If you have a question, there are various ways to get in touch with us.

Child development expert Marga Sikkema-de Jong explains how the online world affects children and how to talk to them about what they see.

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.

Within 3 months of the start of the PhD project, your supervisors and you will draw up a Training and Supervision Plan in consultation with you and the other members of the supervision team. 

Our previous meta-analysis (Swart et al., 2019) had shown that feedback targeting text comprehension given when students perform a reading task positively influences learning from text. So far, differences in the effects of feedback were explained by design features, such as the timing and richness…

The transition period in which men become fathers might provide an important window of opportunity for parenting interventions that may produce long-term positive effects on paternal care and, consequently, child development. Existing prenatal programs traditionally focus on maternal and infant health…

Sweetie 2.0 is a research project commissioned by Terre des Hommes on online child sex tourism and criminal law.

The Dutch cabinet faces a challenging task. On 1 December, they are expected to present a plan for the accommodation of child asylum seekers at locations where there are adequate arrangements in place for education, healthcare and indoor and outdoor play facilities. Mark Klaassen, Assistant Professor…

Dr. Stephanie Rap, Denise Verkroost, LL.M. and prof. Mariëlle Bruning conducted a research on the participation of children in youth care in the Netherlands. In 2016 the first part, a legal desk-research on the possibilities for children to participate in youth care procedures and decision-making in…

The 16-year-old girl was staying in a closed juvenile care institution where, among other things, she was administered 'pain stimuli'. The charges are the first of their kind, says Mariëlle Bruning, Professor of Children and the Law, to Dutch newspaper the Volkskrant.

This case study-based textbook in multivariate analysis for advanced students in the humanities emphasizes descriptive, exploratory analyses of various types of data sets from a wide range of sub-disciplines, promoting the use of multivariate analysis and illustrating its wide applicability. Fields…

Depending on the research area you are charged with bench fees or not.

This study examined the effects of a classroom-focused intervention on different domains of early literacy. The intervention consisted of shared e-book reading combined with a print referencing technique done via a SMART board. The specific goal of the study was to examine whether children could be…

Student cooperativeness underlies high quality teacher-student relationships, and has been positively associated with students’ school engagement. Fostering cooperative rather than oppositional student behavior might be especially helpful for protecting at-risk students against academic failure.

Our research is done at two different locations.

We encourage you to contact your faculty's Academia in Motion team (fAiM). Each faculty team translates the Academia in Motion commitments and approach to their own unique needs and context.

When graduating from our programme, you will be a starting researcher who can bridge the gap between research and practice. You will be prepared for a PhD position.

Within the FSW, we have put together a core team with contacts in the individual Institutes and at the Faculty level.

Within the FSW, we have put together a core team with contacts in the individual Institutes and at the Faculty level.

This article explores how notions of citizenship are negotiated in encounters between parents and youth care professionals in Amsterdam in the context of heated debates over citizenship and belonging. We draw on ethnographic research on Egyptian migrant parents’ interactions with the welfare state,…

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) by the UN General Assembly. How do countries implement this treaty and how does it relate to their own national legal system? PhD defence on 3 December 2019.

With the knowledge, tools and practical experience you will have obtained as a graduate of the master’s specialisation Parenting and Child Development, you will be able to effectively contribute to promoting optimal caregiving and child development.

In order to deepen your knowledge of psychology, Leiden University encourages you to continue your studies with a master programme.

‘We didn’t find any mechanisms in the brain for transmitting child abuse from generation to generation. What we did find is that experiences of neglect and abuse affect the brain differently,’ concludes Lisa van den Berg (Clinical Psychology). PhD defence 30 June.

On Friday 13 April 2018, the Department of Child Law of Leiden University was proud to host the international symposium 'Deprivation of Liberty of Children in The Justice System – Towards A Global Research Agenda', organised by Prof. Dr. Ton Liefaard and Dr. Yannick van den Brink.

On early October, the Master of Laws: Advanced Studies in International Children’s Rights released its October Newsletter to its friends and partner networks.

As humans we have a tendency to judge certain actions as either right or wrong. Where does our moral sense come from? We found evidence that infants who are only one year old prefer those who comfort as opposed to ignore another who is sad.

How important is a child’s right to meaningful peer relationships? Vaishnavi Ramalingam wrote her master’s thesis on this topic, and was recently awarded the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) Jan Brouwer Thesis Prize 2026.