Despite a lack of specific legislation on this issue, Dutch Minister of Justice and Security Dilan Yeşilgöz is allowing the national police force to experiment with facial recognition technology.

More and more reports appear in de media claiming that Frontex, the organisation coordinating the joint border control of the European Union, has been helping the Greek coastguard to stop asylum seekers at sea. In doing so, has Frontex endangered the lives of migrants?

This thesis presents insights from our study of various correlated electron systems with a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). In ordinary metals, electron-electron interactions exist, but get substantially screened due to the sheer number of electrons.

Promotor: Roeland M.H. Merks

Prematurely born neonates require, amongst others, pharmaceutical therapy. Dosing guidelines for these therapies are often based on data from term born neonates or older infants, while these are not necessarily similar to prematurely born neonates.

As museums face more scrutiny and are being demanded to decolonize, there are opportunities for Dominican museums to adopt a critical perspective and turn their collections and exhibitions into connections to our cultural past, present, and future.

Ruixuan Chen defended his theses on 16 October 2018.

This book is about the archaeology of indigenous peoples who thrived across the Caribbean, the Guianas, and the Lower Amazon basin just before the European invasion, and who also remained central to the early history of conquest and colonization.

This study by artist Jonas Staal explores the development of propaganda art from the 20th to the 21st century.

Promotor: J.P. Abrahams, Co-promotor: T. Grüne

Why do historians so often talk about objectivity, empathy, and fair-mindedness? What roles do such personal qualities play in historical studies? And why does it make sense to call them virtues rather than skills or habits?

How to reduce aggression when two parties are at odds? PhD research by psychologist Lennart Reddmann's shows that it can help to offer them a peaceful alternative. However, the attacking party benefits the most from such a solution.

Leiden University is famous for its library’s large collection of Oriental manuscripts. Part of this collection is a group of 104 Arabic documents written on papyrus and paper (Or. 8264 and 12885). These documents date from the 7th through 10th century CE and cover a wide range of subjects (private…

In this paper, Kantorowicz argues that reverse party favoritism exists. He exploits the fact that during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic crisis, the Polish government was keen to launch postal voting in the presidential elections scheduled for May 2020.

What is the impact of Indonesia’s democratization process on everyday state-citizen relations?

A small project grant from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung foundation has been awarded to Dr. Andrea Waters-Rist, a co-applicant on a project entitled

Friday 25 September, 2015 marks the official launch of Leiden University's Central and East European Studies (CEES) Center.

Europe must be prepared to stand up for its values in its relationship with China, argues University Lecturer Casper Wits in an article in Politico.

Scientists at Leiden University (Netherlands), Stuttgart University (Germany) and Ural Federal University (Russia) have successfully put forward a novel, computed, reaction mechanism that was experimentally tested and show that formaldehyde is formed at much earlier stages in the birthplaces of stars…

What is the name of the medieval Persian poet Nezami (✞ ca. 1209) doing on the cover of an Eric Clapton rock album? Asghar Seyed Gohrab, associate professor at the Institute for Area Studies, talks about it in a new blog for the Leiden Medievalists Blog.

What do you do if you have a book from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, but you suspect that the binding contains a fragment of a medieval manuscript? University lecturer Thijs Porck has received an NWO grant to experiment with a camera attached to a tube. 'The project boils down to keyhole surgeries…

An archaeologist as a modern-day shaman. An unexpected comparison Professor by Special Appointment of Public Archaeology Luc Amkreutz will make in his inaugural lecture.

- Which metabolites could be components of NADES? - How can we prove the presence of NADES in nature? - What are the roles of NADES in nature? - How to apply NADES in life sciences?

Making the Virtuagym e-platform suitable for wheelchair users with a spinal cord injury or lower limb amputation.

Around the sixth and seventh centuries, South and Southeast Asia saw a great religious change: Saivism largely took over from Vaisnavism. We’re going to look at the way in which Saivism, the religion of the god Siva, presented itself with respect to Vaisnavism. In particular we’ll investigate the role…

Over the past years it has been discovered that the population of extra-solar planets is large and diverse.

