Meet the core staff behind Global Transformations and Governance Challenges, which consists of a Professor, a postdoctoral researcher, three PhD candidates, and a Programme Officer.

Correctly interpreting the patterns of fire evidence in the archaeological record will illuminate the origin of human fire use.

Hegemony and World Order explores a key question for our tumultuous times of multiple global crises.

The Executive Committee consists of the following members:

Triplet superconductivity refers to a condensate of equal-spin Cooper pairs (pairs of electrons with equal spin).

The legitimacy and justice of political institutions and arrangements are among the perennial and defining subjects of the field of political theory. Political theorists who participate in the research cluster ‘Legitimacy and Justice’ engage in both systematic and historical reflection on the ways legitimacy…

Strategic direction of the GTGC initiative lies with a Steering Group, composed of seven members from four Leiden University faculties. Chaired by Leiden's Professor of Global Transformations and Governance Challenges, the Steering Group addresses questions such as overall vision, staffing, communications,…

In this thesis unconventional tools based on fluidic interfaces were developed to study the surface and interfacial chemistry of graphene, to characterize the intrinsic properties of graphene, to disentangle the effects of substrate and of the environmental factors, and to improve handling protocols…

Materials with strongly correlated electrons show some of the most mysterious and exotic phases of quantum matter, such as unconventional superconductivity, quantum criticality and strange metal phase.

In condensed matter systems electron-electron interactions, negligible in everyday metals, can dramatically alter the electronic behavior of the system. Examples of such altered behavior include high-temperature superconductivity and modulation of the electron density.

Within Una Europa, academic collaboration takes place in interdisciplinary Self Steering Committees (SSCs)

Promotor: J. Aarts

The elementary excitations of magnets are called spin waves, and their corresponding quasi-particles are known as magnons. The rapidly growing field of Magnonics aims at using them as information carriers in a new generation of electronic devices, (almost) free of electric currents.

This thesis presents insights from our study of various correlated electron systems with a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). In ordinary metals, electron-electron interactions exist, but get substantially screened due to the sheer number of electrons.

How does governing work today, and how does society handle pressing challenges in ways that are democratic, effective, fair, peaceful, and sustainable?

This thesis presents the results of a study on the interfaces of insulating oxides with and without the insertion of a magnetic layer.

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. Aarts, Prof.dr. J.M. van Ruitenbeek

Changing the world (a little bit)

The quantum nature of matter and light has grown into a broad and fruitful research field for theorists and experimentalists alike. It combines foundational research with toward applications, the most well known of which is the quantum computer.

Our world is shrinking, or at least our electronic devices are. From PCs to mobile phones: everything is smaller and thinner. The smaller the chip, the better it can conduct electricity and pass on information.

Death in all types of melanomas is generally caused by metastasis. Uveal melanoma (UM) is the most common intraocular melanoma, there are currently no (patient-derived) animal models that faithfully recapitulate metastatic dissemination of UM.

The Multistakeholder Global Governance (MGG) Project is a four-year project which explores how far, and under what circumstances, multistakeholder constructions of global governance operate well, in terms of having capacity, effectiveness, and legitimacy.

To understand how multistakeholder global governance institutions operate well, the Multistakeholder Global Governance (MGG) Project is currently developing three case studies to compare differences and similarities between capacity, effectiveness, and legitimacy. The case studies explore these themes…

Jan Aart Scholte, Professor Global Transformations and Governance Challenges, is a co-author of this book that offers the first full comparative study of citizen and elite legitimacy beliefs toward global governance.

Leiden University regularly welcomes members of the Royal Family to attend opening ceremonies, lectures, presentations and unveilings of works of art.

This article explores levels and patterns of legitimacy beliefs with respect to multistakeholder global governance at ICANN. From a large and systematic evidence base, Jongen & Scholte have found that ICANN has strong legitimacy underpinnings among its staff and board, as well as quite uniformly moderate-to-high…

Research groups in the Quantum Matter & Optics programme investigate electronic properties of matter and light-matter interactions with emphasis on quantum information.

This research cluster is a part of the Institute of Political Science’s research programme ‘Institutions, Decisions and Collective Behaviour’. Its members examine the sources, design, effects and contestation of norms, rules, institutionalised practices and formal organisations that operate across national…

Are traces of fire use detectable in ancient hominin genomes?

Despite the field’s general agreement that pyrotechnology had a significant impact on the cultural evolution of humankind, our understanding of the origins and development of fire use and its role in humankind’s cultural evolution is very limited, blurred by strong disagreements over its chronology…

The research in my group addresses a range of topics related to quantum many-body physics.

What would a university be without its students? In 2025, we will celebrate 450 years of studying with an exhibition showcasing our students from the past centuries. How did they study in the past? And how do they study now? This outdoor exhibition will be on display from 23 April at the Hortus bota…

Amidst concerns over what the re-election of Donald Trump will mean for the international system, Prof. Dr. Jan Aart Scholte gave a Cleveringa Lecture titled ‘Trump, geopolitics and the future of globalization’ on 28 November 2024.

Superconducting devices such as SQUIDS (Superconducting Quantum Interferometry Device) can perform ultra-sensitive measurements of magnetic fields. Leiden physicsts invented a method to 3D-print these and other superconducting devices in minutes.

On 23-24 June 2022, Jan Aart Scholte and Valentina Carraro were invited to the Annual Meeting of the Academic Council on the United Nations System. Jan Aart Scholte gave a paper on the ‘Institutional Sources of Legitimacy at ICANN’. Valentina Carraro was a roundtable speaker during the collective entry…

If computers work on superconducting current, they won’t consume any energy. Leiden physicists have now gained control over a new type of superconducting memory elements. Publication in Nature Communications.

Thirty years ago, pioneers of the internet expected that this new technology would be a force for freedom, democracy, justice and peace. Yet today digital communications often involve human rights abuses, criminal activity, disinformation, gender-based violence, and cyber warfare. How can we turn these…

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2018, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

To what extent can global issues be solved by multistakeholder collaboration, a relatively new type of organisation? Jan Aart Scholte, the coordinator of the Global Transformations and Governance Challenges (GTGC) interdisciplinary research programme, has received a Dutch Research Council (NWO) grant…

The idea that modern humans displaced Neanderthals because they were better protected against toxic smoke components is now under fire. An earlier study that put forward this suggestion has now been refuted by genetic research by scientists from Leiden and Wageningen. This new research was published…

Amidst concerns over what the re-election of Donald Trump will mean for the international system, Prof. Dr. Jan Aart Scholte will give a Cleveringa Lecture titled ‘Trump, geopolitics and the future of globalization’ on 28 November 2024.

On 5 July 2021, GTGC Chair Jan Aart Scholte moderated a panel on digital data governance during the 2021 Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE).