On the 26th of January, Alex Reuneker successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Alex on this achievement!

Daphne Wong-A-Foe received her Media Technology MSc diploma cum laude in August 2021. Her thesis research used EEG recordings to study aspects of traditional Javanese Jaran Kepang dancing, something she holds close to her heart.

Adolescents who were more popular among their classmates in junior school are often the ones who are more inclined to share things fairly with others. During this sharing process, 'social' areas of the brain are more strongly activated than in adolescents who are less popular. This is the finding of…

The research conducted at the Health, Medical and Neuropsychology unit investigates the psychological factors of health and disease, which allows for the development of innovative treatments.

The Master’s programme Health, Ageing and Society trains its students to become academic Health, Ageing and Society professionals and engaged citizens who are competent and trained internationally and interdisciplinary. They are able to contribute to solutions for the challenges facing our ageing so…

One of the recurring points of discussion within the Criminal Justice research programme is the question of what behaviour should or should not fall within the scope of criminal law. This research theme is examined from a legal-dogmatic and social-scientific perspective.

With cancer, a person’s body cells grow uncontrollably. Putting together a detailed picture of how this comes about makes it possible to develop efficient therapies. Researchers at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) and Leiden University are working together to gain a better understanding…

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…

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.

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?

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

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…

Study information

Together with prof. Ton Liefaard, Eva Schmidt was granted a prestigious scholarship from the Research Talent programme of the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

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.…

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…

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 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?

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,…