Promotor: A.P. IJzerman

On 22 June, Anneke Koning defended the thesis 'Return to sender: a multi-method study of guardianship against transnational sexual exploitation of children'. The doctoral research was supervised by Joanne van der Leun, Masja van Meeteren and Johan van Wilsem.

PhD defence

The Old Obervatory Leiden is one of the partners of the local learning ecosystem ‘Verwonder om de Hoek’, an educational platform from Leiden that lets school children and families wonder about the world of Nature, Science, Technology and Sustainability. On this page you will find the educational programmes…

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…

What is the origin of solar systems?

Leiden astronomer Tim de Zeeuw has been appointed Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion. He received the distinction on 14 May to mark his departure as Director General of the ESO European Astronomy organisation. The celebration took place during the 2018 Dutch Astronomers Conference in Groningen.

Rychard Bouwens from the Leiden Observatory is the first scientist in the Netherlands to be assigned a Large Programme on the state-of-the-art ALMA telescope in Chile. With his team, he wants to use the unique capabilities of the billion-euro facility to investigate the build-up of massive galaxies…

An overview of the media appearances of scientists working with the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs about terrorist attacks in Europe, their consequences, and more.

Leiden Observatory is the astronomical institute of the Faculty of Science of Leiden University.

Astronomers from, among others, SRON and Leiden Observatory have discovered long-sought intergalactic gas with ESA’s space telescope XMM-Newton. This gas is one of the pieces of the puzzle to map the total amount of ‘normal’ matter in the universe. The research will be published in Nature on 21 June…

At Leiden Observatory, researchers investigate the origin of stars and their planetary systems. They detect and characterize planets around other stars (exoplanets). They study how stars and planets form. And they follow molecules from interstellar clouds to nascent planet systems. This way they address…

Leiden was European City of Science in 2022: for a year Leiden was the capital of European science. Leiden University was a proud partner of Leiden2022.

This thesis revolves around the electronic spectroscopy of molecules in the laboratory and the search for the carriers of the diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs).

Our research primarily focuses on the early universe and its origins in theories that go beyond the Standard Model of particle physics.

My work is motivated by the necessity to extend Standard Model of Particle Physics in order to explain three observed phenomena that this great theory fails to accommodate

Promotor: Prof.dr. S.F. Portegies Zwart, Co-promotor: D.C. Heggie

Promotores: S.F. Portegies Zwart, E. M. Rossi

Promotor: M. de Jong, Co-Promotor: Samtleben

The field of science communication is very broad. Below is a list of organisations where SCS students can fulfill internships or where alumni have found jobs.

This book aims to be a point of reflection and debate for journalists, academics and students to recognize a fundamental task in the duty of the communications professional, which is to influence through their daily work and their routines in order to achieve a more inclusive and plural society, through…

On Saturday October 16, the special exhibition ‘Shared Sky: Canvases of the Universe’ opens in the Old Observatory in Leiden. The exhibit takes a cultural look at the starry sky by Aboriginal Australian and South African artists, and features colorful artwork that explores how these Indigenous cultures…

The ability to collect and interpret huge quantities of data has become indispensable to society and academia. Leiden University is a knowledge and expertise centre for data science that places the emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation.

Radio telescope LOFAR maps the sky. It produces incredibly detailed images of the universe - and vast amounts of data. Huub Röttgering, director of the Leiden Observatory, talks about the challenges of working with those enormous datasets.

Astronomers from Leiden Observatory have developed a new method to find distant quasars and better distinguish them from other objects that look like them, using machine learning techniques. The research result has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. It is the last…

The Leiden astronomer Huib van Langevelde) has been selected as the new director of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The EHT is a collaboration involving about 350 scientists from 18 countries. It combines the ALMA array in Chile with sub-millimeter telescopes around the world and published the first…

Leiden Professor of Astronomy Mike Garrett is searching for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. In his Kaiser lecture on 23 April he will discuss how far science has progressed in this quest.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration receives the 2021 Royal Astronomical Society Group Achievement Award. In April 2019, the EHT team presented the first-ever photograph of the shadow of a black hole. Leiden professor Huib-Jan van de Langevelde has been director of EHT since last year. Three…

Hoe kan de City Deal Kennis Maken bijdragen aan het formuleren van maatschappelijk relevant onderzoek dat de stad in al haar diversiteit centraal stelt? In de stad Leiden zijn burgers momenteel maar in beperkte mate betrokken bij het bepalen van de agenda van de lokale City Deal Kennis Maken. Dit onderzoeksproject…

In the master’s programme in Archaeology, you can follow courses on the archaeology of Europe, deepening your understanding of the continent’s long history.

The thesis addresses the long-term dynamical evolution of hierarchical multiple systems.

From nanoparticles to colliding ice planets and from biological origami to new x-ray scanner techniques: this year again, our scientists have made wonderful discoveries. From the largest numbers to the smallest molecules and from the oldest galaxies up to the latest algorithms, take a look at each institute's…

To get an idea of the science communication products and research that is possible, a few examples of student projects of recent years are shown below.

We explore the particle physics and quantum world at the time of the big bang.

Internationalisation is an important part of the mission and vision of Leiden University. The Erasmus+ programme, an initiative of the European Commission, makes a substantial contribution to this goal. Erasmus+ provides grants for educational projects with partners within and outside Europe, and facilitates…

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University’s Faculty of Science with the Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute.

PhD defence

PhD defence

On November 22nd, Morana Lukač succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Morana on this great result.

Multiple stars, that is two or more stars composing a gravitationally bound system, are common in the universe.

Excavations at Geleen-Janskamerveld 1990/1991

From basic science to real-world interventions

Postbus71 is the place for all questions to science! Do you have a burning question for the scientific world? Send your question to vraag@postbus71.nl, so we can find you an answer.

Leiden emeritus professor George Miley receives an honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin on 8 December. ‘I never dreamed that I would receive an honorary doctorate somewhere, and this is all the more emotional because it's in the city where I spent the first 21 years of my life.’

Exploring the largest structures in the universe by looking at the tiniest particles? Lydia Stofanova, PhD candidate at Leiden Observatory and SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, dives into this intricate connection. In her PhD research, she explored how elements like oxygen influence the…

Henk Hoekstra and Alessandra Silvestri work on the astronomy and theoretical physics in the Euclid mission. These Dutch researchers are part of the mission.

He discovered how to determine the rotation and centre of our Milky Way, predicted where comets come from and laid the groundwork for radio astronomy: Leiden Professor of Astronomy Jan Hendrik Oort (1900 – 1992). Piet van der Kruit, whose PhD supervisor was Oort himself, has written a biography about…

Sound Arguments is an innovative laboratory-atelier for creative artists and researchers dealing with sound. Presented by the Orpheus Institute, Ghent (BE), and the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, University of Leiden (NL), Sound Arguments transcends the boundaries of art school or conservatory,…

For only the second time ever, astronomers have linked a neutrino to an object outside our Milky Way. These observations were made using telescopes both on Earth and in space. The researchers, including Leiden astronomer Sjoert van Velzen, were able to trace the neutrino to a black hole that is devouring…

At Leiden Observatory, researchers investigate the origin of stars and their planetary systems. They detect and characterize planets around other stars, which are called exo-planets. They study how stars and planets form. And they follow molecules from interstellar clouds to nascent planet systems.…