igraph development focused on improving the most-used interfaces, which are Python, R, and Mathematica. Additionally, the developers aim to make the library and the interfaces easier to maintain, focusing on long-term sustainability. This ensures that igraph continues to be a useful tool for network…

He teaches, as he puts it, the ‘most brutal class’ at Leiden University College (LUC). Despite this, David Zetland’s students have nominated him for the LUS Teaching Prize. We asked him why he thinks this is.

Governments are increasingly facilitating the roll-out of so-called “smart meters”, a technology for measuring energy consumption that are able to transmit and receive data using a form of electronic communication. However, implementation has been slow or even stalled.

The complexities of modernization in Brazil and Graciliano Ramos significance for our understanding of Brazil today.

Arts and culture

Efficiently responding to others’ emotions has great survival value, especially for social species, such as primates, who establish close, long-term bonds with group members. The closest living relatives to humans are the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Studying these species, and comparing them on the exact…

Autistic children have indeed potential: most of their emotional abilities improve with age, concludes developmental psychologist Boya Li in her research on the emotional development of autistic children. Promotion on 10 November 2021.

This omnibus brings together some old and some recent works by Jos Gommans on the warhorse and its impact on medieval and early modern state-formation in South Asia.

Bahar Şimşek defended her thesis on 4 May 2021.

The fifth volume of Ex Novo has the pleasure to host Flaminia Bartolini as guest editor for the special issue titled Heritage in the Making. Dealing with Legacies of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. This collection of peer-reviewed papers stems in part from the successful workshop held at McDonald Institute…

Crafting Futures through Cheese-Making in Val Taleggio (Northern Italy) is written by Cristina Grasseni and is published in Gastronomica.

The EU-funded project SKIES (SKilled, Innovative and Entrepreneurial Scientists) will train astronomy graduate students in transferable skills for academia and industry. SKIES integrates open science, social innovation and entrepreneurship topics. The project kicked off on 1 March and will run for…

Searching for ways to delay the need for a transplant and trying to build kidneys to order.

Assessing the feasibility and legitimacy of the current model of global tax governance and the role of the OECD and EU in international tax law-making.

How is Indian foreign policy made? This special issue of the journal India Review, edited by political scientists Nicolas Blarel (Leiden University) and Avinash Paliwal (SOAS University of London) features a number of interesting case studies that bridge the gap between Foreign Policy Analysis and India’s…

The coronacrisis is emerging as the ultimate test for political leaders. How do national political leaders get ahead or behind ‘the curve’ of fast-changing dynamics. Martin Lodge (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Arjen Boin (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) look…

The Winter Week of Digital Skills will take place in the PJ Veth building from 29 January to 2 February. There will be different workshops where you can improve your digital skills, from dealing with AI and ChatGPT to setting up your own podcast. University lecturer Jelena Prokic explains more.

Big data promises to transform public decision-making for the better by making it more responsive to actual needs and policy effects. However, much recent work on big data in public decision-making assumes a rational view of decision-making, which has been much criticized in the public administration…

Hunter-gatherers acquire their food through complex gender-specific foraging techniques for a relatively stable and diverse supply of energy. New research indicates that this specialisation by boys and girls starts at a very young age. Most likely, this enabled the human species to evolve much larger…

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The starting point of Hermans' research is how both children's physical play and dance improvisation by professionals can be considered somatic practices where sense-making manifests itself in and between bodies, and through movement.

On 20 March 2019, Tim Dekkers defended his thesis 'Mobility, Control and Technology in Border Areas: Discretion and Decision-making in the Information Age'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. J.P. van der Leun en Prof. dr. M.A.H. van der Woude.

The starting point of Hermans' research is how both children's physical play and dance improvisation by professionals can be considered somatic practices where sense-making manifests itself in and between bodies, and through movement.

In line with the university and faculty ambition: ‘Future-oriented development of students’, from now on all FSW bachelor students can follow a three-year elective, faculty programme with certificate for personal-professional development, the programme starts with current first-year students; they are…

This volume is pubished in the IMISCOE-AUP Series and edited by Marlou Schrover and Deirdre M. Moloney.

Promotor: A.P.IJzerman Co-promotor: A. Bender

Diversity and inclusion within the police creates opportunities but also meets resistance. Professor by special appointment and former police officer, Saniye Çelik, emphasises how ambivalent feelings about D&I are essential to the learning process and can lead to informed decisions and real change.

Collecting as much information as possible about administering a new medicine to people can save a lot of money.

Composer Paul Craenen (1972) is actually a pianist, but as part of his PhD ceremony, he performed a composition on PVC pipes. Craenen studies the position and role of the body in music. ‘I am interested in what precedes the resulting sound’.

Read-Urban was a first project to investigate whether policy recommendations can be made with the aid of linked data collections and data science and to gain experience with the success factors for such a process.

On 6 June 2019, Edward Donelan defended his thesis 'Regulatory Management Policies and a Universal Model for Public Policy Making, Legislative Drafting and Managing Stocks of Legislation'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. W.J.M. Voermans.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri was a celebrated Indian politician and diplomat in the early twentieth century. Despite being hailed as the ‘very voice of international conscience’, he is now a largely forgotten figure.

The rise and fall of Dutch Brazil (1624-1654) was a major news story in early modern Europe, and marked the emergence of a

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Ubbink

Many humanities graduates find work in digital heritage, but a good pedagogical model to match education is lacking. University lecturers Karin de Wild and Peter Verhaar want to change this with a Comenius grant.

The proposed project evaluates how the vulnerability of migrant men and women was constructed in political, public and media discourses, and how differences in the constructed vulnerability influenced the decision to migrate, the migration process, and the subsequent settlement process.

Tailoring teaching to students’ learning needs in speaking skills in modern foreign languages is desirable, but difficult to achieve in regular classes in secondary schools. Esther de Vrind, PhD, manager and teacher educator at ICLON, developed a method to make this easier. Defence on 25 November.

What is the iconography of propaganda specifically as it relates to the historical development of political ideologies in modern Egypt and how was/is this propaganda disseminated among creative fields such as cinema, art, monuments, architecture, and literature?

The sixth issue of Ex Novo explores how ‘peripheral’ regions currently approach both the practice and theory of public archaeology placing particular emphasis on usually underrepresented regions of Eastern and Central Europe, the Mediterranean and beyond.

How was FDR's image constructed—by himself and others—as such a powerful icon in American memory?

Before 1936, musical practices in Palestine relied heavily on colloquial poetry, especially in rural communities, which constituted most of the population. In this dissertation, Issa Boulos has examined historical records that revealed many differences and similarities between Palestinian communities…

Arts and culture

Organised by the Common Law Society of Charles University, Prague, the summer school takes place during two weeks in July at the University’s mountain house 'Patejdlova bouda'.

The main case study of the project is the cultural geography of Saqqara, the necropolis of the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, and its development.

Investigating the intercultural connections that shaped practices of knowledge production in colonial Dutch Brazil.