Humans share meaning through language. Over time, repeated interactions have shaped languages into forms that match our cognitive preferences, making them structured, expressive, easy to learn, and ultimately, meaningful.

This thesis focuses on the question: What is the content of mentor teachers’ practical knowledge of adaptive response to their mentee teachers’ learning?

How do individuals make decisions? What determines the quality of group decisions? When and why do people cooperate with others? How does intergroup competition evolve?

On 1 July 2020, Niek Strohmaier defended his thesis 'Making Sense of Business Failure'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.A.A. Adriaanse en dr. H. Pluut.

Piecing together the urnfield mortuary process in the Lower-Rhine-Basin, ca. 1300 - 400 BC

How to make educational innovations practical for teachers

Plants could be regarded as small chemical factories, which produce chemical substances via photosynthesis. If we can imitate photosynthesis in an artificial system, we can make clean fuels and materials out of sunlight and CO2. Huub de Groot is very close to designing a system of this kind.

This minor focuses on how our thoughts, emotions and behaviour are influenced by other people, and how we influence other people.

Simona Demková, Assistant professor at the Europa Institute of Leiden University, publishes her book ‘Automated Decision-Making and Effective Remedies: The New Dynamics in the Protection of EU Fundamental Rights in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’.

This book offers a concise and accessible introduction to debates about expertise, policy-making and democracy. It uniquely combines an overview of recent research on the policy role of experts with discussions in political philosophy and the philosophy of expertise.

Advanced biotechnology allows us to select or alter the genetic makeup of human embryos. What limits do we impose on biotechnological intervention in nature and the human body? And whose call is that?

The International Criminal Court’s response to contestation by African states parties

Both play and politics have the potential to create worlds in which new rules apply, meanings are created, and possibilities emerge for collaboration, strategy and creative solutions. In this sense, play and politics have always been very much alike. But what happens to this kinship in a post-digital…

We are doing all we can to save energy at the university. Find out how you as a member of staff or student can do about energy and help reduce CO2 emissions.

This book argues that Armenians around the world – in the face of the Genocide, and despite the absence of an independent nation-state after World War I – developed dynamic socio-political, cultural, ideological and ecclesiastical centres. And it focuses on one such centre, Beirut, in the postcolonial…

The project’s overall goal is to improve Indonesia’s environmental legal framework and its implementation by strengthening the regulatory capacity of the government, and by enhancing the capacity of CSOs and scholars to hold the government accountable for its regulatory performance.

How can teachers be motivated by their students’ data in making stepwise changes to their teaching practices?

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…

Sophie Vériter is a doctoral researcher at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), Leiden University. Her research focuses on European foreign policy-making with a specific interest in hybrid threats, strategic communication, and the EU’s eastern neighbourhood.

The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) of Leiden University and Art Institute West Den Haag are pleased to announce their close collaboration in the second season of the public series In the Making. This series, dedicated to the practice of research in the arts, will consist of seven public…

How can the concept of Critical Making be expanded into a general approach that ties the critical methodology of artistic research, and the established concepts of artistic autonomy, together with contemporary creative-technological development?

PACES is an innovative, inter-disciplinary and multi-level research project that asks, How do changes in society, individual life experiences and migration policy shape decisions to stay or to migrate over time and across countries? And how can this knowledge inform future migration policies and gov…

Our project focuses on the analysis of decision-making processes in the European Union (EU) and explores how approaches and tools to understand decision-making found in both the Natural and the Social Sciences can be linked, knowledge between these traditions exchanged and synergies utilized. To explore…

The ability to create objects and structures with our hands has been essential to human development. This ability is something modern society is at risk of losing. Leiden archaeologists gather knowledge about ancient processes of ‘making and creating’ over the centuries, knowledge that helps our current…

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…

What political factors affect the speed or duration of EU legislative decision-making?

A study of the technology, form, function, and use of pottery from the settlements Uitgeest-Groot Dorregeest and Schagen-Muggenburg 1, Roman Period, North-Holland, the Netherlands

This thesis examines the complexity of legislative decisions within the EU, with a specific focus on the Council of the EU.

This book offers readers an alternative history of the origins of the discipline of International Relations.

In this top-rated course, you will learn how the European Union prepares and decides on policy, and how policy is transferred to member states and implemented by various authorities. It discusses the challenges of the European multi-level governance structure and the main causes of policy failure or…

Studies of perceptual decision-making typically present the same stimulus repeatedly over the course of an experimental session but ignore the order of these observations, assuming unrealistic stability of decision strategies over trials. However, even ‘stable,’ ‘steady-state,’ or ‘expert’ decision-making…

The starting point for this research project is the notion that the human brain is susceptible to all kinds of fallacies and biases that affect our perceptions and influence our reasoning outside of our conscious awareness. Indeed, most people think they are merely observing facts and that they process…

This book analyses the emergence of modern parties in nineteenth-century Europe and explores their connection with the slowly developing institution of democracy.

This project investigates the professionalisation of university libraries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, through the lens of the medieval manuscript holdings. Taking Leiden University Library as a starting point, it sheds light on the changing practices surrounding the conservation,…

This project investigates the role of art in the public and academic debate on biosolar energy

This study investigates how the tenure of security (proxied by both inter- and intra-party electoral advantage) affects the engagement and political performance of members of parliament.

We present an extensive study of methods for exactly solving stochastic constraint (optimisation) problems (SCPs) in network analysis. These problems are prevalent in science, governance and industry.

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Efficiently responding to others’ emotions has great survival value, especially for social species, such as primates, who establish close, long-term bonds with group members. The closest living relatives to humans are the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Studying these species, and comparing them on the exact…

KNOWMAK project aims at developing a web-based tool, which provides interactive visualisations and state-of-the-art indicators on knowledge co-creation in the European Research Area (ERA).

Is criminal disenfranchisement compatible with a democratic political order? This article considers this question in light of a recently developed view that criminal disenfranchisement is justified because it expresses our commitment to democratic values.

Explore how skateboarding functions as a prefigurative learning tool in 'Skate/worlds.' This volume examines skateboarding's therapeutic potential, its role in queering and decolonizing education, and its impact on parenting and care work through perspectives from writers, educators, and activists.

How do authorities and citizens construct meaning in the aftermath of jihadist terrorist attacks through the use of frames, rituals, and symbols. What does this reveal about the communicative impact of terrorism?

Brain activity changes as people age, which can lead to cognitive decline. By measuring and comparing brain data from mice and humans, the researcher will investigate how the brain’s noise levels change with age and affect choice behavior.

Müller, Braun & Fraussen examine the conditions under which commissioners appear in the news and which communication strategies they pursue.