The Faculty of Humanities is committed to creating an inclusive and diverse community, where all students and staff are supported, respected, and empowered to do their best work, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, age, religion, or socio-economic background.

On the 24th of June Hossein Pourbagheri successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

To be eligible for Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

The two-year master's in Korean Studies, a specialisation of Leiden University’s master's in Asian Studies, offers a large and varied selection of subjects and the freedom to choose the areas upon which you will focus.

The two-year MA in Chinese Studies, a specialisation of Leiden University’s master's in Asian Studies, combines content courses with intensive and advanced language training, outstanding teaching, and world-class resources to bring you the only qualification of its calibre offered in the Netherlands…

When it comes to languages and cultures, Leiden University is the university. The global expertise present places our university at the top. In Leiden and The Hague, we study languages and cultures from all regions of the world and from prehistory to the present day. In this way we create a broad view…

Members of LUCAS work in various buildings on the Witte Singel-Doelencomplex. The board and the secretariat are housed on the first floor of the P.N. van Eyckhof 3 (building 1165).

An international team of astronomers has found an unexpected link between dark matter and visible stars in stellar systems. This discovery may even cause us to reconsider our understanding of gravity. They published on their discovery in 'Nature' on 1 October.

Leiden University computer scientists Yu Liu, Yanming Guo and Michael Lew are a step closer to their ultimate goal: search engines with visual recognition. Their publication of a new algorithm for fusing multi-scale deep learning representations has been received with great enthusiasm. No other algorithm…

The Kikkoman chair is a new chair in Leiden sponsored by the Kikkoman Foundation and the Association of Friends of Asiatic Art. The chair will address the intercultural dynamics of Asia and Europe.

Six researchers from Leiden University have received an ERC starting grant. This grant of on average 1.5m euros will enable the researchers to launch their own project, form their own research team and develop their best ideas.

Thanks to fanatical lobbying various groups of citizens and traders had a lot of influence on the initial success of the Dutch colony in Brazil. This is the conclusion of Leiden PhD candidate Joris van den Tol, who defended his thesis on 20 March.

The advent of script has never managed to eliminate the use of symbols. This is the finding of research carried out by Kyra van der Moezel on Ancient Egyptian identity marks. PhD defence 7 September.

Onlangs verscheen de handelseditie van het proefschrift van Marieke van Wamel (Nijmegen).

A new book, Learning to Play: Learning Reinforcement and Games by Aske Plaat is now available.

NVIC is pleased to welcome Christine Kamel as our new receptionist. Christine will briefly introduce herself: "My name is Christine Kamel. I live in Cairo, Egypt. I studied Pharmacy at an Egyptian University (Ain Shams), class 2010. I worked as a Research & Development Pharmacist in a Pharmaceutical…

The Europa Instituut is pleased to announce that this week a new handbook “EU State Aids” (31 Chapters, 1500 pages) was published.

Producing offspring of a crop without sowing and that is even bigger than the parent plant. According to Leiden researchers this can be achieved by overstimulating a single gene that rejuvenates cells, including bringing them back to the embryonic phase.

Since April 2017 the LUCDH team has received reinforcement in the shape of two brand-new Phd candidates. They will be working on existing projects set up by Victoria Nyst and Sjef Barbiers. I have the pleasure of introducing them here.

The socio-political and cultural memory of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire played a very important role in Antiquity and later ages. This book is the first to systematically chart these multiform ideas and associations over time and to define them in relation to one another, as Persianism.

Jelena Vićić and Richard Harknett offer an analytical construct to better understand the mechanism by which cyber-enabled influence operations work

The main research question of this thesis was: Can nitrogen cycling on dairy farms on peat soil in the Dutch Green Heart area be improved by adapting management to the nitrogen supply from soil and by using other grassland species and crops without affecting milk production?

Andrea Giolai defended his thesis on 3 May 2017.

The filamentous bacteria Streptomyces are widespread inhabitants of terrestrial soils.

From Crisis to Critique

Microbial rhodopsins are photosensitive pigments implemented in the growth and adaptation of a large population of microorganisms.

Promotores: W. Jiskoot, F. Ossendorp

A new vision on the Revolt of the Low Countries through the eyes of Spanish commanders

The availability of indicators based on social media has opened the possibility to track the online interactions between social media users and scholarly entities.

This dissertation develops an innovative approach to cultural transformation in the kingdom of Commagene (modern south-east Turkey) during the 1st c. BCE, focusing on a palatial context in the capital Samosata.

Subproject of

The ethics of ghosts, spectres, and mediums in postcolonial literature

In meta-analysis, heterogeneity often exists between studies. In such cases, it is essential to investigate the sources of heterogeneity and understand the relationship between effect size and study characteristics (i.e., moderators).

Death’s Social and Material Meaning beyond the Human is edited by Jesse D. Peterson, Natashe Lemos Dekker and Philip R. Olson

In this article, Tom Buitelaar proposes a systematic framework for analyzing the impact of individual characteristics of peacekeeping leaders on the behaviour of field-level personnel in UN peacekeeping operations.

On 8 January 2020, Jelmer Brouwer defended his thesis 'Detection, detention, deportation'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.P. van der Leun and Prof. M.A.H. van der Woude.

As leading cause of death worldwide, cancer is responsible for nearly 10 million deaths in 2020 according to World Health Organization (WHO). Cisplatin and its derivatives are commonly used chemotherapy agents for current cancer treatment in the clinics.

In the light of the fragility of current liberal democracies, this dissertation aims to contribute to rethinking political order by reconstructing Hegel’s account in the Philosophy of Right.

This work has described synthetic strategies towards well-defined structures resembling capsular polysaccharide (CPS) fragments, CPS mimics, teichoic acid (TA) fragments as well as a third-generation ring-closing tandem metathesis (RCM) linker to better exploit the potential of automated synthesis.

Promotors: Prof.dr. P.G.L. Klinkhamer, Prof.dr. P.M. Brakefield

Detecting nanoscopic objects plays an important role in nanoscience in particular, in the rapidly growing field of nanobiology. The forebear to modern super-resolution microscopy for single molecule investigation, is fluorescence microscopy.

This work focuses on the interpretation of the archaeological remains of the Mixtec culture in Southern Mexico on the basis of the knowledge, perceptions, economy and worldview of contemporary descendant communities.

This research project focuses on the thoughts of ethnicity and political orthodoxy in Medieval China by investigating Wang Tong’s works.

On 19 February 2020, Richard Jiang defended his thesis '‘Greening’ the WTO Ban on China’s Export Duties'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. M.C.E.J. Bronckers.

Promotor: J.N. Kok, P.E. Slagboom Co-promotor: J.F.J. Laros

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. A. Bouwstra, Prof.dr. W. Jiskoot

Zhaole Yang defended his thesis on 25 June 2020.

Animal models suggest that the chemokine ligand 2/CC-chemokine receptor 2 (CCL2/CCR2) axis plays an important role in the development of inflammatory diseases. However, CCR2 antagonists have failed in clinical trials because of a lack of efficacy.

Clinical development of drugs for central nervous system (CNS) disorders has been particularly challenging and still suffers from high attrition rates.