Explores the relationship between technics and humanity, tracing the emergence of a bio-technical conception of existence in contemporary continental philosophy. Suny Press

After two years of corona restrictions, it was ‘back to normal’ in 2022. Migration, elections, the history of slavery, Russia, and Ukraine were much-discussed topics. We compiled an overview of the most-read news items and other events of the past year.

Development of Natural Resource for New Medicines

Professor Peter Bisschop has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant. He will invest the 2.5 million euros in his research into puranas: ancient texts, commonly written in Sanskrit, that are up to fifteen hundred years old.

Utilization of plant-originated products as new antibiotics

Can the pink-pigmented microbe Methylobacterium extorquens be genetically engineered to convert the sustainable raw material methanol into antibiotics?

Electoral Systems and Turnout: Evidence From a Regression Discontinuity Design. In this article, published on the website SAGE research methods, authors Jaroslaw Kantorowicz and Tobias M. Hlobil discuss how a Regression Discontinuity Design can be executed.

Papers in honour of Professor Annelou van Gijn

Who doesn't love to turn on a horror film on a rainy evening? Fortunately, it is only fiction - or is it? According to university lecturer Evert Jan van Leeuwen, modern horror says more about our society than we think. He has been nominated for the Klokhuis Science Prize for his research into addiction…

Conference, Book launch

This project intends to provide an integrated linguistic assessment of the hypothesised migration route of the Tocharians.

Lecture, China Seminar

Our focus is to optimize the fungal cell wall to both increase chitin production and chitin extractability.

The work presented in this thesis is based on ALMA surveys of protoplanetary disks in three star-forming regions: Lupus, OMC-2, and NGC 2024.

This recently released book takes a critical view of conceptual issues and practical problems that inevitably emerge when ‘excellence’ takes center stage in science systems in the Global South. What is ‘excellent science’? And how to recognize and assess it? After decades of inquiry and debate there…

The group of Dr. Roxanne Kieltyka designs and synthesizes molecules that self-assemble into polymeric materials using specific non-covalent interactions. These substrates can be used for numerous applications in medicine ranging from disease detection to cell delivery depending on the (bio)molecular…

This volume sees the publication of fifty-six early Old Babylonian letters from ca. 1880 BCE. They were found by legendary Iraqi archaeologist Taha Baqir in 1941 at the site of Tell ed-Dēr, ancient Sippar-Amnānum, in central Iraq.

Marieke Liem, Professor Social Resilience and Security at Leiden University, and Katharina Krüsselmann, PhD candidate at Leiden University and Manuel Eisner mapped the flow of homicide cases with the help of a systematic review.

This dissertation investigates ikat from the eastern Indonesian islands from a uniquely technical perspective, including design analysis of asymmetry and microscopy.

Natural history collections provide invaluable sources for researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds, aspiring to study the geographical distribution of flora and fauna across the globe as well as other evolutionary processes.

Promotor: K.E. Schalm, Co-promotor: S.S. Lee

This project develops a scientific method to extract clinically relevant new information from patient forum websites that discuss patient experiences concerning e.g. medication, nutrition, co-morbidities, genetic factors etc.

The economic history of Soviet development practices in Central Asia remains controversial and dominated by the view that Soviet development policy was wasteful and inefficient in the periphery. Challenging the established view of Soviet largesse and largely undirected and untracked “subsidies” to…

Who is Economic Man? Every economic paradigm presupposes an anthropology, a theory of human nature. This project explores the anthropologies presupposed and produced by ancient Greek economic texts, and the specific knowledge forms that shape these anthropologies.

Despite a lack of specific legislation on this issue, Dutch Minister of Justice and Security Dilan Yeşilgöz is allowing the national police force to experiment with facial recognition technology.

More and more reports appear in de media claiming that Frontex, the organisation coordinating the joint border control of the European Union, has been helping the Greek coastguard to stop asylum seekers at sea. In doing so, has Frontex endangered the lives of migrants?

