Thursday 27 March 2025
Hanging out with beer, biology and a quiz
Anyone interested in learning more about queer behavior in nature and gender-swapping shrimp can attend Biology on Tap's pub lectures
Thursday 6 March 2025
What makes the first drawn bee brain so special?
Leiden biologist Jan Swammerdam managed to map the brain of a honey bee around 1670, using a simple microscope. Only centuries later did scientists manage to approach his precision. “He was an exceptionally gifted drawer.”
Monday 10 February 2025
Honorary Doctor Bonnie Honig fights against Trump: ‘We are being governed by rapists’
The Canadian-American political philosopher Bonnie Honig continues to fight against Trump’s rapeocracy, even though she feels disheartened at times. On Friday, she will receive an honorary doctorate. ‘The ethos is: take what you want, no one will stop you.’
Monday 10 February 2025
‘I want to confront Afro pessimism’, says honorary doctor Kelly Chibale
Science must solve social problems, says professor of organic chemistry Kelly Chibale, who founded the first center for drug development in Africa. Last Friday, he received an honorary doctorate. ‘You have to kiss a lot of frogs to meet the prince.’
Tuesday 17 December 2024
We need cleaner ditches (and that requires a fact-based debate)
'We cannot survive without healthy aquatic life', warn environmental scientists from Leiden. With an update of their Pesticide Atlas, they hope for 'a transparent debate based on facts'.
Monday 25 November 2024
Are black holes the ‘vacuum cleaners of the of the universe’? They don’t suck!
Black holes sound like something out of science fiction, but studying them could help answer fundamental questions about the nature of the universe. ‘Black holes are really at the frontier of what pure science is.’
Friday 22 November 2024
AI in Academic Publishing: ‘We can’t just develop technology and hope it goes well’
How do scientific journals deal with artificial intelligence and automatically generated fake papers? “Language bots don't reason, they hallucinate.”
Friday 25 October 2024
Wanted: female role models. ‘We need stories to tell other girls’
Why are so few women studying computer science? Researchers at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science want to break stereotypes. ‘It is very important to show to young people that we all have struggled.’
Thursday 6 June 2024
The misconduct within archaeology is structural
Her reign of terror has been rightly condemned, but the dismissed professor of archaeology Corinne Hofman is certainly not the only one who is guilty of misconduct, writes a Leiden archaeologist. Misconduct has entrenched itself in the field and especially men act with impunity.
Tuesday 2 April 2024
Reimagining Dutch agriculture: What if we all go vegan?
What if everyone in the Netherlands stopped eating meat and animal products: what would change? That is the question Jan Willem Erisman, professor of environmental sustainability, decided to explore. ‘It only has advantages.’
Monday 11 March 2024
What Tinder can learn from Orang-utans
Behavioural biologist Tom Roth does research on orang-utans’ partner choice. This is useful for zoos, but also for developers of dating apps. ‘It’s just like with people: just because you’re genetically compatible doesn’t mean you find each other attractive.’
Wednesday 12 April 2023
How children find food in the Congolese jungle
Why do humans have such large brains? To answer that question, two biologists travelled to the Republic of Congo to see how children gather food in the jungle. ‘It’s impossible to survive on your own.’