This focus area adresses the mental well-being of people of all ages, from infants to the elderly. The emphasis lies on understanding, preventing, and treating mental health problems in a variety of contexts, such as the family, school, and work environment. We carry leading research and education programmes…

In this article, Sanneke Kuipers and Machiel van der Heijden examine how patterns of policy inaction emerge in public organisations, arguing that systematic biases and organisational decision premises contribute to the failure of policymakers to address pressing societal issues.

A hidden disability can make studying a considerable challenge, partly because of the disability itself, but also because others may not realise that extra support is justified. To overcome this problem, the Faculty of Humanities is introducing the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower.

Conference, Van willen naar zijn

Seksueel misbruik tussen broers en zussen kan ook na jaren nog grote impact op de familierelaties. Dat blijkt uit onderzoek van Sheila van Berkel, Iva Bicanic en Anja van der Voort, die slachtoffers met elkaar in gesprek brachten over hun ervaringen. ‘Ouders ontkenden of minimaliseerden het misbruik…

Speech Prosody 2024 includes seven special sessions. When making a submission, authors are asked to indicate whether they want their paper to be considered for a special session. You can find descriptions of each below.

How does the brain develop from birth up to adolescence? And why are young people given so little information about the development of their brain? Two new websites of the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition provide an answer.

PhD defence

Lecture, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars

Inaugural lecture

PhD defence

Inaugural lecture

Scientists have discovered that starlings and parrots can imitate the complex sounds of Star Wars droid R2-D2 remarkably well. Their study reveals how the structure of a bird’s vocal organ determines its vocal abilities – and how citizen science helps uncover it.

Do you often find yourself exhausted in the lecture hall or at your workplace? Not great for your mental well-being, as Laura Pape knows. She is investigating how an online self-help program can assist in addressing sleep issues and preventing mental health problems. Join her on this elevator pitch…

Eveline Crone surmises that adolescence also has a positive effect on social development. She believes, for example, that it is in adolescence that young people learn the skills of cooperation, sharing and helpfulness. She will be researching this hypothesis in the coming period with an ERC Consolidator…

The Netherlands Association for Sleep-Wake Research is studying this issue. Lead researcher Kristiaan van der Heijden, Leiden psychologist and sleep specialist, invites students to take part in the study.

In the Dutch media lots of articles have recently appeared based on interviews with Eveline Crone about the adolescent brain.

During eye contact, people tend to mirror the pupil size of the person they are conversing with. This social mechanism is related to the trust an individual has in the person they are talking to, according to research by psychologists at Leiden University. Publication in PNAS.

Orange the World 2025

Lecture

Islam has a rich and fascinating history, but if you talk about it in the classroom, all kinds of opinions and emotions come up. 'How do I incorporate these responses into my lessons?' The Netherlands Institute in Morocco is organising a study trip on ‘Islam and Citizenship’. Fourteen teachers from…

PhD defence

Psychology graduates acquire skills useful in a variety of jobs. Whether helping people with mental disorders, researching the brain or deciding who should be hired at a company, psychologists can do it.

To be eligible for Creative Intelligence & Technology (previously Media Technology) at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

Dementia is a progressive disease, diagnosed at a relatively late stage when intervention may not be effective. Aim of the research is to study scans of brain networks to help discover the early network changes related to dementia. Early diagnosis may benefit effectiveness of future treatment.

Open online education has become a highly popular method of education. The current project aims to further our knowledge of how open online courses can be best designed to be consistent with human learning mechanics and facilitate meaningful learning.

What is the difference between a minister saying that something is possible or that it is not impossible ?

Are the types of school non-attendance which have been evidenced in typically developing youth also found among children and adolescents with an intellectual disability (ID)? If so, which types are most prevalent and thus in greatest need of attention, and what factors (child, family, school/environmental)…

Although exposure therapy is the gold-standard treatment of posttraumatic stress-disorder (PTSD), only half of the patients adequately benefit from it. Based on recent insights into the mechanisms of extinction, this project examines strategies and techniques to improve exposure treatment outcome in…

Healthcare robots and AI is a project that investigates the legal and regulatory aspects of healthcare robot and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies

Understanding others’ emotional behavior is essential for navigating daily social life. But how is such an understanding achieved? The eye-tracking study by Yung-Ting Tsou and colleagues shows that children with hearing loss adopt a unique visual strategy that makes uses of explicit visual information…

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In this dissertation, the types of context Dutch speakers need to interpret the poly-interpretable word ergens ‘somewhere/anywhere’ are studied.

What are the behavioral, cognitive, and motivational consequences of decision reversibility?

What is the role of neuronal emotional reactivity in the intergenerational transmission of abuse?

Embedding ethical legal and societal aspects for responsible military AI.

Can a newly developed, app-based, personalized maintenance program enhance the effectiveness of the exposure-based one-session-treatment for children with a specific phobia?

Very generally speaking, this study aims at questioning and re-defining the mind-body epistemic problem within contemporary dance and art culture.

Dialogue is a multi-dimensional communication mechanism whose processes can only be examined by means of an interdisciplinary approach.