On Friday 7 March 2025 Adam Knight successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The Brain and Education lab is a research group in the Institute of Education and Child Studies at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Our group is embedded in the Educational Sciences research program and the Leiden Institute of Brain and Cognition.

ADHD&me is a new cognitive-behavioural therapeutic intervention for young adults (16–25 years old) with ADHD, specifically aimed at improving self-esteem. In this study, we are conducting a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) to examine whether this intervention improves self-esteem and whether related…

In the Psychology Lab on Wheels, we conduct innovative research together with citizens. We drive our mobile lab to people all over the country helping to bridge the gap between science and society.

The LIBC is actively involved in training and education in the field of brain and cognition.

How do people acquire language? How can you train your brain? What is the effect of stress on an unborn child? LIBC research topics range from language processing to cognitive robotics, and from psychiatric disorders to the impact of social factors on human behaviour. Meet several main research topics…

This COIn Grant 2025 awarded project allows Leiden University researchers and students to do research on the world’s largest corpus of digitized Ottoman language periodicals and books.

A new bill is currently under debate in the Netherlands, advocating raising the prison sentence for manslaughter from 15 to 25 years. ‘This very serious crime (...) evokes feelings of disgust and insecurity in society’, Dutch Minister for Justice and Security Grapperhaus comments on the sentence that…

This dissertation aims to provide insight in ethnic prejudice in Chinese-Dutch children and the ethnic socialization context they are exposed to through three social-contextual factors, i.e., parents, children’s books, and the COVID pandemic.

Researchers of the National University of Singapore and Leiden University have discovered that chimpanzees and bonobos share the contrasting colour pattern seen in human eyes, which makes it easy for them to detect the direction of someone’s gaze from a distance.

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.…

Knowledge and culture subproject 2:

The master's specialisation Applied Cognitive Psychology consists of three main parts: the mandatory and elective courses, a thesis and an internship.

The project Advancing The European Multilingual Experience (AThEME) studied multilingualism in Europe by incorporating and combining linguistic, cognitive and sociological perspectives.

This project combines an extensive new open database on linguistic distributions, spatial modelling and areal linguistics in order to disentangle the roles of social and environmental factors on the emergence of linguistic diversity patterns of South America.

...What does seem clear, though, is that there is a great deal of room for improvement in the process of out-of-home placement. The FSW's social and behavioural scientists give their views.

How do processes of coalition-formation influence patterns of decision-making in the European Union?

This is a Special Issue of the peer-reviewed journal 'Social Sciences and Missions', which provides a forum for exploration of the social and political influence of Christian missions worldwide.

Andrei Poama, Assistant Professor at Leiden University, published a piece in the journal of Political Philosophy about social injustice, disadvantaged offenders and the state's authority to punish.

How can theatricality act as a mediating process between public space and public as ‘audience’? Does the presence of an observer change the nature of the observed and if so, how?

The master's specialisation School Psychology consists of three main parts: the mandatory courses, the thesis and the internship/extra electives.

On 20 September 2019, the opening drinks for the Open Science Community Leiden will be held at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. Open science is the approach to science aimed at making scientific research accessible, reproducible, and freely available to people within and outside the academic…

De rechtbank van Rotterdam geeft zorghulp Carol Kollmann gelijk in haar rechtszaak tegen het UWV. De zorghulpverlener vond dat ze recht heeft op een WW-uitkering en het meetellen van haar arbeidsverleden voor de WW, nadat ze erachter kwam dat ze daar door de zogeheten Regeling dienstverlening aan huis…

Lecture

Researchers from Leiden University are working with Ouwehands Zoo to improve our understanding of emotions and intelligence in orangutans. Visitors to the zoo can now watch orangutans as they play with computer touch screens.

Monday 26 September, 2016 saw the first confrontation between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Expectations were high – not only about the content of the debate, but also about how the two presidential candidates would behave, and how this might influence their campaigns. We asked three researchers…

Cognitive psychologists Eliska Prochazkova and Mariska Kret from Leiden University have won an Ig Nobel Prize for their research into the romantic click between people. They discovered that attraction between people can be predicted by synchrony in heart rate and skin conductance.

The aim of the research programme is to provide insight into the cognitive processes and brain mechanisms that underlie reading, arithmetic and learning in general.

Schemas are knowledge structures that allow us to make efficient judgments about the world without the cost of memorizing every detail of previous experiences. It has long been known that schemas can enhance long-term memory for related information.

Smartphone behaviors are so common but how does the brain generate this behavior? The Cognition in the digital environment laboratory (CODELAB) investigated the brain activity surrounding smartphone interactions with the help of Artificial Intelligence. According to their research, the brain fluidly…

Science begets technology but technology also begets science. Anne Urai from the Leiden Institute of Psychology is part of an international team team that rolls out a new, user-friendly, plug-and-play AI tool they hope will become an engine of discovery by quantifying the growing volume of recorded…

How do we create an environment for scientists to flourish in, while facing the challenges of the 21st century?

Presents a novel philosophical account of psychedelic experiences, arguing that they can be induced by means other than psychedelics — such as meditation and yoga.

This article explores the concept of issue prioritisation within the context of public administration research, focusing on decision-making processes.

The programme group Educational Sciences is one of the six programme groups within the Institute of Child and Education Studies at Leiden University.