The oldest forms of literature and law originate from Mesopotamia (3000 BC until AD 70), as do important discoveries in science and technology. All these developments were recorded in cuneiform texts on clay tablets. There is still a lot to learn from the study of cuneiform texts, says Professor of…

The coal-power energy sector is using enormous amounts of fresh water which is projected to negatively affect lives and the ecological balance of the surrounding region. This is the conclusion of the new report The Unquenchable Thirst of Energy Production, published by Greenpeace Bulgaria and Leiden…

Lecture, Studium Generale

Lecture

The chief curator of the National Museum of Ethnology, Laura van Broekhoven, is participating in the Museum Leadership Institute at the Claremont Graduate University.

In our culture, vocal harmonics function as independent musical elements since only a few decades. Thresholds of the audible explores the changing relationship between singers, listeners and harmonics.

Yusen Yu wins the prestigious Graduate Student Prize of the Middle East Medievalists (MEM) with his article

Strengthening a cancer patient's own immune system so that the body itself can better destroy cancer cells. This is at the heart of immunotherapy, the most promising progress in cancer treatment in recent years. In order to drive this development further, the Netherlands Cancer Institute-Antoni van…

A partnership with the Leiden Leadership Programme: what does it bring you? Two partner organisations in the field of sustainability, Arcadis and Bioto, share their experiences: “It's great to be surprised by new insights.”

How do children learn to see the world through someone else’s perspective? Max van Duijn, assistant professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), receives 24,167 euros from the Elise Mathilde Foundation and the Leiden University Fund (LUF). With this grant he will set up a…

The ERC has awarded a Starting Grant to five promising researchers from Leiden. Two are from the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, one is from the Faculty of Humanities/Governance and Global Affairs, one from the LUMC and one from the Faculty of Science.

There’s been a lot of commotion about the ‘Apartheid in Israel’ panel discussion being cancelled. The organisers, Students for Palestine, wanted to hold this at Leiden University’s Wijnhaven building in The Hague on 21 March. The Executive Board would only allow the event to go ahead if guarantees…

Three decades ago, cyber-diplomacy did not exist. The interest in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a vector of change in international relations was limited to a few mostly technical organisations, and a restricted number of states.

Taking a Bachelor’s in Security Studies while starting and running two businesses: student Mohamed Sulaiman never stops. But he wouldn’t have it any other way. PLNT The Hague entrepreneurs’ hub is a source of help and inspiration.

Exactly a century ago, astronomers observed the first two diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) in space. A DIB manifests itself as a colour of light that is missing in the radiation from stars behind an interstellar cloud. Although about 500 DIBs are yet discovered, they remained inexplicable until recently.…

An international team of astronomers including Leiden scientists publishes the image of a young star with a surrounding dust disk that is still being fed from its surroundings. The phenomenon around the star SU Aur may explain why so many exoplanets are not neatly aligned with their star. The European…

Judicial officers have some leeway in how they act. In most cases that's fine, but it can also lead to abuses, such as ethnic profiling. It is easy to forget that these are not isolated decisions, but are also part of a framework of formal policies. Professor Maartje van der Woude calls for more comprehensive…

A new way to decipher the light from distant worlds could give us unmistakable evidence of extraterrestrial photosynthesis, and maybe alien plants, finds astronomy author Colin Stuart in the New Scientist. In his article, he describes the work of the group led by Leiden astronomer Rob van Holstein.…

Why have some European countries responded faster to the coronavirus outbreak than others? While in some countries the lockdown had already been declared when relatively few cases were known, others did not take action until thousands of people were already infected and hundreds were already dead. What…

It’s become somewhat of a tradition at Leiden University: the strategic conference at the end of June each year. About a hundred staff including the faculty boards, academic directors, directors of the expertise centres and Administration and Central Services, the representative councils and student…

How can business strategies help us solve social problems? This was researched by students of the Master Honours Class 'Social Innovation in Action' over the past twenty weeks. During the final seminar of the class they presented their creative enterprises to tackle child poverty in Leiden. ‘It’s not…

The climate crisis, the return of TB and the digitisation of cultural heritage. The Netherlands and Indonesia face many of the same challenges. A visit by a delegation from Leiden University to Indonesia at the end of June highlighted the benefits of cooperation.

PhD defence

What better way to represent women in the present than to ask them? The Museums Matters Class decided to ask Leiden’s Leading Ladies to loan an object which they felt encompassed their time here, from those in their undergraduate to one of the 23 female professors, with many positions in between.

The aim of ANCIENT CHARM was to develop neutron-imaging techniques and the associated equipment, and help establish neutron imaging as a mainstream archaeological analytical technique. In particular, one of the goals was a new imaging technique which called neutron resonant capture imaging combined…

Archaeological research of coastal farming communities on the southern North Sea coast, 2000-800 BC

The Museums, Collections & Society (MCS) group consists of staff members, all of whom have a strong link to the Museums and Collections programme of the Faculty of Humanities and the Heritage and Museum programme of the Faculty of Archaeology.

This special issue of the International Forestry Review talks about how logging really affects society.