestic implements provided new insights of the Single Grave Culture population in the Netherlands.

On Monday 6 May, GTGC guest researcher Joohyun Baik presented her research on 'Data Localization as a Data Sovereignty in Nigeria's Digital Policy Landscape'.

At LUCL, researchers aim to understand, describe, and preserve the linguistic diversity of the indigenous Americas.

Leiden University's International Honours College, Leiden University College The Hague (LUC) experienced empty halls and empty classrooms this past year on the residential campus on the Anna van Buerenplein in The Hague due to the global pandemic. Dr Paul Hudson designed a Covid-proof course that enabled…

Ethiopian wolves are endangered diurnal Afroalpine rodent hunters. I investigated the interaction between wolves, rodents and human land use in Borena Sayint National Park (BSNP), Abune Yosef and Aboi Gara in Ethiopia.

PhD defence

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…

This dissertation attempts to describe the linguistic history of Hittite on the basis of a systematic etymological treatment of its entire inherited lexicon, precisely analyzing the phonological and morphological developments.

Reconstructing Later Prehistoric Societies in Northern Iraq (ca. 7000-3000 BCE)

Climate change, depletion of natural resources, loss of natural and cultural landscapes, and many other (ecological) sustainability challenges urge us to (re)evaluate human interaction with the natural world. This renewed environmental consciousness has invigorated not only scientists working on effects…

This thesis discusses the development in Proto–Indo–European, Latin and Romance of a word–formation pattern which the most adequate terminology in use dubs ‘verbal government compounds with a governing first member’; I use the shorthand ‘pickpocket compounds’.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok, Co-promotor: F.J. Verbeek

A Spatial Enquiry into the Urban Society of Rome’s Imperial Port-Town

This dissertation investigates how the efficiency of Computed Tomography (CT) can be improved for dynamic scientific and industrial applications.

Optimally solving real-world expensive Black-Box Optimization (BBO) problems w.r.t. real-world constraints, such as wall-clock time and computational costs, is extremely difficult and tedious.

The Wadi al Jizzi Archaeological Project is a systematic and long term archaeological surface survey project, investigating the rich archaeological heritage of the Wadi al Jizzi region (Oman) from the Paleolithic until the early Modern period.

With the emergence of new methods and technologies such as improved DNA analysis and big data, archaeological research has changed radically in recent decades. The researchers from the Department of Archaeological Sciences at the Faculty of Archaeology use new scientific knowledge to answer fundamental…

The hinterland of important centres like Petra (Southern Jordan) can provide essential information that contribute to the understanding of their rise, expansion and decline.

In this thesis, I targeted the orchid genus Lepanthes, one of the six genera of angiosperms that surpasses 1,000 species in the Neotropics, as a study model to investigate the evolutionary processes that promoted species diversifications.

Visualizing the internal structure is a crucial step in acquiring knowledge about the origin, state, and composition of cultural heritage artifacts. Among the most powerful techniques for exposing the interior of cultural heritage objects is computed tomography (CT), a technique that computationally…

The long-held desire - to link structure directly to function and to explain molecular mechanisms based on basic chemical or physical principles - is finally coming closer, satisfying not only our scientific curiosity but also offering new solutions to the many challenges in the field of health, energy…

This project aims to integrate three of the largest survey databases in the Mediterranean to study the impact of the megalopolis Rome on its direct hinterland.

How did Angkor interact with regional urban centers? How did the settlement system impact the society's agricultural system and regional resilience?

A comparative study on the spatial origin and development of towns in the northern Netherlands, 700-1400.

What motivated past human societies to repeatedly invest labour, generation after generation, in constructing, maintaining, and enhancing monumental structures in an environment prone to frequent and unpredictable natural disasters? Moreover, how did societal resilience and periods of heightened or…

In the upcoming Dutch general elections, the focus of the party campaigns is on national issues. Luuk van Middelaar, Professor of Foundations and Practice of the European Union and its Institutions, argues in a column in Dutch newspaper NRC that foreign policy should also be on the agenda.

How can archaeological datasets reveal the interplay between past indigenous understandings of the surrounding world and resilient and sustainable ways of life in the Isthmo-Colombian Area?