1,836 search results for “late medieval” in the Public website
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Unravelling prehistoric fire use: ‘Variation in fire conditions equals variation in human behaviour’
Building a fire involves many variables, such as size, choice of fuel, temperature, and burn time, that affect the way the generated heat can be used, and therefore the potential function of a fire. A group of Leiden archaeologists are, together with a team of international colleagues, investigating…
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Who is liable when damage is caused by Global Navigation Satellite System?
Who shall be responsible or liable when damage is caused by Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)? Is it fair enough to force a GNSS provider to bear the burden of compensation given GNSS open signals are provided free of charge? And are current international laws adequate to deal with those questions?…
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Hoard of Roman coins turns out to be offering for safe crossing
Several years ago, two amateur archaeologists from Brabant discovered over a hundred Roman coins near to Berlicum in the north of the province. After years of research, it now appears that the location, close to a ford in the river, was a site for offerings. Another interesting fact is that the coins…
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New management structure for nanoscopy centre NeCEN
A new executive board has been installed at NeCEN, a state-of-the art facility that offers the most advanced cryo-electron microscopes worldwide. The new board members are full of excitement: what are their ideas for the future of the facility?
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Leiden astronomers calculate genesis of Oort cloud in chronological order
A team of Leiden astronomers has managed to calculate the first 100 million years of the history of the Oort cloud in its entirety. Until now, only parts of the history had been studied separately. The cloud, with roughly 100 billion comet-like objects, forms an enormous shell at the edge of our solar…
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Dutch East Indies tax system was supposed to elevate the colony, but turned out to be token politics
In the late 19th century, the Dutch government introduced a tax system in the Dutch East Indies, with the intention of transforming the colony into a modern state. PhD student Maarten Manse wrote his thesis on this development and discovered how grandiloquent colonial ideals became bogged down in daily…
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Materials from the past contain lessons for today
Studying ancient materials and the way they were made can give us groundbreaking insights into the past. Not only that, the interplay between people and materials is highly relevant for society today, says Ann Brysbaert, Professor of Ancient Technologies, Crafts and Materials, at the Faculty of Archaeology.…
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A word from our Director
Dear friends of the NVIC
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Blockchain, smart contracts and decentralized organisations
On Monday, 09 April 2018, Aron Fischer Ph.D., freelance mathematician and researcher of Colony and Ethereum Foundation’s Swarm team, delivered an absorbing presentation on the Ethereum blockchain, smart contracts and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) at Leiden Law School. These headline-grabbing…
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‘Different languages of instruction could help African education move forward’
The high number of students that we are used to in the West would never have been possible if Latin were still the language of instruction in our universities. In his PhD defence on 16 September, Bert van Pinxteren will argue that Africa could gain a lot from a similar language switch in secondary e…
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Research in an imperial setting by Niels Bakhuis
Archival research, which student of history has not done it? Many of us have spent days in brick buildings with artificial lights, staring at ancient documents with unreadable handwritten texts, hoping to find something that is useful. To some, this may sound dreadful, but to us? We love this stuff!…
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2011 Monte Alban
At the VIth Monte Albán Round Table conference (July 2011) in Oaxaca, Mexico, Maarten Jansen (Leiden University) together with Mexican archaeologists Dante García and Iván Rivera (both from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia) discussed the topography and toponyms of the archaeological…
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Sex and gender analysis needs a more prominent role in research
Researchers, policymakers and funders have to take more account of the effect of sex and gender in scientific research. This is the view presented in an advice paper published by LERU, the League of European Research Universities. The lead author is Vice-Rector Simone Buitendijk.
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The ethics of returning colonial photography
Is it ethical to freely redistribute photographs taken in colonial contexts, historically and today? Christoph Rippe, PhD-candidate Cultural Anthropology, suggests that people might not have been always fully aware of what happened to their photographs after they were taken. 'But nowadays, with the…
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New Year’s speech 2023 & Meijers Medal
On Tuesday 10 January, the Meijers Lecture was held followed by the New Year’s reception in the restaurant of the Kamerlingh Onnes Gebouw. Dean Joanne van der Leun opened the reception with a New Year’s speech. The following is a short overview of the event.
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UN youth delegate Dennis Jansen gives young people a voice in the climate debate
The goal of alumnus International Studies Dennis Jansen (24) is to make the voice of young people heard in the climate debate. In November he is going to el-Sheikh in Egypt, where the Climate Change Conference is being held.
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How can we make Leiden a really 'healthy university'?
