In Slaving Zones: Cultural Identities, Ideologies, and Institutions in the Evolution of Global Slavery, fourteen authors—including both world-leading and emerging historians of slavery—engage with the ‘Slaving Zones’ theory.

Plants produce an astonishing variety of secondary metabolites (SMs) which are thought to play vital roles in the fitness of plants through ecological interactions.

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) implies that societal actors (researchers, citizens, policy makers, business, third sector organisations, etc.) work together during the whole research and innovation process in order to better align both the process and its outcomes with the values, needs and…

Pulsars were first discovered in 1967 and since then the population has grown and expanded over several wavelengths.

PhD defence

Evolution is all around you every day. This is the message of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) of Leiden University and Naturalis that is offered free of charge to anyone interested.

Certain cichlid fish in Lake Victoria seem to have adapted super-fast to changing circumstances. Dr Frans Witte from the Integrative Zoology section has been awarded an NWO subsidy (approx. € 240,000) to carry out PhD research into the rapid changes apparent in this fish species.

The explosive radiation and diversification of the advanced snakes (superfamily Colubroidea) was associated with changes in all aspects of the shared venom system. Morphological changes included the partitioning of the mixed ancestral glands into two discrete glands devoted for production of venom ormucous…

Promotores: Prof.dr. P.M. Brakefield, Prof.dr. B.J. Zwaan (Wageningen Universiteit)

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F. Smets, Co-promotor: Dr. V.S.F.T. Merckx

How did digital intermediality symbolise and facilitate the transfer of content from popular culture into policy statements and vice versa in the period between 1945 and the new millenium?

A global biological study has provided the most direct evidence to date that humans, and specifically cities, are the drivers of evolutionary change on Earth. Leiden University, Naturalis and the Municipality of Leiden worked on and helped fund the study.

A very special occasion for the Dual PhD Centre. Vasileios P. Karakasis is the 25th PhD candidate in the history of the Dual PhD Centre, combining work with PhD research at Leiden University. Karakasis will defend his dissertation: ‘Adding Fuel to the Conflict’ on 15 October. In this interview, he discusses…

This project combines an extensive new open database on linguistic distributions, spatial modelling and areal linguistics in order to disentangle the roles of social and environmental factors on the emergence of linguistic diversity patterns of South America.

Promotor: Prof.dr. P.G.L Klinkhamer

Newts of which half of the offspring die before birth. Evolutionary biologist Ben Wielstra is investigating how this can exist in nature. In his research he collaborates with Naturalis Biodiversity Center.

An international team with researchers from Leiden revealed how a bacterium repurposed an internal system to control its movements. Movement control is very important in host invasion, which can lead to disease. Publication on 27 April in Nature Communications.

A study by an international group of scientists headed by Prof. Michael Richardson showed that asymmetry in the snake lungs manifests itself early in development.

Ben Wielstra strives to unravel the evolution of balanced lethal systems. On 1 February he started his own lab at the Institute of Biology Leiden. Wielstra is one of five researchers at Leiden University who has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2018 by the European Research Council. ERC Starting…

More attention to the needs of PhD Candidates who are not employed at universities, but combine their research with a professional career outside the academic world. That was the main wish expressed at the workshop Supervision of dual PhD candidates, organized at the Wijnhaven building in The Hague…

Dr Johannes Magliano-Tromp has been appointed Director of Leiden University Interfacultary Dual PhD Centre The Hague as of 1st May 2016.

On 17 November 2017 the Board of the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA) in The Hague welcomed the Mayor of Leiden, Henri Lenferink, and Alderman Paul Dirkse for a working visit, and introduced them to the campus in The Hague. During the visit, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed…

Hemin Hawezy, a political & international government adviser, has started as a dual PhD candidate at Leiden University. Bram Klievink and Toon Kerkhoff are supervising his research on the organisation of digitalisation in government; a good example of transdisciplinary collaboration.

Leiden University's Kiem grants aim to help develop new interdisciplinary and interfaculty collaborations and encounters. In the first round, a Kiem grant was awarded to a group of researchers from the Faculty of Archaeology, the Faculty of Social Sciences, and the LUMC for the organisation of a symposium…

Which traits did change due to the invasion process of plants and how do these traits contribute to the invasiveness of such species. What is the role of carbohydrate accumulation? What is the function of carbohydrate accumulation in plants? Is genetic variation depleted in invasive species under se…

The emissions of the Chinese industrial sector alone comprise 24.1% of global emissions (7.8 GtCyr−1 in 2015). This makes Chinese industrial emissions of unique national and international relevance in climate policy. This study reports a literature survey that quantitatively describes the evolution…

Seven new Medical Delta professors revealed their research plans in a lecture marathon on 21 June. The professors at Leiden University, the LUMC, Delft University of Technology and the Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam operate at the interface between life sciences and health and technology.

How do common marmosets combine their calls into sequences and how are their vocalisations influenced by reproductive state?

We study the link between the acoustic, behavioral and physiological health of birds and prominent pollution factors. We aim to explore causation through experimental studies on detrimental factors like traffic noise, particulate matter and chemical toxins. Our primary target is scientific progress…

What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us About Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves, Menno Schilthuizen reports from the front lines of evolutionary biology, on a quest to make sense of the origins, workings and evolution of our and other species’ reproductive selves.

Zijn sociale aspecten van anxiety-like gedrag bij zeer jonge zebravissen al aanwezig? Zijn deze afhankelijk van de coping style (persoonlijkheid) van het individu? Zijn deze gedragingen endocrien te moduleren, bv door oxytocine?

The logic seems inescapable indeed. The bigger the population, the higher the probability it contains an Einstein. Hence, bigger populations are more likely to develop complex culture.

A new analysis of the king cobra genome by Michael Richardson, Christian Henkel (IBL) and collaborators at the IBL and Naturalis, Helsinki and Singapore has been published in

Does Artifical Light at Night (ALAN) disrupt seasonal physiological and behavioral patterns in migrating freshwater fish?

Evolution acts via mutations in amino acid sequences. Substitution of essential amino acids leads to a nonfunctional protein. l.

The Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) record throughout Europe is characterized by major changes in human behaviour.

The Leiden University Shii Studies Initiative (LUSSI) is hosting a two-day online conference on Islam and Evolution.

Evolution is all around you every day. This is the message of the new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) of Leiden University and Naturalis that begins on September 19.

Leiden archaeologist José Joordens has been awarded a Veni grant to develop her research on the role of climate change in early hominin evolution.

A theoretical project on the insights gained by human (including infant), nonhuman animal and computational studies on artificial grammar learning; identifying the critical questions for future research by developing novel experimental and computational approaches to address these issues.

In a recent article published on PLOS, Drs. Briana Pobiner and Ryan McRae of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History discuss the top 13 discoveries in human evolution in 2023.

A central and much debated topic in the study of language acquisition concerns the nature of the learning mechanisms that are required. Are the computational and learning mechanisms that guide learning about language structure special and specific to language or humans?

Dark matter represents around eighty per cent of the total mass in the Universe. Yet, we still don't really know what it's made of. Astronomer Pavel Mancera Piña is looking for answers. With a Veni grant from NWO and the most advanced telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, he will investigate…