On 24 November 2022, Simone van der Hof delivered the annual Mulock Houwer Lecture. The title of the lecture was ‘Niet om de knikkers maar om het spel – Over de digitale versie van een vergeten kinderrecht’.

Promotor: Promotor: W.Th.F. den Hollander, Co-promotor: V. Sidoravicius.

Discover how to prepare for the MSc The Politics of Artificial Intelligence at Leiden University: orientation activities, academic resources, visa guidance, and student support services.

Prepare for your MSc in Democracy and Representation at Leiden University: orientation week, student card & LU-card setup, study resources, and arriving tips for international & Dutch students.

Prepare for the MSc in Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Development at Leiden University with orientation programmes, academic resources, visa guidance, and student support.

Prepare for your MSc Political Theory: Legitimacy and Justice at Leiden University with orientation activities, academic resources, visa guidance, student support and tips for arriving in the Netherlands.

For the first time, a group of international and interdisciplinary researchers led by Karline Janmaat and her former MSc Student Chirag Chittar, have tested the several hypotheses on music simultaneously in a modern foraging society during their daily search for tubers – their staple food.

Health is a wonderful gift, both for humans and for society. If we are able to prevent both physical and mental illnesses, we can spare a lot of suffering and fight rising health costs. Social scientists and physicians in Leiden are working closely together to conduct research on the human mental, behavioural…

Over recent years Leiden University has taken some significant steps forward in innovation in teaching and learning and in diversity. But there is still a lot to be done. These were the comments by governors, lecturers and scholars during the farewell seminar for Vice-Rector Simone Buitendijk on 27…

How did you get to where you are now? This is a key question in the Academic Life Course board game, developed by and for academics. ‘In a normal working week we hardly ever talk about the career choices we make, but with this game, we do.’

During the Summer School Science Communication, you will learn everything about science communication.

How is social cognition shaped by our knowledge of language and stories?

Two Leiden University science communication projects have been awarded a WECOM grant through the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA). One project is a study of the history of the deaf community in the Netherlands and the other is of a condition that causes people to lose their way.

Regional Federal Studies carefully reviews, selects and publishes high-quality articles dealing with various aspects of regionalism and federalism crossing substantive, thematic, geographical, theoretical, and methodological boundaries.

The 2025 Dutch Parliamentary Study is a comprehensive survey of views and experiences of members of the Senate and House of Representatives. This survey, conducted by Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science, is part of a long and rich tradition of parliamentary surveys in the Netherlands.…

LUCIS promotes high-quality research on Islam and Muslim societies and actively communicates the insights and findings of that research to the larger public.

The Leiden Center for the Study of Ancient Religions (L*CeSAR) facilitates the integration of scholarly expertise and resources, promoting interdisciplinary collaboration and intellectual exchange among researchers of ancient religions, both within Leiden University and in the broader academic commu…

Nobuaki Murai defended his thesis on 24 January 2018.

A unique multicenter study, including about 3,500 youth between 10 and 25 years old from across the globe, shows that artificial intelligence - specifically machine learning - is able to identify individuals with anxiety disorders based on their unique brain structure.

Many children experience trauma and if they are unable to deal with it properly, it can have a huge personal and societal effect. Building resilience in vulnerable children and young people should therefore have the highest priority. This is the message of Anne-Laura van Harmelen, Professor of Brain,…

Young Dutch people’s reading skills have been declining for years. The main reason for this is that many have difficulty with reading at greater depth. Teach pupils to read actively in order to construct meaning is what Leiden researchers Paul van den Broek, Christine Espin and Anne Helder write in…

Promotieonderzoek van Karin Smit bij het Instituut Pedagogische Wetenschappen aan de Universiteit Leiden

Frank van der Horst is per 1 februari 2026 benoemd tot bijzonder hoogleraar Pedagogische Wetenschappen.

What is the relation between brain development and social and cognitive development across childhood, adolescence and adulthood?

What are the developmental pathways to social anxiety (disorder), the causal processes and maintaining factors? How do these factors interact in the development of social anxiety disorder? How can this knowledge be used to design and implement effective preventive intervention programs for youth?

Numerous beads and pendants of amber, jet and bone have been found in Dutch Neolithic and Bronze Age context, both in settlements and in graves. Because ornaments are personal items, they are closely linked with people’s identity.

The digitisation of society is a worldwide challenge. Not only are robots increasingly taking over human tasks, they are even beating the world champion at solving the most difficult brainteasers.

The Editors of PAIR are always interested in suggestions for themed editions. Anyone wishing to propose a theme and/or to assist as a ‘guest editor’ should contact one of the editors of PAIR.

In this project we followed children of parents with an anxiety disorder. We wanted to examine how these children develop and try to better understand why it is that some children develop fears, whilst other children do not. In this project, we mainly focus on social anxiety disorder and panic disor…

How are children’s rights and welfare protected in the Dutch 'gezinslocaties' (family reception centres)?

Of the 111 Spinoza Prizes that have been awarded since 1995, 28 have gone to researchers from Leiden University.

Social anxiety runs in families, but the neurobiology underlying this genetic vulnerability is until now largely unknown. The unique Leiden Family Lab study on Social Anxiety Disorder (LFLSAD) aims to broaden our knowledge with respect to this genetic susceptibility.

This edited volume suggests promising new avenues of research in analyzing coalition politics. Written by a group of leading scholars, the book clarifies a number of concepts too often taken for granted in the existing literature, performs theoretically-driven and methodologically novel comparative…

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F. Smets, Co-promotores: Dr. B. Gravendeel, F. Pupulin

On the 12th of December, Eleanor Dutton successfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Eleanor on this achievement.

This dissertation investigates A'-dependencies in Standard German, Zurich German and Dutch where the dislocated constituent is indirectly, i.e. not transformationally, related to the position where it is interpreted. The analysis is carried out within the Principles & Parameters framework.

In this thesis, bioorthogonal chemistry is combined with correlative light-electron microscopy to selectively label and study pathogenic intracellular bacteria within the host immune cell.

Bacterial chemosensory arrays are protein assemblies that are the key structural and functional component for motile bacteria to sense their internal or environmental chemical signals.

The Centre for the Study of Political Parties and Representation (CSPPR) aims to serve as an interdisciplinary platform for scholars of Leiden University for research focusing on the historical and contemporary operation and functioning of political parties and political representation, with a particular…

Teacher training should do more to prepare teachers for the pedagogical aspects of teaching, Professor of Educational Sciences Tim Mainhard will argue in his inaugural lecture. ‘Children who find learning difficult particularly benefit from a close relationship with their teacher.’

Electronic versions of our publications can be obtained by sending an e-mail to Esther van den Bos: bosejvanden@fsw.leidenuniv.nl

From 1 August 2018, Alanna O'Malley was appointed as Chair of United Nations Studies in Peace and Justice, focusing on the ‘lesser-known actors’ of the UN: women, the youth, the agents of informal diplomatic networks within the UN and actors from the Global South. This Special Chair has been created…