A virtual hand that feels as if it is your own. Feeling happier because a virtual face is smiling with you. Cognitive Psychologist Ke Ma discovered using virtual reality that the way we experience our body is more flexible than we thought. Ma: ‘We can think up some fantastic applications.' PhD defence…

Exploring the intersection of environmental conservation, indigenous cultural expectations, and human-nonhuman relationships in the Eastern Himalayas. Developing inclusive approaches to ecological preservation through community-centered research.

In a longitudinal study, Eichengreen and colleagues explored how the certain aspects of emotional intelligence impact the development of adolescents’ mental health, thus identifying potential warning signs and targets for intervention programs. Despite a higher risk for mental health issues and lesser…

The Institute of Tax Law and Economics at Leiden Law School has three departments: the Department of Tax Law, the Department of Economics and the Department of Business Studies. The Institute brings together research and teaching at the point at which, on the one hand, law and, on the other, fiscal…

Hoe kan de City Deal Kennis Maken bijdragen aan het formuleren van maatschappelijk relevant onderzoek dat de stad in al haar diversiteit centraal stelt? In de stad Leiden zijn burgers momenteel maar in beperkte mate betrokken bij het bepalen van de agenda van de lokale City Deal Kennis Maken. Dit onderzoeksproject…

How does stress influence cognitive performance? What is the role of selective attention to threatening information in this effect? Could we prevent stress-induced decline of cognitive performance with pharmacological interventions? Could we use resting state theta/beta ratio as a biomarker for cognitive…

The Institute of Education and Child Studies is part of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Leiden University. The institute is governed by an Institute Board under the direction of a rotating chairman, i.e. the Scientific Director and an Director of Studies. The Institute Board is…

The STRINGS project is mapping development pathways for science, technology and innovation that best address the UN Sustainable Development Goals. A consortium of seven universities led by Tommaso Ciarli at SPRU at the University of Sussex and the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) have worked…

If you want to take on an extra challenge during your bachelor’s programme, options like the Honours College, the Humanities Lab and the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) will give you additional depth, intensity and study credits. You can even do a double degree.

The master’s degree programme Education and Child Studies (Research) is an academic, not a vocational programme. It offers research based knowledge about education and child development.

Occupational health in the Emergency Department

What is the effectiveness of (booklet or online) self-help programmes for people with somatic stressors and depressive symptoms? What works best for whom? How to improve motivation and adherence?

Somatic symptoms, such as pain, itch, and fatigue have been shown to have a bidirectional relationship with mental symptoms. Although acute somatic symptoms serve some adaptive properties, chronic symptoms can instead lead to interference in daily activities and lower quality of life.

Let’s get this out of the way: Hillary Clinton won the 26 September 2016 presidential candidates television debate. Handily.

Commonplace - Photographs from the Drummond-Fyvie Collection and the Ngilima Collection. By Tamsyn Adams and Sophie Feyder.

At Leiden University, researchers from all disciplines work together to find answers and design innovations in the field of artificial intelligence.

How do women and men living in logging concessions in Solomon Islands experience the impacts of logging during and after logging operations? This project assesses how and why industrial logging affects men and women differently. Using insights from an ethnographic case-study of the logging industry…

Persistent somatic symptoms are long term symptoms that lack a clear medical explanation. These symptoms have a high prevalence where most people know someone who experiences such symptoms or they experience such symptoms themselves. Symptoms can vary greatly in and between people. While one person…

Having a chronic somatic condition can result in a variety of impairments in patients’ daily lives, including not only physical complaints such as pain, itch, and fatigue, but also problems of negative mood and impairments in social relationships. Next to disease characteristics, individual difference…

The |0100| Project studies the discourses, practices and imaginaries of Islamic information society’s most debated component- Artificial Intelligence- using multimodal and mixed methods and comparing and contrasting narratives and imagery of AI-religious-futures in Muslim Southeast Asia.

Spontaneously helping one another, why do we bother? It is believed that lending a hand to others promotes social bonding, helping us to connect with each other and even build friendships. In our experiment, in which the adult researcher ‘accidentally’ dropped matches on the floor, most adolescents…

Adoptees in the Netherlands generally do not use more medication than their non-adopted peers.

