If you replace the standard hydrogen atoms in ice with a heavier variant, something odd happens. The volume occupied by the molecules increases by 0.1 per cent. Leiden chemist Jörg Meyer and his colleagues have created a theoretical model that describes this behaviour. Their research appeared on the…

Western countries still tend to view Africa as the periphery, says anthropologist Mayke Kaag. In her inaugural lecture, she calls for a shift in perspective: to see Africa as a mirror of global developments.

Do you want to show that sustainability and business can work well together? And are you ready for a challenge? If so, you can sign up for the Sustainable Business Battle, a six-week business case challenge in which teams of students help companies find innovative and sustainable solutions.

This project is aimed at 1) elucidating the role of attention in itch and pain, including orientation, and attentional disengagement (i.e., directing attention away) from itch and pain; and 2) modifiability of these attentional processes.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia. This makes fundamental research on the precise cause of the illness of vital importance. One of the possible suspects is a certain protein filled with iron. Leiden physicist Lucia Bossoni (LION/LUMC) has now developed a new way of investigating…

The changes that humans are making to the landscape are beneficial for mosquitoes that spread diseases such as Zika, chikungunya and dengue. This is what biologist Maarten Schrama and his colleagues write in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. ‘If we know in which living environments mosquitoes thrive…

Our leadership model consists of four competences that align with our core values. Each leadership competence expresses two opposing qualities. The goal is not to prioritise one of these qualities over the other, but to find the right balance between them. Effective leadership starts with awareness…

What practical knowledge do mentor teachers have of adaptive mentoring and of individual differences between student teachers?

Researchers from the Institute of Public Administration study the mechanism of lobbying and influencing political parties and the behaviour of these parties to see how solutions are found to problems. This enables them to reach conclusions as to how best to effect changes in political focus and poli…

The Mycenaean civilization of ancient Greek times offers enormous potential for useful information: from innovative construction methods to ways of handling crisis situations as a society. Archaeologist Ann Brysbaert and her team analyse Mycenaean construction processes in the ERC Consolidator project…

Lecture, Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series

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…

It’s Saturday and electric minibuses ride back and forth bringing prospective students to Leiden University’s various faculties. They want to see for themselves whether that interesting-looking programme will suit them.

To generate electricity, power plants use huge amounts of water. In Europe and the United States, generating electricity is accountable for 40% of the total water withdrawal. PhD candidate Industrial Ecology Yi Jin devoted his research to the water footprint of power plants and the impact on the environment.…

Young Academy Leiden (YAL) will change its board this month and welcome six new members. Outgoing chair Rachel Plak and incoming chair Ahmed Mahfouz talk about what the platform has achieved for young academics over the past year and what the plans are for the future.

Lecture, This Time For Africa! series

The first AWRANA conference, organized by the Material Culture Studies group from May 27-30, 2015 was a great success

In late May 2019, the Food citizens? team traveled to Poland for a project meeting and team outing. This was made possible by the European Research Council’s support and facilitated networks and knowledge-generation.

Recently, a new round of NWO XS grants was awarded. This grant is given to researchers with small, high-risk, innovative or promising research projects by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). In this round of the so-called Open Competition XS, no fewer than six researchers from the Institute of Political…

TEXTS FROM ANCIENT EGYPT. Highlights from the Collection of the Leiden Papyrological Institute. Online exhibition on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the foundation ‘Het Leids Papyrologisch Instituut’ in 2015.

Street theatre, drama, poetry and a lot of science: Leiden's Rapenburg was the backdrop for the fifth Night of Art and Knowledge on Saturday 16 September. Many University buildings - from the Observatory to the Hortus - opened their doors to artists, scientists and a public curious to know more.

The Leiden University College (LUC) education team behind The Learning Mindset (TLM) has received 800,000 euro’s during the Dutch Higher Education Award Ceremony 2022. The LUC team was second behind Universteit Twente. The prize was awarded during the annual Comenius Festival of the Comenius Network.…

Every year the Leiden Centre for Science and Technology Studies publishes the Leiden Ranking, a league table of universities based on the quality of their academic education. But the data can be used for many different purposes, deputy-director Ludo Waltman explains.

Last week was the opening of SNAP! The night sky through a Leidener’s lens. The exhibition, located in a library in the Stevenshof, shows how astrophotographers capture the universe from their backyards. Turns out, this does not have to be that difficult: your mobile phone camera will get you a long…

New research published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that these changes to the behavior of the immune system are persistent and can continue even after diet is improvedAlmost everyone knows that improving your eating habits will most likely improve your health. What most people may not…

In a week in which the threat of violent protest against taxi platform Uber made headlines from Athens to Amsterdam, Jorrit Rijpma (Europa Insitute) and Sophia Ranchordás (Groningen University) organised an Leiden Law Exchange (LLX) Roundtable on the recent judgment of the European Court of Justice…

Less meat and dairy means more space for nature, leisure, climate, biodiversity, more justice, and it's good news for the economy. That's according to the thought experiment conducted by Strootman Landscape Architects and Leiden environmental scientists. They presented their findings on 11 April.

