The project Deconstructing Stability aims to improve reconstructions of late prehistoric landscapes and predictive models for the purpose of archaeological heritage management.

This project explores how changes in diet helped early hominins expand from Africa into the colder and more seasonal environments of Europe.

On 5 and 6 june 2024, the conference The Senses, Cognition, and the Body in Medieval Devotional Practices is organised at the University of Padova. The organisers welcome abstracts for 25-minute papers in English or Italian, to be submitted by November 30.

This thesis investigates the evolution and fate of gaseous exoplanets, which are continuously shaped by stellar activity across both short and long timescales.

Which genes are involved in woodiness and associated traits such as drought tolerance, flowering time, stem elongation, life span, and plant herbivory, and how do these gene regulatory pathways overlap?

A neuro-ecological perspective on adolescent prosocial development

The IBL has four Divisions: Animal Sciences, Plant Sciences, Microbial Sciences and Science Communication and Society.

Within the field of astronomy, understanding how galaxies grow and evolve from the Big Bang to the present day is a challenging and complex question.

Voltammetry plays a crucial role in modern scientific research by offering valuable insights into the electrochemical properties of materials, with wide-ranging applications in fields such as materials science, energy storage, corrosion studies, and sensor development.

Understanding how galaxies form, interact, and evolve comes largely from comparing theory predictions with observational data. Numerical simulations of galaxies provide the most accurate approach to testing the theory, as they follow the non-linear evolution of gas and dark matter in great detail and…

When observing star-forming galaxies, we are not only seeing stellar light, but we also see how this interacts with galactic gas and dust. This thesis contains studies of the stellar, nebular and dust properties of low mass star-forming galaxies.

Promotor: Prof.dr. K.H. Kuijken, Co-Promotor: Dr. H.Hoekstra

In this dissertation, the synthesis and characterization of a series of iron complexes based on different ligand platforms are described.

One of the key quests in astronomy is to study the growth and evolution of galaxies across cosmic time. Radio observations provide a powerful means of studying the formation of stars and subsequent buildup of distant galaxies, in a way that is unbiased by the presence of dust.

An assessment approach that tailors to children’s instructional needs

How do practice and theory reinforce one another in neuroscience? Professor Birte Forstmann’s inaugural lecture on 2 October will be about building interdisciplinary bridges between cognitive neuroscience and cognitive models. Her approach may lead to brain research with fewer side-effects for patie…

The European Union has awarded a COFUND grant to a consortium of researchers from the universities of Groningen, Leiden and Eindhoven for a collective fellowship programme called ‘oLife’. The 6 M€ programme, which is co-financed by the participating universities, will recruit and train 18 post-doctoral…

Which educational and child welfare interventions offer optimal opportunities for positive development to children with severe behavioral and emotional disorders.

The formation and evolution of galaxies is fundamentally driven by the formation of new stars out of cold gas.

Human language is constantly evolving with its linguistic structure being shaped by language users at both individual and population levels. Focusing on the interplay between processes of language acquisition and communicative need in shaping human languages, this thesis introduces a novel computational…

Festschrift for Prof. Dr Raymond H.A. Corbey in celebration of his 70th birthday

What makes a truth true? Throughout the history of philosophy, numerous theories have been proposed to define what it means for something to be ‘true’. Despite their wide variety, most accounts presuppose that a truth is expressed through linguistic assertations or propositional statements. But can…

Our lectures are open to anyone with an interest Find your inspiration for interdisciplinary research

BlaC is the β-lactamase of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We show that it can recover from inhibition by clavulanic acid and that phosphate helps it do so.

Humans share meaning through language. Over time, repeated interactions have shaped languages into forms that match our cognitive preferences, making them structured, expressive, easy to learn, and ultimately, meaningful.

Our ability to learn and control movements is essential for engaging in goal-directed behaviour. From buttoning your shirt and driving a car, to cooking dinner and brushing your teeth -- our actions in daily life rely on this ability.

Researchers at Leiden study group behaviour. One of their findings is that when people make sacrifices for another member of their group, it is probably instinctive. Insights of this kind enable us to better understand and influence the social processes in a neighbourhood or company.

An international team of researchers including Leiden archaeologists has produced convincing evidence that 300,000 years ago pre-Neanderthal people had a high level of cognitive complexity. New insights into early human capabilities and behaviour.

Ben Wielstra studies balanced lethal systems, in which half of the offspring die before birth. In the journal Current Biology, he explains in an accessible way how such a disadvantage can originate in nature.

A new study carried out by Leiden archaeologists Hadar Ahituv and Amanda Henry, together with international colleagues, reports the identification and analysis of 650 starch grains preserved on basalt percussive tools (anvils and hammerstones) found at an early Middle Pleistocene site in Israel. These…

After successfully completing the Media Technology MSc program, Tom Kouwenhoven became a PhD student. He now investigates how humans and Artificial Intelligence can better communicate with each other, to avoid awkward confusion.

Cognitive neuroscience gives us a glimpse into our brain activity; it allows us to learn more about ourselves. Or do brain scans actually not say very much about who we are? Philosopher Annemarie van Stee examines four myths about neuroscience and self-understanding.

Like ants, termites and bees, some bacteria work together as a multicellular group. There is a strict division of labour in such colonies, to make the group more resilient to the outside world. Now researchers have found that some parts of the bacterial colony can take ‘for the greater good’ to a whole…

For nine years he worked on the three-volume standard work Plant Galls of Europe. It yielded 2300 pages about 10,000 species of European galls, abnormal outgrowths in plants caused by parasites. Hans Roskam from the Institute of Biology Leiden: ‘The abundance of galls says something about the natural…