Genes predict whether you have a propensity for an illness but environmental factors often have the last word: nutrition, air pollution, lifestyle, stress. The exposome as both culprit and chance. Large-scale research is being carried out into this at Leiden. Thomas Hankemeier, Professor of Analytical…

Since 2014 church organ player Paul Houdijk has been working on his PhD project on the musical and aesthetic developments of the Dutch 19th-century church organ builder Michael Maarschalkerweerd.

Media in the Netherlands and abroad reported extensively about the drug research led by Leiden chemist Mario van der Stelt. In this research, Van der Stelt shows which unwanted side-effects a French drug candidate has.

As UN Youth Delegate on Sustainable Development, Leiden student Aoife Fleming is currently in Madrid for the UN Climate Change Conference COP25.

For the following years, Dr Aitor Burguet-Coca will be a returning face at the Faculty of Archaeology. He will join Dr Amanda Henry’s team with his expertise on prehistoric fire use and the methodologies that studying ancient hearths requires.

Big Data - Big Business? - wrap up

The ARTIVES project studies imaginaries of diversity portrayed by artists in Lisbon and Rotterdam in their films, performances and (oral) literature with the aim to explore their transgressive potential of opening up possibilities of thinking differently about migration-related diversity. Their stories…

In 2023, many of our students and staff won great prizes and secured important research grants.

What kinds of pan-European connections linked communities across early medieval Europe, and what social infrastructures allowed these networks to function beyond political, cultural and geographic boundaries?

In the United States and around the world, the death of George Floyd has sparked fierce daily demonstrations against police violence and racism. What is the significance for our faculty?

This thesis aims to enhance our understanding of galaxies by testing theoretical models of galaxy formation against observations, particularly in the cases of extreme systems which have been found to have an excess of baryonic mass in their central regions, in the form of either supermassive black holes…

Rutger Leukfeldt, special chair of Governing Cybercrime, and colleagues investigate the link between Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) factors and self-protective online behavior.

Dark matter is one of the biggest mysteries of the Universe. Its properties cannot be explained with the known laws of physics and elementary particles.

This paper examines the need and possibility for developing online resilience-based approaches in response to COVID-19 vaccine conspiracies, often linked to the far right.

Why do we sometimes speak more slowly or more rapidly, and why do we sometimes have a longer pause between uttering particular words? This has to do with whether you are about to use a noun or a verb. This is the finding from research by an international team led by linguist Frank Seifart from the University…

Archaeologists often use the percentages of heat-affected stone or bone artifacts found at archaeological sites as a way to determine how frequently fire was used by the inhabitants. Andrew Sorensen and Fulco Scherjon have come up with a computer model called 'fiReproxies' to simulate how fires used…

Heavy rainfall can cause streets to flood and basements and tunnels to overflow. Jan van Rijn investigated, together with Christiaan Lamers (formerly of Leiden University) and Ton Beenen (STOWA, RIONED), how data science can help to predict which areas are at greater risk of flooding. Van Rijn presented…

This project seeks to close the gap between the three main players in the field of prescriptivism: the linguists themselves, the prescriptivists (as writers of usage guides) and those who depend upon such manuals.

When and how commenced the use of fire by early humans? Armed with stones, peat moss, and fungi, archaeologist Andy Sorensen tries to answer that question. In the February edition of the Dutch language version of National Geographic Magazine his research features in the section The Discovery.

The use of fire can tell us a lot about human evolution. Archaeologist Femke Reidsma has developed a more accurate technique to identify how our ancestors used fire. Existing archaeological studies will need to be revised. Reidsma’s study was published in Nature Scientific Reports on 2 November.

Martijn Kitzen has been appointed professor by special appointment of Military Science at ISGA on behalf of the Royal Netherlands Society for War Studies (KVBK).

In July, Leiden will be hosting the EuroScience Open Forum conference. Humanities scholars from Leiden will make use of the opportunity to stress the importance of art in science. ‘Artists have the ability to show the consequences of science.’

Exploring the mechanism of targeted nanoparticle-mediated drug delivery using the zebrafish model

In this article, Tom Buitelaar proposes a systematic framework for analyzing the impact of individual characteristics of peacekeeping leaders on the behaviour of field-level personnel in UN peacekeeping operations.

As humans we have a tendency to judge certain actions as either right or wrong. Where does our moral sense come from? We found evidence that infants who are only one year old prefer those who comfort as opposed to ignore another who is sad.

Reasserting America in the 1970s brings together two areas of burgeoning scholarly interest.

This project aims to develop advanced data analysis methods for monitoring and increasing our understanding on biodiversity dynamics in nature reserves such as the Oostvaardersplassen.

Caminada et al. examine elderly poverty across 16 European countries (2005-2022).

Promotor: H.S. Overkleeft, Co-Promotor: B.I. Florea

Deepfakes are videos that have been manipulated to replace one person’s likeness with that of another. They can be difficult to distinguish from authentic videos. In our study, we found that people who score high on conspiracy thinking and people who use social media more are better at distinguishing…

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics states that a measurement collapses a wavefunction onto an eigenstate of the corresponding measurement operator.

Indonesia is experiencing various environmental challenges related to its fast economic growth. Therefore, it is necessary to have measurable and applicable indicators to obtain accurate data and information regarding the costs of adverse environmental impacts arising from economic activities to support…

University lecturer Andrew Gawthorpe wrote an article for the Conversation about the relationship between American presidents and Benjamin Netanyahu.