This project investigates the causes of the major archaeological change in the period of 40.000-20.000 BC in South Africa.

We aim to gain a better understanding of the natural disease progression of ALS in order to improve clinical trial design and analysis and to support drug discovery and clinical development of new drugs.

The effectiveness of the skin barrier underlies the outer layer of the skin: the stratum corneum (SC). However, in several skin diseases this barrier is impaired. In two inflammatory skin diseases, atopic eczema and Netherton syndrome, an increased level of monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) has been…

Anthonya Visser, Professor of German Language and Literature, was a PhD candidate in East Berlin just before the fall of the wall. The 'Wende' became the theme of her research. 'My focus is always strongly on the East German perspective.' On 7 November Visser will give a lecture in the Studium Generale…

Ten years after its introduction, the controversial idea of Erik Verlinde on gravity is still a hotly debated topic, and is still surrounded by a cloud of scepticism. Scepticism in which the media have played a major role, theoretical physicst Koenraad Schalm says in an article by NWO. ‘The media simply…

Early hominins probably lived in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years before using fire to alleviate the winter cold, to cook or to make tools. It was only in the period betwen 300,000 and 400,000 years ago that the first finds were made that indicate that people had the ability to control fire…

Recently, a paper by Peter Grünwald was published in the prestigious scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Grünwald is full professor of Statistical Learning at the Mathematical Institute and senior researcher at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica.

PhD defence

PhD defence

Tracking early human behaviour through plant processing and -exploitation.

The Faculty of Archaeology proudly presents the research brochure Perspectives on the Past, featuring passionate, dedicated researchers introducing a dazzling scala of research topics: from present-day traditional knowledge in Africa to the power of glue in Palaeolithic Europe. In addition to these…

The activities of the Europa Institute (also known as the Department of European Law) are supported by ‘Stichting Europees Instituut’. This foundation was the first of its kind in both the Netherlands and Europe as a whole. Established in 1957, its aim was to ‘support and advance the study of scientific…

As a contract student you can join our introductory courses and have the right to take part in the course assignments and to take the exam alongside the regular students.

This dissertation provides a formal description of the relationship between diatopic/diachronic micro-variation and phonologization through analysis of the phonetic/phonological properties of unstressed vowel reduction and vowel insertion in two Northern Italian dialects.

All students with a Master of Science degree in Biomedical Sciences are admissible to a PhD programme. Graduates of the master Biomedical Sciences have good career perspectives: 90% of our graduates finds employment within 6 months of graduation (source: WO monitor). You can fulfil different positions…

This dissertation examines how Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Fécamp designed, produced, and read books over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. den Hertog

For a long time it has been thought that habitation and landscape organisation only changed significantly from the Roman Period onwards. However, many developments were already started long before Julius Caesar's Roman armies arrived in the southern Netherlands.

The lipid matrix in the stratum corneum (SC), the upper layer of the skin, plays a critical role in the skin barrier. The matrix consists of ceramides (CERs), cholesterol (CHOL) and free fatty acids (FFAs).

Schemas are knowledge structures that allow us to make efficient judgments about the world without the cost of memorizing every detail of previous experiences. It has long been known that schemas can enhance long-term memory for related information.

I am Nargess Asghari. I came to the Netherlands in 2017 to study Linguistics at Leiden University. I wrote my pre-master’s and master’s theses on Iranian Sign Language and Berbey Sign Language (an emerging family sign language in the village of Berbey, Mali), respectively, under the supervision of Dr.…

Promotor: Prof.dr. A. Achucarro

Including modelling as part of software development appears to have various benefits.

Up to 50% of all children and adolescents growing up worldwide are exposed to at least one form of childhood adversity (CA), which is one of the strongest predictors for later-life psychopathology.

In this part of the LUC Newsletter Archive you can find the newsletters of block 3 and 4 of academic year 2019 - 2020.

In vitro disease models play a fundamental role in drug research. They enable the systemic identification and validation of disease mechanisms and the discovery of possible drug targets. However, more than often, drug candidates that are identified in vitro fail in the later clinical stages of drug…

You'll be able to join us for a public film screening on Sundays at 8:00 pm and a public lecture on Thursdays at 8:00 pm (depending on the duration of the powercuts). Seats are limited and we work on a first-come, first-serve basis. Our doors open 30 minutes earlier and close 15 minutes later or when…

The plant hormone auxin plays a central role in the growth and development of plants. Auxin acts in a concentration dependent manner and polar cell-to-cell transport of this hormone determines its distribution in the tissues of plants. This polar auxin transport is mediated by several families of auxin…

How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

A P300-based Brain Computer Interface character speller, also known as P300 speller, has been an important communication pathway, under extensive research, for people who lose motor ability, such as patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or spinal-cord injury because a P300 speller allows human-beings…

Ancient Greek was spoken in a large number of different dialects. Although we do not find direct evidence for syllabic liquids in any of our sources, comparative evidence shows that these sounds must have been present in Proto-Greek, and that they were retained until comparatively recently in the prehistory…

Heightened activation of the striatum that adolescents show in response to reward is often associated with risk-taking and negative health consequences. This article in Nature Communications investigates a potential positive side of this heightened activation. It shows that the activity peak in late…

PhD defence

PhD defence

Staff members and affiliates of the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities are involved with a variety of digital research projects. Some of them are featured below:

The project aims at contributing to the safeguarding of Palestinian cultural heritage and the enhancement of economic situation through tourism development, by presenting and managing one of the most important archaeological resources, the archaeological site of Tell Balata.

This research area is focused on the development and application of novel concepts and models in the emerging area of quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP).

Bronze Age settlement sites in the Dutch river area (c. 2000-800 BC)

Which adolescents are more at risk of developing social anxiety disorder later in life?

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…

In this project we followed children of parents with an anxiety disorder. We wanted to examine how these children develop and try to better understand why it is that some children develop fears, whilst other children do not. In this project, we mainly focus on social anxiety disorder and panic disor…

Wordt het nog wat met de Arabische lente?

Case Studies in Etruscan Ritual Behaviour

What is it like to study International Studies in The Hague? Read how Vincent, student of International Studies, spends his day on average.

A linguistic prehistory of the Tarim Basin in Northwest China