This project tries to explain the persistence of this cultural repertoire by zooming in on (1) interaction between idioms (cultural repertoires) available to scholars at certain points in time, (2) mechanisms that help transmit repertoires across time and place, and (3) rhetorical purposes for which…

Research and design are two activities that are becoming increasingly important in the Dutch subjects O&O (‘research and design’) and NLT ('nature, life and technology’). The dissertation of Tessa Vossen (ICLON and Faculty of Science) indicates that teachers and students understand the importance of…

Leiden has a long history in the treatment of blood cell cancer. Research to find better therapies never stands still. One of the potential treatments currently being worked on is a ‘living medicine’.

At LUCIS we offer a varied programme of scholarly meetings (conferences, workshops) which reflect our multidisciplinary and comparative view on Islam and Muslim societies in past and present.

This project traces how, why, and under what circumstances scholars invoked the trope of “dogmatism,” especially in controversies. Relevant controversies from various fields, periods, and countries will be subjected to in-depth rhetorical analysis.

The research in this thesis is focused on tomographic reconstruction based on two imaging modalities in electron microscopy.

Promotor: R.C.M. Pelger Co-Promotor: G. van der Pluijm

Why did 'character', 'habit', and 'virtue' serve as key terms in late 19th and early 20th-century scholarly correspondences, biographies, and obituaries? Why did scholars around 1900 display so much interest in the working habits and character traits of what they called the 'scholarly self'?

What evaluative languages (errors, mistakes, vices, etc.) did book reviewers employ? To what extent and on what occasions did they invoke early modern vices? And to what extent did this differ across fields or change over the course of the century?

If idioms employed in codes of conduct could be as idiosyncratic as examples suggest, then to what extent did early modern language of vice, too, persist in this genre?

How can we broaden youth participation in STEM Learning

Lots of efforts are being made to promote open science practices in scholarly publishing. However, information on the openness of scholarly journals is highly fragmented. There are various data sources that provide information on specific aspects of openness, but there is hardly any integration of these…

Treatment with special stem cells seems to be a good option for suppressing the immune system in organ transplants. Researchers are trying to learn from processes that take place in the human body during pregnancy.

Below are some of the scholarly works published within the context of the Institutions for Conflict Resolution programme.

How did British scholars and scientists in the period of discipline formation envision, experience and resist scholarly temptations?

Why does the history of dogmatism deserve our attention? This open access book analyses uses of the term, following dogmatism from Victorian Britain to Cold War America, examining why it came to be regarded as a vice, and how understandings of its meaning have evolved.

This volume examines how the history of the humanities might be written through the prism of scholarly personae, understood as time- and place-specific models of being a scholar.

Pieter Jakob Cosijn (1840-1899) was Leiden University’s first Professor of Germanic and AngloSaxon Philology. A recognised expert in the field of Old English grammar and textual criticism, Cosijn corresponded with various prominent philologists and experts in his field, including Julius Zupitza, Arthur…

In an age before GoogleDocs and LinkedIn, 19th-century scholars relied on letter-writing for collaboration, peer-feedback and the building and sustaining of academic networks. Letters were a quick, efficient way to share insights, data and discoveries. Scholarly correspondence thus allows a vital behind-the-scenes…

My PhD thesis investigates the ecological significance of resistance against drought-induced air bubble formation inside the water conduits of plants (embolism), and the plasticity and functional aspects of stem anatomical traits in woody and herbaceous species.

What makes a good historian? When historians raise this question, as they have done for centuries, they often do so to highlight that certain personal attitudes or dispositions are indispensable or studying the past. Yet their vieuws on what virtues, skills or competencies historians need most differ…

This dissertation focuses on the systematic vowel alternations displayed by the Proto-Germanic n-stems. The fact is, that many of these nouns now appear to have preserved the ablaut system of the Indo-European proto-language spoken some five millennia ago. In this respect, the n-stems are truly comparable…

The objective of this project is to fundamentally improve our understanding of the ways in which science progresses. Empirical studies have used bibliographic metadata to provide relevant insights, but these studies have failed to tell us how science progresses. Supported by computational advances and…

The Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), the Danstem Institute from the University of Copenhagen and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne have received 300m euros from the Novo Nordisk foundation. The aim of this new international consortium is to bring stem-cell based therapies…

The availability of indicators based on social media has opened the possibility to track the online interactions between social media users and scholarly entities.

Why are professors still warning their students against dogmatism, prejudice, pedantry, and other centuries-old vices? What explains the persistence of these scholarly vices across the ages?

Chemist Roxanne Kieltyka has received an ERC Starting Grant of 2 million euros. In her lab, she creates gels that mimic the instructive material that supports cells in our body. With the grant, she aims to make these gels stiff and tough, and to create a bio-printed miniature heart ventricle.

Embryonic stem cells have the remarkable ability to develop into any type of cell. On their way to become for example a liver or a heart cell, they must repeatedly decide between alternative developmental paths. How they make these decisions is largely unknown. An international team of biophysicists…

Three speakers, three fascinating science stories and a well-filled lecture hall. The Niko Tinbergen Lecture had a successful restart on 10 December 2019.

Drawing on a broad array of sources, this project examines modern retrievals of Bacon’s idols, thereby testing Justus von Liebig’s intriguing observation, back in 1863, that Bacon’s name lived on mainly in mottos or stereotypical phrases. More importantly, it examines the rhetorical purposes served…

In comparing a selection of 18th-century histories to a representative sample of 19th-century histories of science, this project inquires: Which early modern vices persisted into the 19th century and to what extent were those vices embodied in anecdotes, conveyed through commonplaces, or symbolically…

This project analyzes to what extent hodegetical textbooks relied on each other in warning their readers against vicious habits, how much continuity their catalogs of vice displayed, and to what extent vices that persisted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries were associated with easy-to-remember…

On Wednesday 11 June 2025 Steffie van Gompel successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) will start construction this year of the largest non-profit stem cell and gene therapy facility in the Netherlands, and one of the largest facilities in Europe. NECSTGEN – the Netherlands Center for the Clinical Advancement of Stem Cell and Gene Therapies…

This research will investigate which aspects of On the sublime received attention in the intellectual milieu of the seventeenth century and how the sublime found its way in the political and artistic discourse of that time. Thus I aim to shed light on the role of art in politics and society in this…

Pericytes, the mural cells of blood microvessels, are important regulators of vascular morphogenesis and function that have been postulated to mechanically control microvascular diameter through as yet unknown mechanisms.

Despite being the object of intense study, embryonic development has been difficult to model due to a number of reasons. First, complex tissues can be comprised of many cell types, of which we probably only know a subset.

Parkinson's disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease in the world. One of its symptoms is the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta.

In this chapter of the Elgar Encyclopedia of International Relations, Carraro explores how expertise is defined and contested in International Relations.

How can pupils and students learn to get a grip on complex 'swamp situations'? Inaugural lecture in abbreviated form held by prof.dr.ir. Fred Janssen on the acceptance of the post of professor of science education at Leiden University on 19 June 2017.

Researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have successfully used stem cell gene therapy to treat a baby with the severe congenital immune disorder SCID. An important milestone: it is the first time stem cell gene therapy of Dutch origin has been administered to a patient, and also…

Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), as a partner in the reNEW consortium, is once again receiving tens of millions of euros for research into new treatments based on stem cells. The collaboration will receive a total of €150 million to develop new therapies in regenerative medicine.

On 3 June 2016, the Symposium on International Investment Law as a Field for Scholarly Research was organized by Uppsala University, together with the Nordic Network on Investment Law and the Swedish Institute of International Law.