Social media are playing a key role in calling for resistance to the corona measures. Online, agreements are made about where and when people will gather to protest. The authorities are not always fully aware of what is happening and cannot just infiltrate, whereas civilians can often easily participate…

Through its launch of Instagram Teens, Instagram promises to create a safe environment for teenagers by introducing age restrictions. But is it actually going to improve the mental health of young people? And is the feature that allows parents to monitor their teenagers’ use of Instagram even legal?

Political parties are calling for a ban on sharing images of victims. Bart Schermer, Professor of Privacy & Cybercrime, spoke about this with Rijnmond: ‘Criminal law is too often used to solve societal problems.’

Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in the Age of New Media is dedicated to art practices that mobilize the model of the archive, demonstrating the ways in which such archival artworks probe the possibilities of what art is and what it can do.

Mums posting photos and videos of their child on Instagram and TikTok and also earning loads of money doing so. Kidfluencers, momvloggers and familyvlogs are very popular, in the Netherlands too. But the lack of legislation regulating these activities means that these children are barely protected.…

Neeltje Blankenstein receives an LUF grant to conduct research on online risk behaviour among young people. What risks do young people take online and why? 'With this research, we not only want to help prevent serious risk behaviour, but also understand what drives young people to it.'

The issue of how to deal with a development such as digitalisation in the public domain raises difficult questions for the municipality: who is responsible and when do you intervene?

Are you thinking about studying Film and Photographic Studies? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Are you thinking about studying Cultural Analysis: Literature and Theory? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

LUCDH Lunch Lecture

Een dag na de inauguratie van Donald Trump als nieuwe president van de Verenigde Staten werden zoektermen gelieerd aan Biden, Harris en Obama op Instagram aangemerkt als ‘gevoelige content’. Promovendus Danny Mekic waarschuwt in de Volkskrant voor techbedrijven: ‘Extreem onwenselijk’.

Underneath you will find the 12 most important Facebook events that took place at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs in the past year, and an overview of our Instagram highlights of 2018.

The aim of this project is to study what makes an act or form of violence a specifically political reality.

Environmental challenges such as plastic pollution and biodiversity loss require extensive monitoring. Citizen science, in which members of the public participate in scientific research, has therefore become an important approach in environmental science.

'Politics of Withdrawal' considers the significance of practices and theories of withdrawal for radical thinking today.

What is the relation between the experience and the act of exclusion?

African oral literatures, new media and technologies: challenges for research and documentation

Pavel Durov, CEO of chat and messaging app Telegram, was arrested in France last week. The Russian tech billionaire flew into Paris by private jet and was arrested on suspicion of cybercrimes. Telegram allegedly facilitates criminal activities such as money laundering. This raises the question of how…

Child homicide is a phenomenon that not infrequently leads to shock and societal unrest. However, the precise nature and scope of child homicide in the Netherlands remains unknown.

Welcome to the Social Anxiety and Specific Phobia (SASP) Research Group!

Instant messaging app Telegram is not faring well in the news – the reason being the illicit activities occurring on the platform. Professor Bart Custers helped Dutch current affairs programme ‘EenVandaag’ respond to questions about the platform.

This thesis describes how complex and real-world relevant analytical solutions can be found starting from a simple Nagumo problem posed on one or two-dimensional lattices.

It increasingly seems that Elon Musk has taken it upon himself to decide what can and cannot be said on Twitter. He bought the platform with the message that there would be room to say whatever you desired, but he himself is casting doubts on that principle.

Zsuzsika Sjoerds seems to be busy with her research, her teaching, and open science advocacy. She will also take over the Twitter account for Dutch scientists. Folllow our cognitive neuroscientist at @NL_Wetenschap from 30 September till 6 October 2019.

Extremist users of Telegram are moving en masse to other chat apps, such as the anonymous SimpleX. In this way, they hope to avoid detection, now that Telegram founder Pavel Durov is going to share personal data of criminal users with authorities.

The consequences of social tendencies for the legislation and institutions in the fields of social security, the labor market policy and pension reform are examined in this multdisciplinary research program..

Why does social anxiety increase in adolescence and how does it grow out of control in some adolescents?

Lecture, Sociolinguistics & Discourse Studies Series

In the Dutch media lots of articles have recently appeared based on interviews with Eveline Crone about the adolescent brain.

Lecture

Building a Deep Cross-media Transfer Network to extract visual relations that relieve the problem of insufficient training data for visual tasks.

In this consortium CWTS (Leiden University) collaborates with two Swedish SMEs: Monocl AB and Recorded Future AB. Monocl AB delivers intuitive analysis software to Life Sciences professionals in support of strategic decisions and improvement of business performance. Recorded Future AB is an organization…

Dutch influencers like Romy Boomsma and Nina Pierson have a huge following on Instagram and are increasingly sharing book tips there. Researcher Aafje de Roest wants to find out more about the reading culture they are promoting and its effect on the reading habits of their mostly young female follow…

Get to know us through our online and in-person events for prospective students!

This dissertation takes an important step in understanding the phenomenon of non-take-up of social support and what it means for contemporary social policies.

Misleading social media posts are falsely claiming that the Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo uses facial recognition at self-service checkouts. Jumbo denies this, although it has launched trials with AI cameras to combat shoplifting without using facial recognition.

Twee jaar geleden klaagde promovendus Danny Mekić het socialmediaplatform X aan, omdat zijn account, zonder toelichting, onvindbaar werd gemaakt. Hij kreeg gelijk van de rechter, maar X verzet zich ertegen: ‘Twitter wil niet transparant zijn.’

Why do some children confront social challenges with confidence, whereas others experience difficulties? What is the role of child temperament and child emotional dispositions? What is the role of parenting? This project aims to shed light on the mechanisms explaining shyness and confidence in response…

Are there any differences in gaze behavior between high and low socially anxious individuals? What factors influence the relation between social anxiety and gaze behavior?

Ukrainian Yana Rudenko lived through the Russian occupation of Bucha in March 2022 and thereafter came to Leiden to study. thereafter De Oekraïense Yana Rudenko (24) jaar heeft in maart 2022 de Russische bezetting van Boetsja meegemaakt en is daarna gaan studeren in Leiden.

On Tuesday 30 September 2025, PhD candidate Jonathan Collins will defend his dissertation A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of the Far-Right Alt-Tech Social Media Movement in Leiden’s Academy Building. His work examines the communication dynamics of far-right communities on alternative…

A neurobiological perspective on individual differences in social competence

Two Leiden researchers of the Institute of Psychology have been given the opportunity to realise their research plans for the coming three years thanks to a Veni grant from the Netherlands organisation for scientific research. Hanneke Hendriks is researcher in the field of Social and organisational…

The studies outlined in this volume explore how connectedness continues to change Africa and how Africa continues to shape the social life of connections.

On the 23d of May, Sanne Rotmeijer successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Sanne on this achievement!