2,560 search results for “political agenda sensing” in the Public website
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Charlotte wins thesis award on argumentation theory: ‘This is one way to strategically pin someone down’
Everyone has heard arguments like this before as a child: ‘Whether you like it or not, you have to go to school!’ It seems as though you are presented with two options, but there is only one real outcome. Charlotte van der Voort of the MA Dutch Studies won the Leiden University Thesis Prize on her research…
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Artificial Intelligence learns faster with quantum technology
An international collaboration, including Leiden physicist and computer scientist Vedran Dunjko, showed that quantum technology can speed-up the learning process of artificial intelligence (AI). To prove this, the physicists and computer scientists used a quantum processor for single photons. Their…
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‘Man's empathy comes from language and stories’
Man is nature's mind-reading champion: we are better able than any other living beings to empathise with others. This comes in part from our story-telling culture, according to Max van Duijn. PhD defence 20 April.
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Honours class students do research into confidence in the justice system
Students from the ‘Public confidence in the criminal justice system’ Bachelor’s Honours Class completed this course with their presentations at the final session on Tuesday 25 May. What is unique about this honours class is the collaboration with The Hague University of Applied Sciences and the Court…
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‘The COVID-19 crisis just goes to show how things can go wrong’
Ijeoma Uchegbu is Professor of Pharmacy at University College London (UCL). As a female scientist of colour, she was initially reluctant to play an active role in the university’s diversity policy. Until, that is, she had a radical change of heart: ‘I knew it; I had to become an evangelist.'
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How accessible are our buildings?
Towards the end of February, three Leiden University buildings will be assessed for their accessibility to people with a disability. The assessment will be carried out by Ongehinderd, a social enterprise committed to making the Netherlands more accessible. Its founder and director, Gerard de Nooij,…
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Massive Stars Are Factories for Ingredients to Life
NASA’s telescope SOFIA has provided a new glimpse of the chemistry in the inner region surrounding massive young stars where future planets could begin to form. Leiden PhD candidate Andrew Barr writes about it in the Astrophysical Journal. The scientists found massive quantities of water and organic…
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Leiden Teachers’ Academy conference focuses on academic skills
Everyone agrees that university students need to learn academic skills. But what exactly are we talking about? The Leiden Teachers’ Academy organised a conference on 7 November on this topic.
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The life of nomads in turbulent times
In recent years, the Walad Djifir from Chad found themselves in a turbulent environment due to the unrest in Nigeria, Libya and the Central African Republic. How did they adapt? Inge Butter explored their situation in her PhD thesis. PhD defence will take place on 2 July.
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Wives of professors, students and alumni played a crucial role in Leiden’s women’s rights movement
PhD candidate Agnes van Steen researched the history of the Leiden women’s rights movement (1860-1990) and found that the university produced many feminists.
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Teaching Prize nominations are now in
Every year, an outstanding lecturer receives the Faculty Teaching Prize from the teaching committee. The prize is awarded during the official opening of the academic year on 7 September. This year, students nominated eight candidates.
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Te Beest: more than the man of the finances and bricks and mortar
Willem te Beest, Vice-Chairman of the Executive Board, is retiring on 1 May. His farewell was celebrated in style in the Pieterskerk on 7 April. And, to his surprise, the celebrations included a royal decoration.
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Pui Chi Lai: ‘I like figuring out and solving problems’
Pui Chi Lai (35) has a lot on her plate, being a study adviser and coordinator of studies for two bachelor's programmes and two master's programmes. Alongside her job, however, she does not sit still and follows a PhD trajectory at the University of Macau.
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Looking at the big world of microbiology through the smallest lenses
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the father of microbiology, died 300 years ago. 2023 has therefore been designated the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek year. The new Unimaginable exhibition in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave is about the amazing world that Van Leeuwenhoek made visible. What was so special about the way he worked?…
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Executive Board column: Energy and new insights at the strategic conference
It’s become somewhat of a tradition at Leiden University: the strategic conference at the end of June each year. About a hundred staff including the faculty boards, academic directors, directors of the expertise centres and Administration and Central Services, the representative councils and student…
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‘Learning with the City’ opens its doors in Leiden-Noord
Bringing the community together, doing up the community centre or researching how to make gardens greener. Students now have a base in Leiden-Noord where they can work with local residents and partner organisations to make the city a better place to live. It was the official opening of ‘Learning with…
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Leiden University student attends Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony
Natalia Sobrino-Saeb has attended the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo. She was awarded this honour after winning the essay competition of the Nobel Ignitor Fellowship, a programme that seeks to inspire young changemakers around the world – for change can be made by all of us: “You never know…
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‘All of Leiden will join in with the Seeing Stars experiment’
What will happen if the lights in a large part of the city are switched off? How many stars can you see without all that light pollution? This is what researchers, artists and the residents of Leiden are going to investigate during Seeing Stars Leiden on 25 September. ‘Leiden is the ideal place for…
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Censorship in cooperation: the representation of the Indonesian massacre in literature
How do you recount historic events if you are not allowed to talk about them? For his dissertation, Taufiq Hanafi tried to find out how a period of mass murder – despite heavy censorship – found a place in Indonesian literature. PhD defence 31 March.
