This 3-year EU Erasmus+ co-funded project focuses on the strengthening and improvement of teaching qualitative research methods across a range of disciplines in the Social Sciences and Humanities in Bhutan.

See below for the full programme and abstracts of all papers.

In the face of threats from other groups, humans, chimpanzees, and a selection of other species get closer with their own. This research shows that even bonobos show a moderated version of this effect. This suggests that this behavior may emerged prior to the Pan-Homo split, several millions years ago.…

Promotores: Prof.dr. M. Franx, Prof.dr. M. Kriek (Univ. of California at Berkeley)

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Franx, Co-Promotor: Rychard Bouwens

In this thesis new methodologies are developed for the detection and systematic study of radio sources in the early universe. This allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies, the activity of supermassive black holes, and the final phase transition of our universe:…

Promotores: Prof.dr. M. Franx & Prof.dr. P.G. van Dokkum (Yale University)

Aristocratic dynasties have long been regarded as fundamental to the development of early modern society and government. Yet recent work by political historians has increasingly questioned the dominant role of ruling families in state formation, underlining instead the continued importance and independence…

Scientists, including our faculty colleague Dr. Mike Field, studying an exceptionally well-preserved woolly rhinoceros have revealed details of what Britain's environment was like 42,000 years ago. The beast's remains were discovered in Staffordshire in 2002, buried alongside other preserved organisms…

The main question addressed in this thesis is how we can best conceive the contrast between a priori and empirical truths.

In the Brill series Intersections a new volume has been published, entitled Ronsard and Du Bartas in Early Modern Europe.

The central inquiry of this thesis revolves around how ontology can adequately accommodate the existence of necessary physical relations. Initially, the thesis demonstrates the imperative acknowledgment of necessary physical relations by showcasing the failure of Neo-Humean theories.

Promotor: T. Schmidt, Co-Promotor: B.E. Snaar-Jagalska

Authority and Control in the Countryside looks at the economic, religious, political and cultural instruments that local and regional powers in the late antique to early medieval Mediterranean and Near East used to manage their rural hinterlands.

This study delivers a comprehensive picture of the causes of radicalization in the Eastern and Southeastern regions of Turkey. It demonstrates how regionally specific factors enable ideologically disparate terrorist groups to recruit and radicalize from the same population.

The ASCL Research Programme for the years 2019-2024 is called ‘Strident Africa: Societal and Environmental Change in the Context of 50 Centuries of History’. It examines the dramatic changes taking place on the continent in terms of population growth, urbanization, the role of external actors and the…

National parochialism is the tendency to cooperate more with ingroup than outgroup members. Angelo Romano, Matthias Sutter, James Liu, Toshio Yamagishi & Daniel Balliet studied national parochialism across different nations and conclude in their publication in Nature Communications that it is a ubiquitous…

Historiography of science is in its current self-image a non-evaluative discipline. Its main goal is to understand past processes of knowledge formation on their own terms. In the last few decades this approach has greatly improved our understanding of the phenomenon of science. Yet, something strange…

In his historical analysis of upland societies of the Zomia massif, James Scott (2009) emphasizes how the modern state strives to control and “make taxable” all of its subjects. For Tania Murray Li (2014), the development of neoliberal markets is the primary driver of change, as she shows based on long-term…

The sites of Norman Estata, Anse des Pères and Hope Estate with a contribution to the 'La Hueca problem'

The contributions in this volume seek to highlight the atypical features of the Hanse, and place them in a wider context of common roots, influences and parallel developments.

A signal that is present both in the centre of our Milky Way and in distant places in the universe could reveal the origin of dark matter. This is what Leiden physicist Alexey Boyarsky concludes in an article in Physical Review Letters.

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

An international team of astronomers including Leiden scientists publishes the image of a young star with a surrounding dust disk that is still being fed from its surroundings. The phenomenon around the star SU Aur may explain why so many exoplanets are not neatly aligned with their star. The European…

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University’s Faculty of Science with two Nigerian universities, the Center for Basic Space Science and University of Nigeria.

An international team of astronomers, with researchers at Leiden Observatory playing a leading role, has mapped the fuel for galaxy formation in the iconic Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The results of the research have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

The field and the classroom invites ethnographers to engage with critical and engaged pedagogies. Breaking down the barriers between fieldsite and lecture hall, this research cluster aims to interrogate the structures and values that shape anthropological and sociological education today.

How do balanced lethal systems originate and persist in nature?

Library of Arabic Literature: Critical Edition and Translation of Ibn Qutaybah’s Faḍl al-ʿArab.

The making of sacrifices seems part and parcel of any elite sportsperson’s life. Remarkably, the insights that we find in the current literature in social sport studies are not able to make sense of the references to sacrifice in the data that emerged in the context of this study on the social significance…

On 21 March 2019, James Welch defended his thesis 'The Grotius Sanction: Deus Ex Machina. The legal, ethical, and strategic use of drones in transnational armed conflict and counterterrorism'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. P.B Cliteur.

Growth hormone profiles are pulsatile and highly variable between individuals, limiting the implementation of mathemathical models to quantify an individual's secretion.

This book contains the first three Leiden-Aramco Lectures on Arabic Language and Culture delivered by Petra Sijpesteijn, James E. Montgomery and Geert Jan van Gelder.

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Researchers at Leiden Observatory study the fundamental physics that creates structure in the Universe. These processes collect matter into galaxies and gas into stars. With the use of powerful telescopes and advanced calculations and computer simulations, Leiden astronomers seek to understand the origin,…

By effectively integrating word-class scientific research and excellent business education, you will become a professional astronomer with an internationally recognized MSc degree prepared for technological business challenges.

By effectively integrating word-class scientific research and excellent education, you will become a professional astronomer with an internationally recognized degree.

By effectively integrating word-class scientific research and excellent education, you will become a professional astronomer with an internationally recognized degree.

By integrating world-class scientific research and education, you will become a professional physicist with an internationally recognized degree.

The two-year Astronomy and High-Tech Innovation master’s specialisation places you at the heart of the latest astronomical discoveries, cutting-edge instrumentation, high-precision measurements, and innovative technologies in advanced instrumentation engineering. The programme is supported by researchers…

By effectively integrating word-class scientific research and excellent education, you will become a professional astronomer with an internationally recognized degree.

Visual art played an important role in the development of cooperative human behaviour. This is the finding of Larissa Mendoza Straffon, a PhD candidate in archaeology, whose dissertation explores the biological and psychological foundations of visual art.

The Italian physicist Andrea Morello is one of the pioneers of the quantum revolution. He is currently doing research at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, but cherishes his time as a PhD candidate in Leiden.

One of the key limitations of the direct imaging of exoplanets at small angular separations are quasi-static speckles that originate from evolving non-common path aberrations (NCPA) to which the primary adaptive optics system is inherently blind. The main focus of this thesis is the development and…

Promotor: Christoph U. Keller, Co-promotores: Matthew A. Kenworthy, Frans Snik