We live in a data-drenched society awash with numbers. An inhabitant of the democratic polis of Athens (5th and 4th centuries B.C.E.) increasingly found himself surrounded by numerical data. This project aims to analyze the communicative functions and the political meaning(s) ascribed to these public…

YAL connects academics to society.

Self-censorship violates principles of a free society but few people want to take the role of the martyr.

This book published by Oxford University Press discusses religion and trade in world history.

Day-to-day activities are important in the development of social identities, the establishment of social standing, and the communal understanding of societal rules. This perspective is broadly referred to as practice theory and relates to the power of an overarching social structure and the individual…

How can we promote more durable solutions to protracted refugee situations and which roles can connectivity and mobility of displaced people play to improve protection and resilience?

Shafa’Atussara Silahudin defended her theses on 18 May 2021.

What are the principles of genome folding and dynamics in bacteria?

The project’s overall goal is to improve Indonesia’s environmental legal framework and its implementation by strengthening the regulatory capacity of the government, and by enhancing the capacity of CSOs and scholars to hold the government accountable for its regulatory performance.

This book sheds new light on domestic forced migration by examining the experiences of American-born slave migrants from a comparative perspective.

We as Young Academy Leiden are continuously educating ourselves and are listening to the voices coming from our own university, especially voices of young academics. In order to amplify those voices, we have set up a new blog called ‘Voices of Young Academics’. It features contributions from early career…

The year 2019 is the 444th anniversary of the University’s ‘birth’ and the 350th anniversary of painter, draughtsman and engraver Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). Reason therefore to celebrate both 444 years of Leiden University and Rembrandt Year. But what was the connection between Rembrandt, the most…

During the Leiden Science Family Day, you can take part in various workshops. You can also watch various demonstrations. Where will you go?

This thesis, conducted in the framework of ERC Starting grant project BABYLON (PI: Caroline Waerzeggers), presents an investigation into Babylonian society, focusing on the city of Borsippa during Neo-Babylonian and early Persian rule (c. 620-484 BCE).

The Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance, and Development and the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies organised the Van Vollenhoven Lecture 2013.

In dozens of study rooms, libraries and laboratories, passionate scientists – with the support of the donors of the Leiden University Fund – are working on a fundamental understanding of the world and the people around us. They make the unknown known and push the boundaries of existing fields of sci…

The researchers and students at the Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society at the Faculty of Archaeology study the role of the past in modern societies. They want to find out more about the relationships between the past and the present, and the role that heritage plays.

In the South African context, certain iconic images have been a dominant source for public understandings of historical events. The emphasis given these images tends to overshadow the historical value of other more personal photographic sources – like studio or amateur photography. This project looks…

Promotor: G.A. Persoon, Co-promotor: H.H. de Iongh

This socio-legal research focuses on the impacts of environmental displacement on land rights and land-related conflict in Mozambique in the aftermath of cyclone Idai, and on the role of the legal framework in addressing these problems.

Research how ‘custom’, ‘traditions’ and ‘heritages’ take on new meanings in the uplands of South and (mainland) Southeast Asia.

Cyber-attacks, privacy-related problems or failures in functioning: many technologies that are used every day have security issues that are solved when the software is already in use. An interdisciplinary project, in which Olga Gadyatskaya, Harry Wijshoff, Alex Uta and Kristian Rietveld from the Leiden…

How do documentary moving images and fictional narratives involve and evolve each other?

How do plants lure microscopically small 'support teams' into their roots for protection against diseases? And what functions are activated in the microbes and the plants?

Correctly interpreting the patterns of fire evidence in the archaeological record will illuminate the origin of human fire use.

