The research Early Pleistocene human occupation at the edge of the boreal zone in northwest Europe published 8th July 2010 in Nature is part of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project, in which the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University is involved.

Tech company Uber uses various tricks via the Netherlands to avoid paying tax on its profits. A $16 billion inter-company loan from Singapore has prompted questions with experts claiming the loan is not under arm’s length terms. MEP Paul Tang wants Brussels to investigate.

As a result of the current corona measures, attendance at the Opening of the Academic Year on 6 September will be restricted to a maximum of 75 persons. The ceremony can, however, be viewed online by taking part in a video wall.

Earlier this year, Spain passed a law that legalises euthanasia and assisted suicide. Spain is now the fourth country in Europe with such a law. Its introduction, however, is not plain sailing.

'How do you write a slogan to win an election?' Steven Ooms answers this question in his PhD research into ideas about good prose in the time of Caesar and Emperor Augustus. This period is considered a high point for the development of literature. The Roman Cicero and the Greek Dionysius of Halicarnassus…

Eliminate violence against women. That is the message of the Orange the World campaign. Leiden University is joining in this year, hence the ‘oranged’ Academy Building and Oude UB.

Every year in February, ninety students who love making music come together in Someren, a town in the Dutch province of North Brabant. Through rehearsals and festivities over ten days, they transform into the latest version of the Dutch Student Orchestra (NSO), which then performs concerts in the Netherlands…

Like spoken languages, sign languages evolve organically and do not always have the same origin. This produces different ways of communication and annotation. Manolis Fragkiadakis wrote his PhD thesis on this.

The Choose a Language Day was created to make high school students enthusiastic about choosing a linguistic profile and further education. Third-years were able to learn about different language studies at the Faculty of Humanities.

Many students who graduated during the pandemic were unable to celebrate their graduation in style. To make up for this, they were given the chance to sign their name in the Sweat Room on Friday 26 May.

For the first time, Leiden University has made it to the top 10 of the UI Green Metric, a global sustainability ranking for universities. Of the 780 participating universities, Leiden has taken seventh place.

This year Dirk Visser will celebrate working at the faculty for 25 years. During this period he has progressed from being a student assistant to becoming an expert in information and copyright law in the Netherlands. This event will be marked with a symposium to be held on 2 September as part of the…

The analysis of protein residues extracted from the storage containers of circa 50,000 year old bone-tools reveals Neandertal strategic selection of bovid ribs to make some of their “lissoirs”.

Marlisa den Hartog is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History since January 2017. She is working on a thesis about perceptions of sexual desire and sexual identity in Italy between 1450 and 1550.

Ed van den Berg started his role as the new interim Director of Operations in September. He will hold the fort until a permanent successor to Dirkje Schinkelshoek has been found. What will Ed be doing exactly, and who is he? We’ll leave that to Ed to tell you...

Leiden University has taken eighth place in this year’s SustainaBul, the sustainability ranking for universities and universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands. It was in 18th place last year.

Professor of Cognitive Psychology Mariska Kret studies how humans and animals express emotions. Comparisons between humans and great apes offer important evolutionary insights, Kret will say in her inaugural lecture on Friday 9 September.

Ben de Jong, a guest lecturer at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, appeared as a guest on NPO Radio 1 to discuss number stations that are used to send secret messages to spies in enemy territories.

'I hope to contribute to a better understanding of social dilemmas we constantly face, like those that arise with climate change or the current pandemic,' says social and organisational psychologist Jörg Gross in an interview on his Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC).

Following a series of diplomatic catastrophes and human rights violations in the country, Nicaragua has left the Organization of American States (OAS) on 19 November 2023. Unlike Brexit, where the decision to leave the EU was based on the famous 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum,…

The Netherlands generally performs above average in the protection of personal data, according to research carried out at Leiden University. Germany is the leading country, while countries such as Italy and Romania are lagging behind.

Last Saturday (4 November) almost 100 LUC alumni returned to the campus at the Anna van Buerenplein in The Hague for the big autumn Alumni Meet up. They were welcomed by Dean Prof. dr. Judi Mesman, who emphasized the role alumni will play in the future of LUC. “From January on LUC will have more alumni…

A leaving do, birthday or other celebration? Many people like to ask for a donation to a good cause for their birthday or anniversary present. Leiden research can be one such cause.