At the initiative of several of its professors, Leiden University has joined the international Healthy Universities network. Surrounded by space hoppers, the initiators of this move and those present exchanged experiences and tips at the kick-off meeting on 17 October. ‘I don't miss my chauffeur'…
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Prof Ann Brysbaert participates in Getty Foundation’s initiative
A new and recently started Getty Foundation project, Material Entanglements in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond, aims to forge connections among Mediterranean and Eastern scholars who rarely come into contact with one another’s work. Ann Brysbaert is one of the 25 invited specialists investigating…
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A word from the Director of the NVIC
Dear friends of the NVIC,
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Book publication: Giovanni Paisiellos Partimenti: Paths to a practical understanding
Nicoleta Paraschivescu highlights the pedagogical and artistic aspects of partimenti in her book 'Giovanni Paisiellos Partimenti: Paths to a practical understanding', released today.
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How the Arabs gained control of Egypt
How did Fustat develop between 640 and 750 to become the capital of Egypt? At the time Egypt was a province of the Islamic empire - the caliphate - that had been started by the prophet Muhammad. Original sources used by Arabist Jelle Bruning give new insights into the city. PhD defence on 2 April.
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You’re never too young to be an entrepeneur: An Interview with Public Administration student and entrepeneur Ebel Slijp
It is difficult not to feel intimidated when looking at Ebel Slijp’s Linkedin profile: with only 23 years old, Ebel has been featured in the ‘Jonge 100’ (Young 100), the ‘Duurzame Jonge 100 (Sustainable Young 100)’ and the ‘Top 25 under 25, all awarded to him for his entrepreneurial spirit. With his…
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CML's Stans Award 2021
CML grants three Stans Awards each year, known as the best PhD paper, best student thesis and best outreach from the past year. The CML staff nominated students and colleagues and this year’s jury Prof.dr. Koos Biesmeijer and Prof.dr. Nicole de Voogd made the final decision.
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A game of Mastermind to unravel Alzheimer’s disease
In order to better understand the course of Alzheimer’s disease, Frédérique Kok believes that a strategic and structured approach is needed: the Mastermind research approach. With her LUF grant, Kok wants to generate high-quality data to build a mathematical model that can recognize the onset of the…
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Cleveringa Professor: Holocaust remembrance has led to very different political lessons
From memorials to the armed forces to memory stones for individual victims. It was only later that the Holocaust took a central role in Western remembrance culture, Cleveringa Professor Frank van Vree notes. ‘Nationalists and human rights activists both invoke the experience of the Holocaust.’
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Music and Words: The Austria Centre, the Practicum Musicae Orkest and Grensverleggend/Crossing Borders
On Sunday, April 23, 2023, Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey, Special Chair for Central European Studies, gave a special lecture alongside the Practicum Musicae Orkest at the Cultuurhuis de Paulus in Oegstgeest.
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Leiden research projects awarded NWO Open Competition grants
Six researchers from Leiden University have been awarded NWO Open Competition funding.
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‘I want to do meaningful, intellectually stimulating work’
‘To be honest, I knew very little about the Netherlands when I arrived in 1998. But studying law in Leiden was a very enriching experience.’ Nathalie van den Berge grew up in a number of different European countries, and now works at a UN office in Tanzania, where she lives with her Dutch husband and…
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Leiden University Libraries acquires 16th-century Chinese imperial edict from Robert van Gulik’s collection
Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been able to acquire an extraordinary Chinese manuscript at auction in Hong Kong. It concerns an Imperial Edict (dated 1582) from the Ming dynasty period, at one time part of the former collection of well-known sinologist and author of detective-novels Robert van…
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An academic perspective on the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos
Today over 1000 chief executives and more than 40 world leaders meet in the Swiss village Davos to discuss the world's issues of today. What is the importance of the conference and what is the actual effectiveness? Dr. Alexandre Afonso, assistant professor in the Department of Public Administration,…
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‘Fundamentals’ inspire students to get started on real-life sustainability challenges
In the near future, students of the LDE Bachelor Honours Programme Sustainability will take on real-life sustainability challenges. But first, the course ‘Fundamentals of Sustainability’ provides them with an environmental mode of thinking: “It allows you to focus on what is useful in practice.”
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A new building block for the quantum computer
The race to build the first quantum computer is still ongoing, but Morten Bakker has made big step forward in that process with qubits. A qubit is a unit of quantum information that can be produced in large numbers on chips. Qubits capable of exchanging photons (light particles) could be used in the…
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In memoriam Harold M. Hays (1965-2013)
It is with profound sadness that we have learned of the passing of our colleague and friend, Dr Harold M Hays. Harold passed away on Wednesday 20 November, in his sleep, as a result of heart failure.
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Interview Ilya Kokorin – ‘Hup, Holland Hup, wasn’t the right answer’
Doing a PhD can be challenging. Moving to a foreign country can be challenging too. PhD candidate Ilya Kokorin, who was born in a small town in Siberia, faced both, while at the same time having to overcome a number of additional challenges and build a future post-PhD.