The effects of many treatments are determined, to a significant degree, by factors other than the medicine or treatment itself. For example, placebo effects can be equal to the effect size of for example antidepressants or painkillers. Contributing factors are the trust placed in the doctor, the expectation…

Common challenge: unique circumstances

Larissa Mendoza Straffon and colleagues investigated visual attentional biases toward self-made artworks, which tend to be favoured, remembered, valued, and ranked above and beyond objects that are not related to the self. Their findings confirm that attention and preference are higher for self-made…

A continuous learning pathway in suicide prevention equips psychology students with essential knowledge and skills to recognise suicidality effectively and to initiate the conversation about it.

In case of serious illness, treatment in the Intensive Care Unit (IC) may be necessary. Intensive care treatments has improved over the years and more and more seriously ill patients are surviving admission to the ICU. This favorable development however has a downside since long-term consequences of…

In this research line, the role pharmacological agents and neurochemcial processes play in behavior and cognition is examined with a particular focus on pain, placebo and nocebo effects and intensive care treatments.

Can the conditioning paradigm be used for checkpoint inhibition cancer treatment?

This research project is supported by an NWO Aspasia grant, DeepDish TV, crowd-sourced funding, and the Democracy and Media Foundation.

The Co-Align Conference 2023 will be held on 16 May 2023 at Leiden University.

To study relationships between emotion regulation after negative and traumatic life events and psychopathology. Within this context, another goal is to develop and validate emotion regulation questionnaires.

Since itch and pain can be very burdensome, especially when individuals suffer from (either of) these symptoms chronically, it is important to know the factors by which these sensations are influenced. It becomes more and more clear that psychological factors play an important role in the experience…

Positive expectations can influence sensations of itch and evoke placebo effects, whereas negative expectations can trigger nocebo effects in itch. There is evidence that placebo effects can occur even when people know that they are taking a placebo. Little is known about how these so-called open-label…

The aim of this project is to develop, evaluate, and multicentre implement a blended form of cardiac rehabilitation that uses a theory-based approach to guide patients to full self-management.

Brenda M.S. da Silva and colleagues designed and validated the “Moral Emotions Questionnaire” (MEQ) for identifying three major moral emotions in preschoolers – allowing to separately measure guilt, shame and pride at the youngest ages.

Learning about circadian rhythms can help students to improve their sleep and overall well-being

These were the main speakers and session leaders at The Knowledge Orchard 2025:

What are the most important perpetuating factors of chronic fatigue and chronic fatigue syndrome, and which interventions are effective in influencing these factors?

Research in Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science focuses on the dynamics and the interaction of political institutions, individual decision-making, and collective behaviour.

Together with researchers from over the world, the ENIGMA-Anxiety Working Group endeavors to unravel the neurobiology of anxiety disorders and related constructs.

What is the role of stress and stress-related hormones in emotion regulation?

The STAP study examines the cost-effectiveness of Written Exposure Therapy (WET) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in primary care settings.

In the face of threats from other groups, humans, chimpanzees, and a selection of other species get closer with their own. This research shows that even bonobos show a moderated version of this effect. This suggests that this behavior may emerged prior to the Pan-Homo split, several millions years ago.…

Beyond the immediately visible plenum, parliaments are highly complex institutions. They work through various venues in which decisions are prepared or even taken. The two main institutions in this regard are parliamentary party groups, which comprise legislators who are elected under the same party…

This Research project is funded by the 7th European Community Framework Programme, with additional funds from NWO Aspasia grant, and in collaboration with University of California, Berkeley.

While many healthcare professionals indicate that they frequently use placebo effects and their mechanisms, there is little formal training on how to deal with placebo and nocebo effects in clinical practice. This project aims to address this gap between scientific knowledge on placebo and nocebo effects…

A comprehensive analysis of the state of play, the design of monitoring mechanisms, and creation of a toolbox of support measures.

Can socioeconomic differences in health behaviour be explained by competing goals and demands in everyday life?

This Research Master’s programme will train you to become a researcher.