While tens of thousands of visitors dance to deafening music, a team of Leiden psychologists are trying to collect data for their research at Lowlands. How do festivalgoers experience a virtual trip? And what role do factors such as too little sleep and whether they have experience with psychedelics…

As a psychologist and pilot, Bert Busscher is interested in the phenomenon often termed as fear of flying. Busscher discovered that the heart rate of a person undergoing a therapeutic flight shows how much they still suffer from fear of flying. The post-flight heart rate can even predict whether the…

This project aims to identify which aspects of exploring a novel environment produce beneficial effects on memory. The effects of novelty will be investigated across the lifespan, including children, adolescents and older adults.

Have you ever stood in front of an abstract artwork and thought: “a monkey could have done that!”. As it turns out, you are wrong.

Within the Graduate School you can conduct your PhD research in a wide range of subjects across the Social and Behavioural Sciences, with five distinct research areas offered by its Institutes.

Development of effective VR training for International Law of Armed Conflict (ILAC)

This study aims to answer two main research questions: (1) What are the main predictors of work ability in employees with migraine? (2) Can we optimise work ability in employees with migraine using a web-based intervention focused on these relevant predictors?

In the first year, the Linguistics programme provides a sound basis for specialisation and helps you develop your academic skills. In the second year, you will choose one of our four specialisations. While focusing on this track in your second and third year, you can also choose electives outside your…

Below you can read about studies we have carried out in the past.

What did psychology student Jessie learn while working at a psychiatric hospital in The Gambia? And why is Noman from Yemen now studying political science in Leiden? Thanks to donations from alumni, students have the opportunity to spend time abroad funded by a LUF grant. Jessie and Noman talk about…

A Preventive Intervention Team that investigates children with behavioural problems and trains their social skills in order to prevent school dropout and other, more serious problems. This is a strategy that Leiden University and the municipality of Amsterdam have been using for several years already,…

What if seriously ill patients do not want to hear their diagnosis? Does a clinician always need to provide a patient with all available information? Communication researcher Liesbeth van Vliet, medical anthropologist Annemarie Samuels and research intern Fiona Brosig will put these questions on open…

From games to scavenger hunts: museums already do all sorts of things for children. But how do children really look at art? Do paintings affect them more if they receive information that is specially tailored to young visitors? Join psychologist Francesco Walker at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and see…

How can chimpanzees, so closely related to humans, have almost no sense of rhythm? ‘The best students ever’ and behavioural biologist Michelle Spierings demonstrated that chimps can actually drum and move rhythmically—each following their own unique beat.

Serge Rombouts is a physicist whose PhD thesis was about functional MRI (fMRI). This visualises activity in regions of the brain. The appealing images of glowing brain regions that emerge from the computer are the result of calculations. According to Rombouts, this isn’t proper artificial intelligence.…

Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) is dedicated to ground-breaking and interdisciplinary research dealing with the relations between culture and society.

How does contemporary art and culture represent nuclear contamination in post-nuclear landscapes?

This dissertation investigates the interaction of aspect and subjectivity in modal constructions.

In science, it is of vital importance that multiple studies corroborate the same result. Researchers therefore need to know all the details of previous experiments in order to implement the procedures as exactly as possible. However, this is becoming a major problem in neuroscience, as animal studies…

Social anxiety disorder is one of the most common disorders in children and young people. Social anxiety is characterized by excessive fear and avoidance of social situations. The primary fear in children with social anxiety is that they will be negatively judged by others. To date, the most frequently…

How to come to valid risk stratification of alcohol use disorder?

Are you planning to take a master’s degree programme in Psychology? And have you completed a Dutch HBO (University of Applied Sciences) or WO (academic) bachelor’s degree in a related field? Then the one-year pre-master’s programme in Psychology could be the right option for you.

How do dissociative states affect the ability to suppress emotional distraction (in the context of a working memory task) in patients with Borderline Personality Disorder?