The channel through which two cell components exchange material appears to form at the edge of their contact surface, and not in the middle. This was discovered by the Leiden physical chemists Jelger Risselada and Edgar Blokhuis together with researchers from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.…

Alzheimer’s disease and cancer are two examples of diseases that are related to malfunctioning cellular patterns. The examination of cell tissue, however, takes a lot of time and generates a lot of data. To make the analysis of data easier, Antonios Somarakis of the Data Science Research Programme (DSRP)…

Japanese was not always the language spoken in Japan. Researchers link the arrival of the language in Japan with the migration of farmers around 400 BC. Linguist Elisabeth de Boer has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to carry out research on the further spread of the language in Japan.

Although seen as the fastest and cheapest way to global climate protection, a uniform global carbon price would have major consequences for the economic competitiveness of countries. Hauke Ward, who recently joined Leiden University, showed in the journal Energy Economics that modern western countries…

PhD ceremonies in the Academy Building will be much easier for family, friends and other non-specialist audience members to follow after the summer. The Doctorate Board is pleased to have decided that as of 1 September, all Leiden PhD candidates will begin their PhD defence with a lay talk. ‘It can…

A century ago, the French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure proposed that the relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is fundamentally arbitrary. In a new study, a team of researchers from European and American research institutions, including Søren Wichmann from Leiden University Centre…

On 14 and 15 March, students can register as candidates for a place in the University Council (UR) or one of the faculty councils. But what do these participation bodies do? UR member Femke van der Meulen takes us through the agenda for the next meeting.

Health policy in the Netherlands is increasingly based on Positive Health. This approach sees health as much more than simply not being ill. There are more and more initiatives to promote Positive Health. But how do you know if these initiatives and policy are actually effective? LUMC researchers are…

Chinees-Nederlandse kinderen krijgen via hun moeders en kinderboeken mee dat witte mensen de norm zijn, zo ontdekte promovendus Yiran Yang.

The way in which written language is processed in the brain is a hot topic in cognitive research. Cognitive psychologist Rinus Verdonschot studied a Japanese script in which a single character can have up to three possible pronunciations. He discovered that all three are simultaneously activated in…

The easy-to-learn programming language Hedy has been used more than 100,000 times in no more than 9 months. Felienne Hermans was a guest in the broadcast of the radio program Science071 to tell more about it.

Lecture, This Time for Africa! series

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a technology that often puts women and minority groups at a disadvantage because it tends to be developed by straight white men. What if that changed and women were the driving force behind AI? This is the thought experiment at the heart of Maaike Harbers’ Annie Romein-Verschoor…

Physicist Diego Garlaschelli co-authored an extensive review in the journal Nature Reviews Physics. Surprisingly, the subject wasn't physics at all, but the networks of banks and other financial institutions, and the way their structure relates to financial crises.

Elisabeth Heijmans originally comes from French-speaking Belgium – ‘close and far at the same time’. She came to Leiden University for her Ph.D. in 2013, and consequently managed to get a postdoc position. In this role, she is part of a team of Ph.D. students, postdocs and supervisors, looking at historical…

A flake of limestone (ostracon) inscribed with an ancient Egyptian word list of the fifteenth century BC turns out to be the world’s oldest known abecedary. The words have been arranged according to their initial sounds, and the order followed here is one that is still known today. This discovery has…

Come to the Night of Arts and Science in Leiden 's historic city centre on 17 September. You can enjoy music, interactive experiments, theatrical plays, lectures, modern dance, comedy and much, much more. Many of the activities are in English.

A team of Leiden astronomers has managed to calculate the first 100 million years of the history of the Oort cloud in its entirety. Until now, only parts of the history had been studied separately. The cloud, with roughly 100 billion comet-like objects, forms an enormous shell at the edge of our solar…

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.

For the duration of a month, the portraits of female professors only will hang in the Senate Chamber of Leiden University. This is the initiative of Athena’s Angels, who want more room for women, literally and figuratively. Vice-Rector Simone Buitendijk unveiled the portrait photos on 8 March.

Research truly comes to life when it contributes meaningfully to society. By sharing our findings, advising policymakers or contributing to community projects – we can make a real impact. Scroll down and discover how Science and society can mutually benefit from each other.

Of this year’s four NWO Spinoza Prizes, two have been awarded to Leiden researchers. On 12 September, Eveline Crone and Michel Orrit received their prizes, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands. The Spinoza Prize carries an award of 2.5 million euros.

Interpersonal communication plays a vital role for the prediction of health behaviours and health campaign effects. That's the way Social and Organisational Psychologist Hanneke Hendriks put it in her dissertation. Hendriks has been awarded the Outstanding Dissertation Award of the International Communication…