These are trying times for Ukraine. The armed conflicts with Russia in Donbass and Crimea have still not come to an end after starting in 2014. Ukranian minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klymkin came to The Hague on February 2nd to discuss these current issues with Leiden students. ‘Ukranians will always…

The war in Ukraine has lasted almost two weeks now. What does Putin expect to achieve with his invasion and how big is the chance that the West will get involved? We phoned André Gerrits, professor and expert on Russia.

On Friday 15 March, more than 750 students from the Netherlands and abroad visited the Master’s Open Day at the Faculty of Humanities to explore their options.

Life returned to something resembling normal after Covid but other crises soon took its place. These great challenges are also being felt at the University and our researchers are working on solutions. The nitrogen crisis, problems with young people’s services and an increasingly urgent climate crisis:…

The Hague Program on International Cyber Security focuses on the various modes of governance that states and other actors can bring into play to deal with and shape the strategic challenges in the digital environment. This years conference focused on international cyber security and the role of the…

On Saturday 25 June, the Europa Institute of Leiden University hosted the 61st Leiden-London Meeting, an annual event organized jointly by the Europa Institute and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL). This year’s meeting had “Interdependence, cooperation and strategic…

Biodiversity in the Netherlands is having a tough time. Professor of Natural Capital Koos Biesmeijer combines research with practical advice: from the greening of industrial parks to solutions inspired by hi-tech nature. Inaugural lecture 9 March.

Does becoming a public sector employee change a person’s political beliefs, behaviors and interactions with the state? Do public teachers hold the same values as other professionals and the general Brazilian public?

From colonial times through to the present day, large numbers of Javanese have left their homes to settle in other parts of Indonesia or much further afield. Frequently this dispersion was forced, often with traumatic results.

Russia correspondent Eva Hartog took a Master’s in Political Philosophy in Leiden in 2011. This former editor-in-chief of The Moscow Times sees this short period as a new chapter in her life. And she is once again contemplating her future now she can no longer ask the big questions in Russia.

Jos Schaeken has just published a book entitled 'Stemmen op berkenbast. Berichten uit middeleeuws Rusland: dagelijks leven en communicatie'.

Friday 25 September, 2015 marks the official launch of Leiden University's Central and East European Studies (CEES) Center.

On 26 and 27 September 2023, the conference

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Professor of International Relations and Diplomatic Affairs at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, says we must block and expel Putin wherever possible.

What does life look like after International Studies? For Chris Colijn who graduated in 2018, it involves working on his master’s in Russian and Eurasian Studies, in combination with a bustling traineeship for “Raam of Rusland”, a think tank, focusing on Russian and Ukrainian politics, economy and culture.…

What is the name of the medieval Persian poet Nezami (✞ ca. 1209) doing on the cover of an Eric Clapton rock album? Asghar Seyed Gohrab, associate professor at the Institute for Area Studies, talks about it in a new blog for the Leiden Medievalists Blog.

What do you do if you have a book from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, but you suspect that the binding contains a fragment of a medieval manuscript? University lecturer Thijs Porck has received an NWO grant to experiment with a camera attached to a tube. 'The project boils down to keyhole surgeries…

By examining the impact of Islam on the daily life of those living under its rule, the goal of this project is to understand the striking newness of Islamic society and its debt to the diverse cultures it superseded. Questions will be the extent, character, and ambition of Muslim state competency at…

Democratic citizenship refers to the capacity and willingness of citizens to actively influence the functioning of state institutions. While considered a vital correlate of democratization and the rule of law, its largely western-oriented literature rarely studies the forms of democratic citizenship…

Machine learning - on classical computers- has made great progress in the past five years. Computer translation of speech and text is just one example. In Leiden, some researchers expect that machine learning, empowered by quantum systems, even if they only contain a few dozen qubits, can lead to a…

Discover the unique Vital Interests course in the BSc Security Studies programme, featuring an inspiring session on climate diplomacy with Dutch UNFCCC negotiators.

Ruixuan Chen defended his theses on 16 October 2018.

This thesis presents insights from our study of various correlated electron systems with a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). In ordinary metals, electron-electron interactions exist, but get substantially screened due to the sheer number of electrons.