A friendly chat is more complicated than you might think. As soon as the other person finishes talking, you already have an answer ready. But how do we know when it's time to change turns? University lecturer Johanneke Caspers has been awarded an NWO Open Competition grant to investigate the role of…

University lecturer Dario Fazzi and postdoctoral researcher Gaetano Di Tommaso set up a virtual collaboration with the United States last year thanks to a VIS grant. And it was a such a success the project will be repeated next year. Fazzi is looking forward to once again offering his students a multicultural…

An international team of astronomers from Leiden Observatory and others, has for the first time mapped a piece of the dark, cosmic web. The research strengthens the hypothesis that the young universe consisted of huge numbers of small groups of newly formed stars. The astronomers publish their findings…

Political scientist Rebekah Tromble (Leiden University) has been appointed as an academic advisor to the Social Science One research commission. She will assist the commission in its new partnership with Facebook, which aims to facilitate in-depth studies of the role of social media in elections and…

Four researchers from Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science have been awarded a grant to jointly investigate attitudes towards Venezuelan immigrants among youths in Ecuador. Combining their expertise and collaborating with the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, they will focus on school-going…

With a special symposium at Museum Boerhaave, ESO celebrated its 60th anniversary on Monday, 26 September. More than 100 scientists, politicians and people from industry were present to look back on collaborations, milestones and discoveries. Leiden astrochemist Ewine van Dishoeck was one of the pre…

In the context of growing political polarisation, the spread of misinformation, and increases in incivility and intolerance, how can Twitter assess and improve the quality of its conversations? To address this question, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Leiden University, Syracuse University,…

Deep observations made with the MUSE spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have uncovered vast cosmic reservoirs of atomic hydrogen surrounding distant galaxies. The exquisite sensitivity of MUSE allowed for direct observations of dim clouds of hydrogen glowing with Lyman-alpha emission in the…

An international team led by Leiden astronomers has taken the first-ever image of a young, Sun-like star accompanied by two giant exoplanets. The researchers used The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope for this, known as ESO’s VLT. Images of systems with multiple exoplanets are extremely…

In 2015, Jorryt Matthee thought he discovered an extremely distant galaxy called CR7, which lacked elements heavier than helium. Three years later, he shows with measurements using the ALMA telescope that the galaxy does have carbon after all, and even in normal concentrations. The American Astronomical…

An international team led by Leiden astronomers has, after years of searching and defying the boundaries of a telescope, for the first time directly captured polarised light from an exoplanet. From this light they can deduct that a disk of dust and gas orbits the exoplanet. In this disk moons are possibly…

New results from the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) show that the Universe is almost 10 percent more homogeneous than previously thought. The new KiDS map was created using the partly Dutch OmegaCAM on ESO's VLT Survey Telescope on Cerro Paranal in Northern Chile. An international team of astronomers from,…

An international team of astronomers led by scientists from Leiden Observatory has for the first time characterised a dust disk surrounding a young super-Jupiter, which is either a giant planet or brown dwarf. They detected infrared emission from the disk which might indicate that moons may have formed.…

While investigating 16 years of images of young stars from a retired astronomical camera, Leiden master's student Sam de Regt discovered that two of those stars were still enveloped in birth clouds. Never before has anyone captured these two stars in so much detail. He publishes his data-cleaning method…

Astronomer Jos de Boer has received the Chesneau Prize in Nice for his research into so-called protoplanetary disks. The prize is awarded to the best astronomical dissertation in the field of high angular resolution. 'I consider it a good opportunity to talk about my research.'

The norms, institutions and power relations that have defined the last decades of international political and economic relations in the European Union are undergoing major transformations. With the return of competition between great and ambitious powers, like the US, China, EU and Russia, the need…

Franx

Nicholas Vrousalis, lecturer in Political Philosophy at the Institute of Political Science of Leiden University, has been elected to a fellowship at Princeton University. During the academic year 2015/16, Vrousalis will be based at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, where he will write…

Two Leiden students stand a chance of winning the ECHO Award for Higher Education. Deniz Rana Kuseyri (Rana for short) and Ruşen Koç are two of the six finalists for this annual national prize that is awarded to students who promote diversity and inclusion in their own discipline.

Political scientist Wouter Veenendaal (Leiden University) has been awarded a Vidi grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This enables him to further develop his innovative line of research on and set up a research group in the coming five years. Veenendaal et al. will analyse the democratic consequences…

In the Netherlands, 1.55 million people suffer from cardiovascular diseases. Yet, acute cardiovascular events, such as a heart attack or stroke, often occur unexpectedly. That is because many people do not know they are at risk for such an event. Immunological researcher Amanda Foks and her colleagues…

How can the transport of molecules in living cells help to target medicines at exactly the right place?

Neuroscientist Simeen Tabassi Mofrad has been awarded a Rubicon grant to conduct research on cortical and allelic determinants of age-related cognitive decline at University of Oxford. She holds the first rank among all Rubicon applicants in NWO Domain Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH).

