At one time, the railway from Kimberley to Kambove in Southern Africa symbolised prosperity and progress. Today, the exhausted mining towns along its route are marked by decay and pollution. Professor Jan-Bart Gewald has been awarded an NWO L grant to investigate the long-term global consequences.

From research on stellar winds to sign language: an impressive seven researchers from Leiden University will receive a prestigious Vici grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

They confounded expectations and went to university anyway – as a woman of colour, a working-class student or refugee... Throughout the centuries the university has always welcomed pioneers. Students for whom going to university was not the obvious choice and who did not grow up in an academic environment.…

The Plants & Planets exhibition brings two worlds together in a dazzling mix of science, nature and art. It opens at Old Observatory Leiden and Hortus botanicus on 7 February.

Life returned to something resembling normal after Covid but other crises soon took its place. These great challenges are also being felt at the University and our researchers are working on solutions. The nitrogen crisis, problems with young people’s services and an increasingly urgent climate crisis:…

Professor of Modern China Florian Schneider researches what people do with technology and what technology does with people. Social media, for example. And then mainly in China.