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Fulbright scholarship takes Sara Polak to Yale
Sara Polak, PhD researcher and lecturer at LUCAS, has won a Fulbright scholarship to work on her research on Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yale University from September 2014 till February 2015.
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Carel Stolker discusses research impact
Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker retired on 8 February. If there was one theme running through his career, it was the links between the University and society. Before he left, Stolker spoke one last time to people from within and without the university about the societal impact of research. On topics…
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Ivo van Vulpen is Professor of Science Communication in Leiden
As of January 2022, Ivo van Vulpen has been Professor by Special Appointment of Science Communication at the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION). Van Vulpen will be researching science communication in general and will aim to underline the value and importance of science communication.
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An artistic view on the hidden fungi in the soil
Music from a compostable cello, photographs and scents of fungi and a woven tapestry. With her upcoming multimedia project Super Organism, visual artist Suzette Bousema enables people to experience the underground fungal network with all their senses. Environmental scientist Nadia Soudzilovskaia and…
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Southern Africa is bracing itself for the coronavirus
At the end of March, the first coronavirus infections were detected in southern Africa, which resulted in country after country rapidly closing their borders. Tycho van der Hoog witnessed this process at first hand during his PhD research in Namibia. He analyzes the state of the corona crisis from his…
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Privacy under threat from ‘messy’ coronavirus app development
The Ministry of Health seems to be going full steam ahead in the search for a track-and-trace app to contain the coronavirus crisis. The apps are being developed with irresponsible haste, according to Valerie Frissen, Professor of Digital Technologies and Social Change.
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New research programme for urgent challenges in Africa
Leiden University and four other Dutch universities will appoint 51 PhD candidates to conduct solution-oriented research for and with the African continent.
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Medieval Studies and Early Modern Studies: New options for the Master’s programme in Leiden
Leiden University is home to over a hundred specialists studying the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. From 2017-2018 onwards, they will join forces to offer two new options for specialisation within existing MA programmes: Medieval Studies and Early Modern Studies.
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Thousands of new students start an old-style EL CID
Smiling faces, a mass dance and a bit of awkwardness: after two ‘corona editions’ of EL CID, the Leiden introduction week is back with a vengeance this year. A total of 3,412 first-year students from Leiden University and University of Applied Sciences Leiden, accompanied by 486 mentors, started EL…
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Peace in the Middle East? Students seek solutions in Peace Academy
Finding solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the not-inconsiderable task of the new Peace Academy in The Hague. Professor Maurits Berger and twelve students from different conflict zones are starting a creative thinking process that aims to discover the basic conditions for peace in the…
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Out into the world, camera in hand: Tulasi Das became a filmmaker
Leiden alumna Tulasi Das moved to England to pursue a career in film, was accepted onto the BBC Trainee Scheme and now works in London as a researcher on historical documentaries. “I still can’t believe I get to do such cool work.”
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Leiden through the eyes of Matthew Fields
Matthew Fields, from Philadelphia, US, came to Leiden to study astronomy as part of the Euroscholars scheme. 'I came here to gain valuable research experience, and I haven't been disappointed!'
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Lorentz Professor Tom Lubensky: pioneer in soft matter
Professor Tom Lubensky from the University of Pennsylvania is visiting Leiden University as the 64th Lorentz Professor at the department of Theoretical Physics. He is a pioneer in the field of theoretical soft matter physics and winner of the prestigious Buckley Condensed Matter Prize. We spoke with…
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Even unconscious stress can cause stress symptoms
Our vision of stress is starting to change fundamentally. We can suffer stress without even being aware of it, while sleeping as wall as during the day. Professor of Psychology Jos Brosschot will discuss this phenomenon in his inaugural lecture on 2 December.
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From scarcity to abundance: big data in archaeology
New digital methods and a data explosion are radically changing archaeological research. Karsten Lambers, Associate Professor of Archaeological Computer Science, tells us all about it.