Vietnamese mathematician Dung is the first to complete his dissertation within the Erasmus Mundus Algant PhD-programme, under the supervision of Prof.dr.Hendrik Lenstra. The defence of his thesis ‘Profinite groups with a rational probabilistic zeta function’ will take place on 14 May 2013 on 13h45 in…

Political scientist Wouter Veenendaal received an NWO Veni grant for his research on the political stability of small states. 'I find small states fascinating, they are almost always excluded from comparative research, while in fact they often challenge existing theories in political science.'

Leiden University College The Hague received the 'Top rated Programme' seal from the Keuzegids Universiteiten 2023 (Dutch University Guide). It is the tenth consecutive time the Liberal Arts & Sciences programme focusing on Global Challenges is awarded the honorary seal.

The Dutch Passport Alerts Register (Register paspoortsignaleringen, RPS) lists Dutch nationals (around 8000 in 2021) whose right to a passport has been restricted. As a result, they cannot apply for, renew, or must surrender their passports. Under the Passport Act, the Tax Authority, the DUO (Education…

Giving lectures, marking exams, essays or theses, supervising students and PhDs, doing research and, as if that wasn’t enough, also trying to raise the necessary funding. There is a limited number of funds for academic research and a large number of applications. Many of our researchers therefore experience…

How do children learn to see the world through someone else’s perspective? Max van Duijn, assistant professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), receives 24,167 euros from the Elise Mathilde Foundation and the Leiden University Fund (LUF). With this grant he will set up a…

After years of hard work, the Roman Villa of Serenus at Amheida in the Dakhla Oasis, of which the reconstruction in mud brick was commissioned to architect Dr Nicholas Warner by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (New York University), after which it was beautifully decorated by Dorothea…

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.

What if seriously ill patients do not want to hear their diagnosis? Does a clinician always need to provide a patient with all available information? Communication researcher Liesbeth van Vliet, medical anthropologist Annemarie Samuels and research intern Fiona Brosig will put these questions on open…

Last Thursday, the final ILS Lunch Seminar of 2018 took place. Irma Mosquera Valderrama, Adrián Grant and Frederik Heitmüller gave two very insightful presentations on Global Tax Governance, part of the EU-ERC project ‘A New Model of Global Governance in International Tax Law Making’ (GLOBTAXGOV).

In early 2019, the QANU (Quality Assurance Netherlands Universities) published its Report on the Research Review of Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). This review takes place every 6 years as part of the overall monitoring and safeguarding of research quality in the Netherlands.

Menzo Havenga, CEO of Batavia Biosciences on the Leiden Bio Science Park (LBSP), has a favourite hobbyhorse: the Clinical Development Board. The aim of this board is to make sure that high-impact research results in high-value products that will benefit patients.

The World Cultural Council (WCC) is an international organisation based in Mexico. Since 1984 the WCC has held an annual Award Ceremony granting prizes to outstanding scientists, educators and artists whose breakthroughs in the fields of knowledge, learning and research have contributed positively to…

PhD Kick-off Event

The LACDR represents the core of bio-pharmaceutical research at Leiden University, and we interact closely with our partners:

If you want to continue your academic education, the logical next step after obtaining your bachelor’s degree is to follow a master’s programme. You can do so at Leiden University, or at another university in the Netherlands or abroad.

The presence and participation of interest groups in policymaking processes has become a crucial component of Western democracies. These groups link society and policymakers and influence public policy choices. Their function however, is often taken for granted and not very well researched. Adrià Albareda…

After ten years and one day, Leiden Observatory has a new director. As of 1 September, Ignas Snellen will set the course for the astronomical institute. In this interview, you will get to know Ignas. Or at least a little. That is why we gave him five dilemmas and asked the people around him who he really…

With his ice-cold nano force sensor, Tjerk Oosterkamp searches for the boundary between the quantum world and the everyday world. The Leiden physicist has received an NWO subsidy of 600,000 euros.

Metamaterials researcher Martin van Hecke has been elected American Physical Society (APS) fellow, an honour exclusive to only half a percent of the society's members.

Alireza Mashaghi from the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) will use state-of-the-art technology to investigate proteins that play a role in muscular dystrophy. His goal is to provide new insights for designing novel therapeutic strategies in the future. To accomplish this, Mashaghi receives…

To safeguard the quality of research within Leiden University, a committee of external experts evaluates the University’s institutes once every six years according to the Standard Evaluation Protocol which is drawn up by the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), The Royal Netherlands…

The centre of our Galaxy is so dark and dense that it is almost impossible to observe what is inside. By catching the rare hypervelocity stars that are ejected from it, Elena Maria Rossi aims to unveil the mysterious environment around the supermassive black hole inside. But she’ll also be solving another…

How did free agents oppose the monopolies held by the VOC and WIC in court?

In the Pioneers of Leiden University series we talk to past and present students who were the first in their families to go to university. In this third instalment we talk to Jos Schaeken (1962) dean of the Honours Academy and Professor of Slavic and Baltic languages and Cultural History: 'I had to…

To what extent does exoplanet Proxima b resemble our Earth? And is there some form of life present? Astronomers hope to find answers to these questions with the new European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). An NWO research grant of €18 million will allow a Dutch consortium to continue building instruments…