Promotor: Prof.dr. A.G.G.M. Tielens, Prof.dr. C. Dominik (UvA)

Harry’s research work looks at the techniques and influence of chordal and polyphonic accompaniment on viola da gamba in the sixteenth century.

Lecture, LUCL Colloquium - Series '24/'25

LUCL is pleased to announce that two Vrije Competitie Grants have been awarded to LUCL researchers. Prof.dr. Lisa Cheng and dr. Jenny Doetjes have been awarded a grant for their project 'Understanding questions'. Prof.dr. Michael Kemper (UvA) and prof.dr. Jos Schaeken have been awarded a grant for the…

In our globalised economy, goods and services are frequently produced abroad. Is it the producer or the consumer that should be held responsible for greenhouse gas emissions associated with production? Together with colleagues from Berlin, Hauke Ward of the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML)…

Horses were first domesticated in South-West Russia, is the conclusion drawn by an international team of researchers writing in the well-respected journal Nature. Their conclusion resolves a longstanding archaeological question. But, surprisingly enough, this domestication did not contribute to the…

What would it be like if you could work with the best in your field every day? Alumnus in International Studies Niels Drost knows just what that’s like. He currently works as a junior researcher at the Clingendael Institute.

The projects of nine researchers at Leiden University have received funding through the new NWO Science Diplomacy Fund. The Fund is for scientific activities that will improve relations between the Netherlands and other countries.

After two years of corona restrictions, it was ‘back to normal’ in 2022. Migration, elections, the history of slavery, Russia, and Ukraine were much-discussed topics. We compiled an overview of the most-read news items and other events of the past year.

Leiden University is awarding an honorary doctorate to virologist Marc van Ranst. Van Ranst has been one of the main advisers of the Belgian government during the Covid pandemic. German Arabist Beatrice Gründler will also receive an honorary doctorate for her work in the field of Oriental Manuscript…

The Military Information and Security Service (MIVD) prevented a Russian hacker attack on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague. Scientists Paul Abels, Willemijn Aerts, Constant Hijzen and Sergei Boeke of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs responded to…

In September 2013 I moved to Leiden from the UK to take up the position of Assistant Professor covering politics and international relations on the BA Russian Studies and International Studies programmes and the MA Russian and Eurasian Studies.

You can hardly avoid it if you want to quickly implement satellite internet. Elon Musk's company Starlink is

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has also had dramatic consequences for Ukrainian students at Leiden University. Besides their intense concern about the fate of family and friends, they also face major financial problems. This also applies to Russian students who can no longer access their bank accounts.…

Earlier this week, a working group of the United Nations, comprising all 193 of its member states, adopted a consensus report on norms for responsible state behaviour in cyberspace. Dennis Broeders, full professor of Global Security and Technology at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden…

What is a good data protection law? How does a good data protection law evolve? Is European data protection law a good one? And whether the European data protection applicable to China?

If we want to solve global problems, we need to know about both the theory and the practice. How does the international community make decisions about military intervention, for instance? Why is it such a complex process? Professor Herman Schaper has represented the Netherlands at the United Nations…

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…

Below you can find lists of Leiden-based and international organizations working on Central Asia, and an overview of useful resources on Central Asia.

Bones contain information about people’s lives such as where they came from, their age at death and which diseases they suffered from. Researchers can deduce a lot from them about a person’s life and about human evolution. This generates leads that could help solve present-day problems, such as how…

The CEES Centre regularly hosts (guest) lectures, roundtables, and film screenings.

China is a one-party regime, yet elections are held for the local congresses. PhD candidate Wang Zhongyuan investigated how the Communist Party uses this democratic instrument to strengthen the authoritarian regime. PhD defence 31 January.

The specialisation consists of a core course in political theory, a methods course, and several optional modules, including political theory options on themes such as Contemporary Theories of Justice, Human Rights Theory, Borders and Migration, and Environmental Ethics. The specialisation concludes…