This research project consists of various case studies.

After an introductory first year, in the second year you will learn more about the four themes: the sustainable city, the safe city, the multicultural city and the healthy city. In years two and three you will have elective options, including a minor, studying abroad and an internship.

In Dutch nature, plant species that depend on pollination by insects are disappearing. Environmental scientist Kaixuan Pan shows this after analysing 87 years of measurements from more than 365,000 locations. Several national and international media reported on the study results. Below is an overview…

The energy transition is already a huge challenge for society, but sustainable use of resources is even more complicated. Yet it is at least as urgent. Ester van der Voet has been working on it for decades, for example within the United Nations. Since February, she is a professor at the Centre for Environmental…

Reseachers of the Institute of Environmental Sciences Leiden (CML) have contributed to a debate in the Journal Nature over whether lions in Africa can only be saved with dollars and fences.

This thesis explores how bees and hoverflies are distributed across the Dutch landscape and how ecological and landscape factors shape their occurrence.

What types of construction materials are used in the Global South, where are they, and what levels of societal services do they support? How will material use evolve under different development pathways and paradigms? What are these materials' environmental and societal impacts now and in the future,…

If you want to know more about Leiden University’s Urban Studies bachelor’s programme and experience what it’s like to study with us, we can offer a variety of introductory activities that will help you choose.

Discover the impact of Instagram on our daily lives in the book On Display. Boy and Uitermark delve into the platform's influence on our social interactions.

Research integrity is vital for good research. How to make it an inseparable part of research culture takes more than having rules and procedures in place. The EU Horizon 2020 project Standard Operating Procedures for Research Integrity (SOPs4RI) has found three areas and nine topics of focus in the…

Katarzyna Cwiertka, Leiden Professor of Modern Japan Studies, was already the recipient of a VENI and a VIDI grant. Now she has also been granted a VICI, worth 1.5 million euro, for her research project Garbage Matters: A Comparative History of Waste in East Asia. ‘I want to do something that hasn’t…

In the fight for a liveable planet, we desperately need a fairer distribution of wealth and equal rights for all, argues anthropology professor Marja Spierenburg. ‘That will also generate broad-based support for sustainable development.’

Osteoarchaeology is a rich field for reconstructing past lives in that it can provide details on sex, age-at-death, stature, and pathology in conjunction with the cultural, social, and economic aspects of the person’s environment and burial conditions. While osteoarchaeological research is common in…

In the early modern period women played a prominent role in crime. At times they even made up half of all defendants. Female criminality was a typically urban phenomenon. Why do we find so many women before the Dutch criminal courts?

How have British cities changed in the years since the Second World War? And what drove this transformation? This innovative new history traces the development of the post-war British city, from the 1940s era of reconstruction, through the rise and fall of modernist urban renewal, up to the present-day…

Studying linguistics at the Leiden University Centre of Linguistics (LUCL) is a challenging but rewarding experience. There are few places in the world where such a broad range of languages are studied from so many different perspectives.

When people migrate, they leave an old environment behind and move to a new one. What exactly happens? How do the migrants feel? How does the host society respond to them?

It is with great pleasure that we present to you the second volume of Inter-Section, published in 2016.

Unlike most city histories, this book focuses exclusively on the city’s connections with colonialism and slavery.

With both national and international companies operating in the market, the expansion of global platform capitalism raises concerns and critique. To counter a perceived erosion of local authority, various countries, particularly in Europe, have introduced anti-trust legislation against such BigTech…

Exploring the Meanings of Lands and Forests as an Avenue for Mutual Development of People and Nature in Ghana

The area will undergo major changes, in a phased plan. Teaching will continue during this period. The existing education buildings will be tackled one by one. Some of the buildings will be reconstructed, and for others the building shell will undergo renovation. The Humanities Building is expected to…

Feeling good doesn’t just lift our mood—it also helps us stay flexible and resilient. A new study by an international team of neuroscientists shows that natural brain opioids released after rewards play a key role in broadening attention, offering fresh insights into stress, cognition, and well-bein…

'The World Upside Down. The Geographical Revolution in Humanist Commentaries on Pliny's Natural History and Mela's De situ orbis (140-1700)', in: Enenkel, K.A.E. & Nellen, H. (Eds.), Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (1400-1700).Humanistica…

Robot technology is flourishing in multiple sectors of society, including retail, health care, industry and education. However, are robots representative towards minority groups of society, like LGBTQ+ people?

This pioneering project will answer this question by examining migrants through the eyes of the courts between 1600 and 1900. It aims to reveal patterns of continuity and change in: 1. Treatment of migrants by criminal courts; 2. Violence and conflicts between migrants and native born.

In Dutch TV programme Early Birds, Marvin and Kevin Groen (26) showed viewers areas of nature in the city that often go unnoticed. These good-natured brothers - twins, in fact - were a big hit with the viewers. How much influence do they have on one another's studies and work?

Urban, Food, Water, Biodiversity, Resources and Energy: these are the main research topics of the Institute of Environmental Sciences. We always strive to be a global leader in our field. And make a real impact with both our research programmes.

Non-urban settlement organization and Roman expansion in the Roman Republic (4th-1st centuries BC)

The Faculties of Leiden University have developed several themes for research cooperation between Leiden University and its Indonesian partners.

Emeritus professor Henk Schulte Nordholt of Leiden University discusses in BBC News Indonesia the unique traditions of Desa Tenganan Pegringsingan during Nyepi.

In 2011, Dr. Amanda Henry published her findings from dental plaque picked from the teeth of Neanderthals who were buried in Iran and Belgium between 46,000 and 40,000 years ago. Plant microfossils trapped and preserved in the hardened plaque showed that they were cooking and eating starchy foods including…

On this page you will find resources developed by the project team, such as bibliographies, reading lists, template case-studies as well as the team's training and seminar activities.

History is all around you: how well do you know your neighbourhood?

The Urban Studies bachelor’s programme is taught at Leiden University's location in The Hague, a vibrant city offering many cultural activities and sporting opportunities, and close to the beach at Scheveningen. The Hague was also awarded the title ‘greenest city in The Netherlands’ in 2017.

Morocco and the Netherlands have a strong bond. The modern community of Dutch people with Moroccan roots is part of a shared history spanning four centuries of social and academic exchange. As an institution that functions at the heart of Moroccan society and the university system, the Netherlands Institute…

Cristina Grasseni’s project

In the South African context, certain iconic images have been a dominant source for public understandings of historical events. The emphasis given these images tends to overshadow the historical value of other more personal photographic sources – like studio or amateur photography. This project looks…

How does global change across time and space lead to convergence and loss of variation or increasing diversity and conflict?

Building more in urban areas is, in most places in the Netherlands, the smartest way to tackle the housing crisis. This is evident from research conducted by Janneke van Oorschot, published in a partner journal of Nature. Remarkably, this does not have to come at the expense of green spaces in cities.…

Research at the department of Environmental Biology

This page features an overview of relevant lectures, publications and conference papers.

This study offers a new view on public services in the early modern Low Countries and answers the following questions: who provided public facilities in urban communities and in which ways did public amenities change in the period between 1500 and 1800?

This article explores how to think about solidarity, considering the diverse stories, spaces, practices, bodies, and temporalities that shape a city.

The project 'Food citizens?' examines the consequences and premises of collective food procurement in three European cities (Rotterdam, Turin, and Gdańsk).

On 21 September 2022 H. Hu successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.