Until recently, the role of external information processing in intelligence has rarely been investigated quantitatively or experimentally. A group of researchers from Erasmus University Rotterdam, Leiden University, GGZ Rivierduinen, and University of Edinburgh measured in a new way how and when people…

The factors that dynamically sculpt the inter-regional correlation of brain patterns are poorly understood. Here, we test the hypothesis that they are shaped by the catecholaminergic neuromodulators norepinephrine and dopamine.

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.

When we are in a conversation, how do we know exactly when to respond, and how do we manage to respond so swiftly, yet without interrupting our interlocutors? Can speech melody – in particular utterance final “boundary tones” – help us determine who will speak next, or are these cues too late in the…

Making sense of the world around us depends on the fundamental ability to parse the world into distinct objects and keep track of them. This process is defined as object individuation. Research indicates that it is not always easy for infants.

What categories exist in the languages of pastoralists? Do these semantic concepts reflect universal or languagespecific tendencies? What (environment? culture?) governs the similarities (or the differences) attested crosslinguistically in cattle colour systems?

The ambition of the Metabolomics and Analytics Centre led by Thomas Hankemeier is to develop innovative analytical strategies for metabolomics-driven health monitoring and systems biology studies. Understanding the intricate balance between health, disease and adaptation to challenges relies on the…

Foundation for Industry (FIND) brings together 5 universities with 10 labs, 11 Dutch companies, ranging from start-ups to multinationals, and 2 knowledge institutes to pave the way for a new wave of AI-based automation that helps the Dutch industry strengthen and keep its international competitive advantage…

How are interests embedded and experienced in daily life and to what extent can their origin and development be understood in terms of this contextualization?

You can ask virtual assistant Siri about the weather, but you can’t have a real conversation with it yet. You can’t refer to anything that’s been said before, or ask the system why it says what it says. Stephan Raaijmakers, Professor by Special Appointment from TNO, hopes to change this.

Research into the development of privacy-friendly care games for children.

Social Information Processing in Children with and without Hearing Loss

The research of the department Public Management and Organisation addresses topics concerning the relationship between the structure of public organisations and behaviour, the role of public leadership in influencing behaviour within and around public organisations, and the importance of diversity,…

Can we predict fluctuations in suicidal ideation in a person’s daily life, from hour to hour?

Leiden University provides ambitious students with the most recent and innovative areas of knowledge, and offers them the freedom to develop their own area of expertise.

What are relationships between student teachers’ personal characteristics, learning experiences and perception of external environmental aspects impacting teacher career and their commitment to teaching?

Do you want to learn how to prevent child problems by optimising caregiving? Would you like to advise parents, professional caregivers and policy makers on caregiving-issues? In that case the master’s specialisation Parenting and Child Development is the ideal choice for you!

A master's degree in Psychology at Leiden University combines theoretical knowledge with academic and professional skills, making you an attractive candidate for many employers.

This project investigates which aspects of social media content adolescents attend to and how these relate to their credibility judgments, aiming to systematically understand their susceptibility to misinformation and inform effective educational programs that foster youth’s resilience to misinforma…

This PhD project investigates the distribution and interpretation of quantity expressions in relation to the mass/count distinction cross-linguistically.

With a MSc degree in Creative Intelligence & Technology (previously Media Technology) you will be prepared for a career involving creative and critical thinking. Our alumni have a broad choice of career prospects: they hold positions ranging from academic researcher to creative entrepreneur.

The Classics Master, a specialization of the Classics and Ancient Civilizations program at Leiden University, gives you the opportunity to study the Greek and Roman world with a focus on Greek and Latin language and literature.

How is generative AI changing the way we learn, communicate, and make sense of the world today? As AI tools become part of everyday life, they don’t just produce text but shape meaning, influence trust, and impact how we find and share information. This project explores how people use, experience and…

How can we use data to better understand climate change? Can smart algorithms help drive medical breakthroughs? And how do you design technology that contributes to a more sustainable world? If you are curious about how the world works and how to solve complex problems using science, data, and technology,…