On Tuesday 10 March 2015 - 10h Ernst Worrell, professor at the University of Utrecht with a chair on

The gas prices now exceed 300 euros per megawatt hour – a record. The transition from fossil (natural gas, coal, oil) to renewable energy is needed and soon. But how do you get a society (and its citizens) to switch to sustainable energy?

A delegation from various Serbian universities and government institutions will visit the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs from Monday 27 to Wednesday 29 May. They will discuss the development of an educational programme in public policymaking and analysis in Serbia. An interview with Serbian…

Professor of Law and Society Maartje van der Woude (Van Vollenhoven Institute) will be visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Law & Society at the University of California in Berkeley for the next 6 months.

HomininSpace is an agent based modelling and simulation system in which fluctuating carrying capacity is the key attractor for hominin dispersal. A parameterized and spatially explicit reconstructed palaeo-environment models available energy in the form of secondary biomass using reconstructed climate…

Decarbonizing the building stock is critical for realizing the climate-neutral target for the Netherlands.

A radical reduction in the amount of meat, dairy and other products sourced from animals is possible in the coming decades, as people turn to an increasing variety of alternatives. This would unlock vast amounts of land that we could use to produce energy and remove carbon from the atmosphere. Leiden…

Plants and their pollinators form complex interaction networks. Within these networks, species differ widely in the number of species they interact with.

Africa is seen as a potential leader in green hydrogen production for domestic consumption, export and greening industry. One key barrier to realising this potential is the mismatch of skills between those required by industry and the capability of local workforces.

CML-researcher Rene Kleijn has spoken about metals scarcity in relation to the energy transition in a new Dutch popular scientific TV show called

RAWCLIC’s main goal is to develop knowledge on the future raw materials (RMs) demand, supply and associated environmental impacts induced by the energy and digital transitions in the EU, and to support fact-based industry- and policy- decision-making enabling these transitions.

Jorrit Kelder, Senior Research Grant Adviser at Luris with close associations with Faculty of Archeology Classical and Mediterranean research, has been invited to become Guest Scholar in a major research programme at the Getty Research Institute, exploring the relations between the Greek / Roman world…

The proceeds of the Leiden University Science Run on 28 September will go to Scholars at Risk, a section of the UAF that assists refugee scholars. One such scholar is Leiden PhD candidate Lety Elvir Lazo from Honduras.

In this thesis, we consider various (electro)chemical phenomena at surfaces and nanoparticles and their underlying atomistic processes, which we studied using first-principles methods such as density functional theory.

During his visit on 12 April 2016, Dr. Jatna Supriatna was appointed as visiting scholar at the Faculty of Science of the Universiteit Leiden. Dr. Supriatna is a biologist, and is a senior lecturer at Universitas Indonesia’s Department of Biology. His appointment was made in the context of increasing…

What is the role of academia in solving societal problems such as the corona crisis? Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker spoke about this at the opening of the academic year on 31 August.

One of the ECSL’s most successful activities is the ESA/ECSL Summer Course on Space Law and Policy, which is open to students in any stage of their study and a number of young professionals already working in the space industry and space-related sectors. The course is now in its 32nd year and boasts…

The focus of the dissertation

Metal production is not only energy-intensive and a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but is also associated with other impacts affecting human health and ecosystems.

Promotor: Jelle S. Kaastra Co-promotor: Jelle de Plaa

Nowadays, it is well known that hydrogen and helium (and small traces of lithium and beryllium) were created shortly after the Big Bang, while the heavier elements are created in the cores of stars at different evolutionary stages. When these stars explode as supernovae, they expel metals synthesised…

Olga Ceran was one of the speakers at the SCEUS Young Scholars Workshop on EU studies on 14 and 15 March 2024 in Salzburg (Austria).

Supply risks are not new. But the aggravation of power conflicts on the international stage coupled with global shifts towards energy transition and digitalization has triggered the next supply risk research era.

This thesis comprises the development of reproducible synthesis procedures for two-dimensional materials (composed of boron, nitrogen and carbon) on different metallic surfaces.

The glycosylation reaction is a pivotal reaction in creating new and complex oligosaccharides.

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…

The first direct detection of gravitational waves opened the possibility of mapping the Universe via this new and independent messenger.

Few have dared declare a winner of the debate between American president Donald Trump and his Democrat challenger Joe Biden. It was more about who was least worst. What do psychologist Willem van der Does, historian Andrew Gawthorpe and policy science scholar Brandon Zicha make of the debate?

On Wednesday, September 17, 2025, Prof.dr. Sarah Cramsey convened a book manuscript event at the beach of Wassenaar near Leiden to discuss her new book 'Caring through Catastrophe: Jewish Children and their Caretakers during the Holocaust' which is under contract with Indiana University Press.

A more efficient solar panel sounds great. But what if these new panels consume more toxic materials, or their production consumes a lot of energy? Leiden environmental scientists, together with colleagues from the Fraunhofer ISE, address this multifaceted question in a new publication in the prestigious…

This thesis contributes to studying primordial cosmology theories and their detectability in future observations.

This thesis is dedicated to the exploration of the primordial dark ages: unknown physics during the earliest stages of the Universe’s expansion that have not yet been directly probed by observations. Cosmic inflation is a burst of exponential expansion of space after the “Big Bang”.

Joris van den Tol spent three months doing archival research in Albany in the USA. Read on how he experienced his stay.

Beatrice Penati is Assistant Professor of History at Nazarbayev University (Astana, Kazakhstan). Dr Penati will deliver a guest lecture on Monday, 10 October and a masterclass on Thursday, 13 October within the Central Asia Initiative at Leiden University.

A discovery made in Leiden helps not only to make natural gas from CO2 but also to store renewable energy. Research by Professor Marc Koper and PhD student Jing Shen shows how this process can be implemented in a cost-effective and controllable way. Nature Communications, 2 september 2015.

It must be there. We just cannot see it: mysterious dark matter and dark energy in the universe. Henk Hoekstra is one of the many cosmologists who would love to know what exactly these substances consist of. He has received a European research grant of 1.3 euro million to find out.

In-use stocks of products can be considered as intermediaries between human needs and the physical world.

The University is taking part in the National Warm Sweater Day on 10 February and the heating will be turned down in many buildings. Make sure you wear something warm!