The Chinese History chair has a long, rich history within Leiden University. Since 1 February, this position has been held by Ying Zhang. ‘Leiden University brings together a legendary range of Asian knowledge.’

De maatregelen die het kabinet voorstelt om het asielbeleid strenger te maken kunnen eigenlijk niet direct leiden tot een lager aantal asielzoekers dat in Nederland asiel aanvraagt. Dit betoogt Mark Klaassen, universitair docent Immigratierecht bij Nieuwsuur.

The colonial and slavery past is an important theme in education and research at Leiden University. Particular attention is also paid to structural abuses that arose from this history and that often still persist in the present day.

With its iconic buildings, Leiden University has a strong presence throughout the city. The university has left its mark clearly on museum collections in the city.

As we are working very hard to make our University more green, it is of upmost importance that you join us in our battle and start increasing the local biodiversity from your own house! Every bit will help, it is beneficial for you own mental health and most importantly it is fun! We have created this…

Learn all about the writing systems used in the famous wall poems of the city of Leiden.

Promotor: P.M. Brakefield

Quantum computers deserve their own quantum internet. This is a network that dispatches information not in the form of bits - ones and zeros - but rather as qubits, just like in the quantum computer itself. In the view of Dirk Bouwmeester, a professor in Leiden’s Quantum Matter & Optics research group,…

To be able to measure small forces or small deviations from Boltzmann, the external vibrations at the resonance frequency must be very low. To achieve this, we have developed a very soft vibration isolation system and combine it with several other measures to reduce vibrations in our dilution refrigerators.…

Methods of treatment for chronic illnesses are limited. Doctors and researchers at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and Leiden University are working on new therapies as an alternative for organ transplants. The goal is to cure the illnesses by restoring organs to their original function. Stem…

Leiden University encourages all its laboratories to obtain LEAF (Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework) accreditation.

Mazatec chants and ancient Mesoamerican pictography

Exponential population growth and rapid urbanisation are prompting the development of gigantic African metropolises that must be supplied with resources such as food, water and energy. This creates economic opportunities, drives migration and presents political challenges. Researchers from Leiden combine…

People are less willing to give up an interest when in a negotiation situation than when they can do it of their own free will, as Leiden University psychologist Eric van Dijk discovered. Knowledge of this kind can be used by policy makers, for instance, to motivate people to adopt certain desirable…

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ said skating coach Jac Orie to Leiden data scientist Arno Knobbe. And he did. Knobbe and his colleagues now assist athletes in all kinds of ways with the help of data mining.

What does the excavated material tell us about the continuation and/or change of urban life during the transitional phrases from Antiquity to the Middle Ages on Crete and in the eastern Mediterranean more generally?

Kim Stroet is examining how the interaction between teachers and pupils influences pupils’ motivation. ‘Children need to have the feeling that they are in control of their own learning process.’

Leiden archaeologists investigate how people in the past impacted their environment. Together with scientists, environmental scientists, and humanities experts, they use this information to draw conclusions about the present – and show what we can learn from it for the future.

To make digital communication more secure, we need to tighten up the legal frameworks and identify the biggest cyber threats.

“Music is about everything else,” theater director Peter Sellars said upon accepting his Polar Music Prize back in 2014. Although it is about particular musical problems, Stanimiras dissertation is about ‘everything else’, too. What and how that is, could be summed up in different ways depending on…

This research project studies the distribution and impact of medieval malaria in the Netherlands.

The Van Loon project sets out to safeguard the archives of Dutch archaeologist Maurits van Loon (Amsterdam, September 22, 1923 - Montpellier, October 12, 2006) and make them accessible for further study.

Leiden University has been promoting studies on Latin America and the Caribbean for a long time.

Imagine that you have a chronic skin condition, characterized by red patches of itchy, scaly skin. You regularly notice people staring at your skin and sense their reluctance to shake your hand. Or imagine that you have Parkinson's Disease, causing your hands to tremble and making it difficult for you…

Through metabolism, biochemical processes give rise to the complexity of life. Acquired and inborn errors in metabolism underlie many diseases occurring in man. The challenge for present day medical biochemistry is to find, and integrate, pieces of information at molecular, cell and organismal level…