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‘Right now, it's an enormous achievement just to pass a subject'
When the corona epidemic broke out, Nuno Atalaia, a teacher of Portuguese, ‘democratised’ his lectures. He is one of the three nominees for the LUS Teaching Prize. What is it about this approach that appeals to students?
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Dutch Research Council pilot programme funding for seven researchers
Seven researchers from Leiden University have made a successful application to the Open Competition SSH (Social Sciences and Humanities) XS, a Dutch Research Council pilot programme.
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A clear picture of bacteria
Freezing bacteria super fast to gain a true-to-nature image of the internal and external structure. Ariane Briegel Professor of Ultrastructural Biology came to Leiden specially to carry out this research. Leiden University is one of the few institutes in the world to have the necessary equipment. Inaugural…
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Student Sjoerd reveals link between cloth trade and slavery
What do the cloth trade and slavery have to do with each other? Quite a lot, as it turns out, as by history student Sjoerd Ramackers demonstrated in his bachelor’s thesis. He reveals that cloth merchant Daniel van Eijs was closely associated with four plantations in Berbice, a former Dutch colony on…
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Beatrice Gründler: ‘Literary text can help us understand Europe better’
'Consider languages in their shared context.' That is the message of Professor and Arabist Beatrice Gründler, who will receive an honorary doctorate from Leiden University on 8 February. ‘I would like people to learn that Arabic history has a close connection with Europe.’
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Rick Honings appointed Scaliger professor
Senior lecturer Rick Honings has been appointed Scaliger professor with effect from 1 July 2020. In the coming years his focus will be on promoting teaching and research on the Special Collections of the Leiden University Library. Honings succeeds book historian Erik Kwakkel, who held this chair until…
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Anne Marieke van der Wal-Rémy: ‘The Instagram influencer should also be preserved as a historical source’
Anne Marieke van der Wal-Rémy, assistant professor of African History and International Studies, has received a Comenius Teaching Fellow grant of 50,000 euros. She intends to use the grant to set up an online archive of digital primary sources, together with her students. Van der Wal-Rémy: ‘ “Once on…
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What did resistance look like in Indonesia during the Second World War?
Stories of resistance in the Second World War are widely covered in Dutch historiography: Hannie Schaft, Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, and Professor Cleveringa are some of the best known. But these accounts largely focus on the Dutch domestic perspective. On the other side of the world, a complex colonial…
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‘Let the Greek politicians explain how we got into this crisis'
Politicians throughout the whole of Europe need to be more honest with their voters and dare to take confrontational measures when necessary. This was the message given by Jeroen Dijsselbloem in the annual Europa lecture on 17 January in Leiden's Academy Building. As newly resigned President of the…
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Early-modern vices: why are they still around? Vici grant for Herman Paul
Over the past few hundreds of years, the world has changed radically. However, cultural stereotypes from the 17th century are still alive and well today, and even academic researchers sometimes use terms coined centuries ago. Why do they do that? Herman Paul, Professor of the History of the Humanities,…
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Non-standard career path: from studying Japanese to making offices greener
The Linked In profile of alumnus Arne Driessen describes him as a ‘serial entrepreneur’. After studying Japanese he ended up working for a translation agency, after which he founded his own online marketing company, which he later sold to enable him to do something different again: making offices more…
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‘American’ Black Power movement was also active in the Kingdom of the Netherlands
In the 60s and 70s, Black Power groups were also active in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This is what PhD candidate Debby Esmeé de Vlugt has discovered.
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In search of hidden voices
Nearly all documents from the 16th and 17th centuries were written by more than one person but attributed to only one author. Professor Nadine Akkerman wants to rectify this oversight in her research on scribes.
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10 years of Humanities Lab celebrated in style at Capstone conference
Last week, Humanities Lab honours students presented their research through creative posters and pitches at the Capstone Conference in PLNT Leiden. It was a special edition, where alumni and teachers reminisced over the programme’s 10-year history.
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Unique exhibition translates science into music, images and dance
Leiden researchers from different disciplines look together at complex social problems. What happens when they join forces with artists? The results could be seen on Tuesday 11 June during a unique exhibition. Take a look for yourself:
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Alumnus Anne Speckens opened a mindfulness centre in Nijmegen
Professor of Psychiatry Anne Speckens studied medicine in Leiden and did her psychiatry training there too. She opened the Radboudumc Center for Mindfulness in Nijmegen. What does she do there and how does she look back on her time as a student?