The research programme Language Use in Past and Present brings together linguists within LUCL whose central focus is both on actual language data, including language use in earlier stages of the language, and, taking a variationist perspective, on language change in various aspects.

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…

Jos F. Brosschot has been appointed as a professor by special appointment on the chair ‘psychophysiological mechanisms of stress in daily life’. This chair has been created by the Foundation for Research into Psychosocial Stress.

Feeling good doesn’t just lift our mood—it also helps us stay flexible and resilient. A new study by an international team of neuroscientists shows that natural brain opioids released after rewards play a key role in broadening attention, offering fresh insights into stress, cognition, and well-bein…

The scientific world is a competitive place. Even so, researchers are often prepared to share their findings with colleagues. This applies particularly to men as a group: women are much less willing to share their work, whether it is with other women or with men. This discovery was made by Leiden and…

This doctoral project by artist and educator Luiz Zanotello engenders a postcolonial understanding of time, space and movement by means of artistic research methods. The project examines the contradictory effects of the abyssal line of thought within the tropics as a starting point.

Two Leiden University science communication projects have been awarded a WECOM grant through the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA). One project is a study of the history of the deaf community in the Netherlands and the other is of a condition that causes people to lose their way.

Research of the Methodology & Statstics unit of the Institute of Psychology at Leiden University.

We are delighted to announce that Speech Prosody 2024 will be held in Leiden, The Netherlands (02–05 July 2024). The conference aims to showcase the facets of prosodic variation and their role in the production, comprehension, and acquisition of speech in order to obtain a better understanding of the…

A warm welcome to the Graduate School of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Leiden University.

Can positive peer feedback break the cycle of negative self-relevant cognitive processes and reduce self-reported anxiety in early adolescents?

This longitudinal study is focused on neurodevelopmental problems in young children with XXY, XXX and XYY, aged 1 to 6 years.

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

Our research covers a very broad terrain and has a strong disciplinary basis across a wide range of scientific disciplines and fields.

Members of the collective explore what it means to be ‘human’, in the past and present, from a range of different perspectives and inter-disciplinary approaches.

An account of a cognitive approach to historically informed staging.

Animal Sciences’ contributions to the Biodiversity & Evolution research theme include evo-devo research, the evolution of cognitive and behavioural traits, and the evolutionary mechanisms of stress adaptation. This research involves both indoor and outdoor studies.

To investigate the effectiveness of an online self-help programme for people with HIV and depressive symptoms.

The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences brings together high-quality research and outstanding teaching.

By choosing Leiden University, you’ll be choosing to broaden your personal and academic horizons. You’ll be in excellent company too because you’ll be part of an inspiring community of students, lecturers and professors from all over the world. Founded in 1575, ours is the oldest university in the N…

Study information

This subproject offers a political and transnational perspective on the development and uses of public memories of the Revolt in the seventeenth century.

In this research group, headed by Bob Van de Water, cell signaling programs that underlie adverse drug reactions as well as cancer development and progression are unraveled. Adverse drug reactions involve cell injury in critical target organ cells which leads to the activation of cellular stress response…

Abstracts can be submitted only if you are registered for the conference, including the required payment.

PhD defence

Abstract submission is now closed.

Please note that SP2024 uses a two-step submission process with two separate deadlines; 20 December 2023 for the abstract and 12 January 2024 for the full paper. The abstract submission (or pre-submission) is needed for the program chairs to assign your submission to reviewers with matching expertise.…

How did parties as political organizations emerge?

Multiple identities of elites and ‘commoners’ viewed through the lens of crafting from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Ages in Europe and the Mediterranean

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. 

Research at Leiden Observatory spans the full width of modern astrophysical enquiry. It is based on observation, theory, simulation, and experiment. Two broad clusters characterize the ongoing research. Within each theme, researchers carry out their personal and specialized research programme. The two…

The radio sky harbours both galactic and extragalactic sources of arcminute- to degree-scale emission of various physical origins. To discover extragalactic diffuse emission in the Cosmic Web beyond galaxy clusters, one must image low–surface brightness structures amidst a sea of brighter compact fore-…

Outflows are crucially important for the gas budget and evolution of luminous star-forming galaxies and AGNs, with observed mass outflow rates of the same order as the star formation rate. Greater star formation and black hole growth lead to more intense feedback and outflows, resulting in self-regulated…

Invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) is the second most common type of breast cancer.

Mining the unusually rich diaries, memoirs, and poems written by Netherlandish Catholics, Judith Pollmann explores how Catholic believers experienced religious and political turmoil in the generations between Erasmus and Rubens.

Promotor: Prof.dr. R.M.H. Merks

Stars and planets form within cold, dense clouds of gas and dust drifting through interstellar space. Although dust makes up only a small fraction of this material, it plays a key role in shaping the chemical evolution of these environments.

This dissertation is an experimental study of laser-generated, atmospheric pressure, transient toroidal helium plasmas.

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper, Prof.dr. P.H.A. Quax

Abdolreza Alamdar Baghini defended his thesis on 5 December 2019.

This dissertation studies the formation of the wage laboring class in the Iranian oil industry during the first decades of the 20th century.

This research focuses on the distribution of chemical elements in protoplanetary disks, the birthplaces of planets. These disks form around young stars and contain gas and dust, from which planets grow. Ice plays a crucial role in planet formation, aiding the clumping of dust particles and influencing…

On April 26th, Kate Bellamy succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Kate on this great result.

How does open government affect the level of public trust?

The applications of studying the early development of insects range from agriculture to material science.

Hydrocarbonylation of alkenes with carboxylic acids in synthesis of carboxylic acid anhydrides is relatively less explored. We herein present a study and optimization of a palladium-catalyzed hydrocarbonylation reaction of alkenes using carboxylic acids as the nucleophile, by which acid anhydrides can…