Supervisor: S.F. Portegies Zwart Co-Supervisor: A.G.A. Brown

Even though more than 4000 extra-solar planets are known today, only a small fraction of these has been captured in an image. To better understand the planet formation mechanisms in solar-like environments we started the Young Suns Exoplanet Survey (YSES).

Physicist Christopher Berg Smiet, who recently obtained his PhD in Leiden, has been awarded an NWO Rubicon. The grant allows him to conduct postdoctoral research for two years at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in the United States.

The Leiden Observatory is starting a crowdfunding campaign to raise enough money to construct a new telescope.

This lecture will be hosted on Thursday, 9 April 2026 at 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm.

A team of astronomers led by Dutch scientists have directly imaged a giant planet orbiting at a large distance around a sun-like star. Why this planet is so massive, and how it got to be there, is still a mystery. The researchers will publish their findings in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

De Franse uitnodiging van president Marcron aan Nederland en zes andere Europese bondgenoten, om te praten over ‘uitgebreide nucleaire samenwerking’, past volgens het internationaal recht binnen het bestaande verdrag uit 1970, zegt Anna Marhold, expert in internationaal recht, in Dagblad Trouw.

Staring into the clouds hoping for a glimpse of the sun, cheering in encouragement, video recordings: there was no shortage of things to do at the Leiden Observatory. More than 600 visitors witnessed the last, almost complete solar eclipse of the decade..

The focus of this thesis is how stars like our Sun and planets like Jupiter, Saturn, and Earth are formed.

ALMA has observed stars like the Sun at a very early stage in their formation and found traces of methyl isocyanate - a chemical building block of life. This is the first ever detection of this prebiotic molecule towards solar-type protostars, the sort from which our Solar System evolved. The discovery…

Twee jaar geleden klaagde promovendus Danny Mekić het socialmediaplatform X aan, omdat zijn account, zonder toelichting, onvindbaar werd gemaakt. Hij kreeg gelijk van de rechter, maar X verzet zich ertegen: ‘Twitter wil niet transparant zijn.’

Monique Koemans werkt sinds 2,5 jaar op de Nederlandse ambassade in de Verenigde Staten. 'Leiden is een opvallende rode draad in mijn leven.'

Landen proberen steeds strengere maatregelen te nemen om minder aantrekkelijk te worden voor asielzoekers. Mark Klaassen, universitair docent vreemdelingenrecht, noemt het Europese asielbeleid in de Volkskrant ‘een race naar beneden.’

Lidstaten negeren steeds vaker gemaakte afspraken wanneer het hen uitkomt, waardoor de grondbeginselen van de VN meer dan ooit onder druk komen te staan. In een recente VN-spoedvergadering hekelde topman Guterres de lidstaten en zei dat ‘het handvest geen menu á la carte is.’ Niels Blokker, emeritus…

Leiden University has partnerships in the local region, in the Netherlands, in Europe and with countries on almost all the world's continents. Students and researchers benefit from these partnerships, but society is also a beneficiary, says Rector Carel Stolker.

The solar system was formed approximately 4.56 billion years ago. Despite the numerous theories that have been developed over the years, the formation and evolution of the solar system still remain unclear.

On the 3rd of April, Sebastiaan van der Lubben successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Sebastiaan on this achievement!

No sitting in lecture halls, no coffee at the JuCa: Leiden Law School students will have to follow lectures and do exams from home for the time being. A huge transition.

Thousands of first-year students and hundreds of mentors kicked off the EL CID on Monday morning. This year for the first time, the introduction week of Leiden University and Leiden University of Applied Sciences was also open for students of Regional Training Centre mboRijnland and the Leiden Instrument…

Sonja Barend distantieert zich van het toneelstuk Sonja, dat gebaseerd is op haar boek. Dirk Visser, hoogleraar intellectueel eigendomsrecht, gaf uitleg in het AD: ‘De auteurs hebben het recht om te zeggen dat ze niet meer achter de productie staan.’

The Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law of Leiden University is active in education in various ways.

Do people actually understand the constitution? This is what Jelle But, PhD candidate at Constitutional and administrative law, wondered. To find out, he conducted a survey among 1333 respondents. His research shows that lawyers and other legal professionals actually do not have a better understanding…

The fact that a significant number of seats in the Dutch provincial councils are now occupied by members of the Dutch Farmer-Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging, BBB) who have an agricultural background need not lead to conflicts of interest when voting on, for example, nitrogen emissions. This is…

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.

Working for a top faculty? Discover the vacancies at the Faculty of Science and apply immediately.

The Old Observatory has a rich history. On this page you will find a short version of the history that took place in the observatory.

Leiden University has participated in an international study carried out by the CARMENES consortium, which has discovered two small, terrestrial planets around Teegarden’s Star. The planets have masses similar to Earth and their temperatures could be mild enough to sustain liquid water on their surf…

In 2014 Hans-Martien ten Napel received a Research Fellowship in Legal Studies at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, NJ. The book he wrote as a result of this fellowship was published last week by Routledge Law.

Voor zowel archeologen, paleontologen en geologen als vrijwilligers in de archeologie en paleontologie is het geen verrassing meer dat op de stranden van de Nederlandse kust fraaie vondsten gedaan kunnen worden. Vele artikelen, boeken, tentoonstellingen, congressen, lezingen, ‘zoekdagen’, krantenberichten,…

Procedural administrative law in a constitutional comparative law perspective

Politically speaking, the Frisian coastal area constitutes a special case in late medieval Europe since it was not subject to an overlord as it withstood feudalization in the 13th century. Its many sub regions, which were dominated by elites of small noblemen and freeholders, long time succeeded in…

Nederland ligt in de periferie van het verhaal van menswording. De evolutie van onze familie vindt lang exclusief in Afrika plaats. En, als Europa eenmaal bewoond wordt door mensachtigen, ligt het zwaartepunt ten zuiden van onze streken. Toch heeft ons land een aantal interessante vindplaatsen en vondsten…

In een uitzending van het Politiek Café van - Dit is de Dag (NPO) discussieerden staatsrecht-experts Corne Smit en Wim Voermans over de vraag of een minderheidskabinet in Nederland levensvatbaar is. Hun antwoorden liepen uiteen, maar kwamen op hetzelfde neer: stabiliteit.

By carrying out fundamental research and providing excellent education, universities become a breeding ground for innovation and entrepreneurship.

On 7 December 2021, Georgina Kuipers defended the thesis 'Beschadigd vertrouwen'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. W. den Ouden and Prof. M.A. van der Steen (EUR).

Do objectively correct solutions to ethical dilemmas exist? Or is ethics always a matter of your opinion against my opinion? How do you know what to do? What kind of thing is ethics anyway? Can you be an expert in ethics?