To what extent is creative ownership in contemporary (graphic) design practices changing now that we are co-creating with machines? And can machines have copyrights, too?

In what ways can a photographic practice act as a means to confront, or even undo, the various material properties of atmospheric enclosure that so clearly put our relationship with our environment under pressure? Is it possible to devise a set of critical and artistic strategies to comprehend the ways…

This pilot project will initiate research on how heritage has been and can be mobilized to address climate change governance in Himalayan Asia. Climate adaptation strategies frequently include the sourcing of heritage, encompassing landscapes, built environments 4 and cultural practices. However, effective…

This book provides an exploration into the historical transformations of women's interactions with state police in the Western world from 1800 to 1950.

A number of scholars joint forces to analyse and re-analyse a number of Merovingian cemeteries and publish the results in the series Merovingian Archaeology in the Low Countries published by Habelt Verlag in Bonn (Germany). We call it the ANASTASIS project. This is the third volume in which the data…

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

The Modern Devotion: pone of the most influential religious initiatives in the late medieval Low Countries.

The main question I want to answer is about the mutual influence between the cultural and settlements changes that occurred between the Bronze and the Early Iron Age in Margiana and the management of water resources.

What plants grow along ditches in the Leiden region? What does this say about vegetation quality? Could it be better? Naturalis and Leiden University's Center for Environmental Sciences are looking for your help to answer these questions.

Long-distance Trade in Early Medieval Landscapes (ca. 6th-12th centuries)

The labour market has seen significant changes in recent decades, not least in terms of greater flexibility and digitisation. Leiden University is keen to prepare students for a working life in which flexibility, resilience and adaptability will be essential qualities. The university’s vision on teaching…

This volume offers an innovative analysis of Roman political culture in Italy from the first to the sixth century AD on the basis of seven case studies.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

On the 27th of June, Timothy Mac Hadjah successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Timothy on this achievement!

Climate adaptation strategies frequently include the sourcing of heritage, encompassing landscapes, built environments and cultural practices. However, effective climate change governance requires taking seriously the stakes of local communities and the power relations that structure heritage initia…

Crafting Futures through Cheese-Making in Val Taleggio (Northern Italy) is written by Cristina Grasseni and is published in Gastronomica.

Reworking Culture: Relatedness, Rites, and Resources in Garo Hills, North-East India provides intimate insights into the lives of hill farmers and the challenges they face in day-to-day life. Focusing on the ongoing reinterpretation of traditions, or customs, the book critiques the all too often taken-for-granted…

Book launch

The Oxford Handbook of Dutch Politics provides a comprehensive longitudinal overview of the state of the art of academic research on the Dutch political system: its origins and historical development, its key institutions, main fault lines, pivotal processes, and key public policy dynamics. In each…

In 2021 many of our students and staff won fantastic prizes and were awarded important research grants. This is our traditional review of these successes as the end of one year marks the beginning of another.

PhD defence

The prestigious journal Science Translational Medicine has published a study by researchers from the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) on a potent new antibiotic that can overcome resistance. ‘The idea was to tweak the original antibiotic and create a next-generation drug’, says Nathaniel Martin, professor…

Biological chemist Nathaniel Martin is going to test an alternative antibiotic that can combat common resistant bacteria such as MRSA. For this purpose, he will receive 350,000 euros from the NWO's NACTAR programme. ‘We want to know how safe and effective our antibiotic is in a realistic situation.’

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded Nathaniel Martin a Proof of Concept (PoC) grant. With it, his group aims to make a dangerous but potent antibiotic less toxic. He receives €150.000.

Identifying novel antibiotic compounds to tackle antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Researchers from Leiden University and VU Amsterdam will unite through a project now funded by NWO’s Open Technology Programme (OTP), which awarded the collaboration nearly one million euros.

No, this isn’t about a Star Wars Alliance that wants to suppress The Resistance. Rather, the EPIC Alliance brings together scientific experts from seven countries to address the growing threat of antibiotic resistance. Leiden professor Nathaniel Martin is part of the 11-member consortium.

Uniting an international consortium of scholars, the Skandapurāṇa Project comprises a team of researchers working in fields across the Humanities. We are creating a critical edition of a foundational work of purāṇic literature and, in doing so, tracing the dynamics of a textual tradition to better understand…

This research project focuses on the extended documentation and investigation of these non-Austronesian (‘Papuan’) languages.

Impressions by Martin Küster, Master of Arts.

This collection, edited by Sophie Vériter, Monica Kaminska, Dennis Broeders and Joachim Koops, includes six papers exploring and investigating European responses to COVID-related disinformation, specifically the responses of France, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, Serbia, and Hungary.

The Leiden Faculty of Archaeology is a world renowned academic centre for the study of the past. Our archaeologists and heritage experts are involved in innovative projects all over the world.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

With a pioneering project like the quantum computer, it’s a good idea not to place all your bets on a single horse. In Leiden’s Quantum Optics research group, instead of working on a Majorana-based qubit, people are working on a qubit based on an ‘artificial atom’. If that becomes the basis of the quantum…

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the three priority areas of Leiden University, which was established by its Executive Board in 2014. The objective is to set up a comprehensive strategy.

The Immune Activation and Tolerance group is headed by Dr. Bram Slütter. Vaccination is an experimental, but promising, treatment strategy for atherosclerosis. Previous work has shown that immunization of mice with modified LDL particles can reduce atherosclerotic lesion development, however such vaccines…

The bottom-up development of post-Roman northwestern Europe

The new cabinet threatens to cut nearly a billion euros from higher education. This not only endangers academic work, it is a disaster for the Netherlands itself. The proposed penalty on study extensions and other financial measures will heavily impact students and will reduce education accessibility.…

In the specialisation Heritage and Society you explore the role of heritage in society. With our combination of education and research you lay a strong foundation for an (inter)national carreer in heritage management and policy.

The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) of Leiden University and Art Institute West Den Haag are pleased to announce their close collaboration in the second season of the public series In the Making. This series, dedicated to the practice of research in the arts, will consist of seven public…

Nathaniel Martin, Professor of Biological chemistry, wondered what would happen if you take an antibiotic that has been known for 70 years and try to improve it with the latest tools of modern chemistry. Turns out it can become up to a hundred times more potent and prevent the growth of some drug-resistant…

A study concerning the collective memory in the region of the Bene lo Ya/ Ene lo I'ya, Sierra Norte, Oaxaca.

Mission Director: Dr. Carina van den Hoven

How have human-environmental entanglements changed in the Gulf of San Miguel, Darien, Panama, from the first traces human practices through to the present?

Cities in Europe house an increasingly diverse population with roots in many different parts of the world. They have also seen the growth of anti-immigrant sentiments and new forms of nationalism. Who belongs to Europe and what such belonging entails is heavily debated. What comes out of this paradoxical…

Whereas when we started the first Project the chief aim was pure research, to find out more about the past in a region, now we see that the countries of Europe are faced with the great problem that there are far too many archaeological sites for them to deal with by excavation, but yet some kind of…

Update : March 2020 Director: Professor Dr Harco Willems (KU Leuven), co-director Dr Marleen De Meyer (KU Leuven & NVIC)