The more we learn about a (neuro-)psychological or physical disorder and the related behavioral factors, the better we can not only identify them, but also treat them. It is therefore important that recent insights about (neuro-)psychological problems and related behavioral factors are incorporated…

Rembrandt painted this Flora, the Roman goddess of spring, in 1635. She is on display above the archway leading from the Academy Building to the lush flora of the University’s Hortus Botanicus. Rembrandt, who had his own cabinet of curiosities, almost certainly knew this botanical garden, the oldest…

The hypothesis of this research is that the municipality used the impressive the Town Hall to enforce its rule and represent its political ideas and make use of sources such as biographies, poems, pamphlets, sermons and governmental documents.

On 9 January 2019, Marieke Wierda defended her thesis 'The Local Impact of a Global Court: Assessing the Impact of the International Criminal Court in Situation Countries'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. C. Stahn en Prof. dr. L.J. van den Herik.

This research programme seeks to understand the dynamics in the relationship between social media, mobile telephony and the social fabric under duress in Africa's mobile margins. It combines studies on mobility/migration, conflict and communication in an attempt to uncover these new dynamics, which…

Early Modern Medievalisms: The Interplay between Scholarly Reflection and Artistic Production

The IBL represents the core of modern biological research at Leiden and we interact closely with the other life science Partner Institutes in the faculty:

Negotiation can only really be an alternative to warfare, if the parties agree on a framework of rules and procedures. And if the confidence of the partners may increase in another. But negotiations continue to wage war by peaceful means.

Andrei Poama, Assistant Professor at Leiden University, published a piece in the journal of Political Philosophy about social injustice, disadvantaged offenders and the state's authority to punish.

Social Information Processing in Children with and without Hearing Loss

Chinese organisations increasingly operate across the borders of China, and growing numbers of people from outside China are coming to live there. Professor Frank Pieke believes these movements have a significant effect on central and local government policy in China.

Since 2012, thousands of individuals have traveled from Western countries to join jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq. While much has been written about these individuals, only sparse attention has been paid to the social environment of these jihadist travelers and, more specific, the role of family members…

From self-driving cars to innovative drug development: artificial intelligence (AI) will fundamentally change our lives in many different ways. We study this technology at a deep and fundamental level. And we seek answers to questions about liability and privacy, for example. Our researchers from…

In dozens of study rooms, libraries and laboratories, passionate scientists – with the support of the donors of the Leiden University Fund – are working on a fundamental understanding of the world and the people around us. They make the unknown known and push the boundaries of existing fields of sci…

Despite not focusing on a particular theme, the academic contributions in this book include essays of history and literature ranging from the Middle Ages to 1970s, from Europe and America to the Ottoman Empire and Turkey.

The Delivery of Biotherapeutics research group is led by Prof. Matthias Barz and focusses on the synthesis and characterization of polypept(o)ids and their application in nanomedicine to improve existing therapies or enable novel diagnostic or therapeutic approaches.

We live in a world of things and people in the past must have been as closely entangled with their material surroundings as we are now. In the Laboratory for Artefact Studies Van Gijn takes a close look at the biographies of objects: what kind of raw material an object is made off and what is its provenience,…

Several PhD platforms and organisations represent PhD candidates within the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University and broader.

Nanoparticles exhibit a number of adjustable properties, e.g., their size, shape, and surface and core chemistry, which can be further diversified with different functional moieties. This opens a broad field for application in diagnostic and therapy. In this respect, the use of a polymeric hybrid material,…

The mission of the Plant Science research programme is to contribute to the sustainable production of high quality crops, flowers and high-value bio-based products. This is realised by generating fundamental knowledge of basic biological processes related to development of plants and their interaction…

This project receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101054849 (PURANA).

How can theatricality act as a mediating process between public space and public as ‘audience’? Does the presence of an observer change the nature of the observed and if so, how?

Atherosclerosis (thickening of the artery wall) is the most common cause of heart attacks or strokes, and one of the most common causes of death in the western world. People with this condition have to take medicine all their lives, so a vaccine for atherosclerosis would be a breakthrough.

The Tatiana Afanassjewa-lecture series is a series of public talks in Dutch by Leiden physicists on wednesday evenings, intended for everyone with an interest in physics.