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Critical of the risks: research into the experiences of military observers
For his PhD, historian and army major Dion Landstra researched the effectiveness of observers in peace operations in the Balkans between 1991 and 1995. What risks are acceptable for bringing about and maintaining peace? Landstra will defend his PhD on 28 September.
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Paradigm-shifting theory highlights the importance of substrate flexibility in enzymatic reactions
Leiden chemists have proposed a new model for enzymatic reactions, in which the flexibility of the substrate is much more important than previously thought. Their results are paradigm-shifting and could have major implications for drug research and enzyme engineering. Publication in Angewandte Chemi…
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Blog Post | Cyber-diplomacy: A Field in Flux
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.
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Mismatched timing: how climate change challenges bird migration
How does climate change affect the migration routes of birds? Mainly negatively, according to a new study from Yali Si from the CML. ‘It changes the timing of natural events differently in each region,’ she explains. ‘This can lead to a growing mismatch between the availability of food and the supposed…
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Old tradition of ‘golden PhDs’ reinstated
Black-and-white photographs filled with solemn young men and distinguished professors line the walls of the Grand Auditorium. Young women are missing from the photos; women rarely obtained PhDs 50 years ago. And this article is about that group, the PhD candidates between 1966 and 1972, who were invited…
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Toward a reliable cloud
The cloud is of increasing importance in our daily lives. It is thus crucial that they work properly and are reliable. Alex Uta, assistant professor at LIACS, received a Veni grant to investigate the reproducibility of experiments in the cloud.
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Jamming the result of special self-organisation
Materials that are built up from individual granules exhibit a special phenomenon called ‘jamming’. With research into the nature of this phenomenon, a team of scientists led by Leiden physicist Prof. Martin van Hecke has made it to the cover of the prominent journal Physical Review Letters. ‘Jammed…
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Double inaugural speech: how social context influences processes in the brain
It’s not a regular occurrence at Leiden University: two professors giving their inaugural lecture on the same day. Berna Güroğlu and Ellen de Bruijn specialise in related disciplines: they both research the influence of social context on processes in the brain – Güroğlu in adolescents and De Bruijn…
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Scientific breakthrough: evidence that Neanderthals hunted giant elephants
Neanderthals were able to outwit straight-tusked elephants, the largest land mammals of the past few million years. Leiden professor Wil Roebroeks has published an article about this together with his German colleague Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser in the Science Advances journal.
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Strings attached to future high-temperature superconductivity
The behaviour of strongly correlated electron systems, such as high-temperature superconductors, defies explanation in the language of ordinary quantum theory. A seemingly unrelated area of physics, string theory, might give physicists a better understanding of the weird behaviour of these kinds of…
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Henri Borel: a government official caught between two cultures
Audrey Heijns explored the mindset of alumnus Henri Borel. From 1894 to 1916 he was an interpreter of Chinese and later a government officer for Chinese affairs in the Dutch East Indies. Borel's way of 'translating' Chinese was both unique and inimitable. PhD defence on 28 June.
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Fleeing tapestry makers picked up the thread again in Gouda
In the sixteenth century, many Protestants fled to the Northern Netherlands to avoid Spanish oppression in the south. This exodus included tapestry makers from Oudenaarde who eventually settled in Gouda. Professor by Special Appointment Yvonne Bleyerveld and researcher Jos Beerens have been awarded…
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Faculty Teaching Prize nominees in the spotlight
Who will win this year's Teaching Prize of the Faculty of Humanities? On Thursday September 12th, we will find out during the faculty party in the Stadsgehoorzaal. Prior to the award ceremony you can come and listen to a mini lecture/HUM Talk of the four nominees in which they will give a sneak peek…
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What can the Leiden International Centre do for you?
As an international employee at Leiden University, it can be hard to settle into the workplace, the city, or generally, the Netherlands. The Leiden International Centre can help international employees land comfortably and make living abroad just a little bit easier. Jenny Willcock, coordinator at the…
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Ancient DNA reveals impact of the “Beaker Phenomenon” on prehistoric Europeans
In the largest study of ancient DNA ever conducted, an international team of scientists has revealed the complex story behind one of the defining periods in European prehistory. The study is published this week in the journal Nature.
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Cultural stereotyping in European Union governance: research on the impact of stereotypes receives ERC Starting Grant
EUROTYPES is a research project developed by political scientist Adina Akbik, for which she recently received a European Research Council Starting Grant. Her aim is to examine the impact of cultural stereotypes in European multi-level policy enforcement. One of EUROTYPES' innovations lies in its focus.…