Andrew DJ Shield (History) and Ann Marie Wilson (Leiden University College) have been awarded a seed grant for their project, “Transnational Gay/Lesbian Activism since the 1960s.” Granted: €3000.

Young babies laugh like adult apes do: producing sounds while inhaling and exhaling. Adult humans produce sounds on the exhale only. Cognitive psychologist Mariska Kret and colleagues have published an article about the development of human laughter in the journal Biology Letters.

Meet the people of the Resilience Center

At the Leiden Curious Minds Centre, our research focuses on the relationship of exploratory behaviour and discovery learning to curiosity and the way children regulate their behaviour and emotions. We want to improve our understanding of how children can and do become more and more the captain of their…

In brain diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, proteins clump together to form fibres. ‘Chaperone proteins’ unravel those fibres, but in the test tube biochemist Anne Wentink saw that this can also cause new problems. She is going to find out what happens inside cells to determine what a drug…

Understanding individual differences in self-regulation in boys with ODD/CD on the level of brain, cognition and behavior

What once began as an assignment for a master’s course and continued as a master’s thesis, has now culminated in a substantial book. Or has it finished? Actually, for Hendrikx, this is just the beginning: ‘I can finally reap the rewards of my research.’

Prehistoric people may well have had an emotional bond with domesticated dogs much earlier than we thought. Leiden PhD candidate and vet Luc Janssens discovered that a dog found at the start of the last century in a grave dating back 14,000 years had been sick for a long time and had been cared for.…

On Tuesday November 25, 2025, Sarah Cramsey travelled with students from her masters seminar on 'New Approached to the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe' taught at the History Institute to Amsterdam for a unique opportunity. There, Lotte Sophie Groenendijk, an alumna of the History Research Masters…

Social resilience and security has never been more important. Over the last 2 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a considerable disturbance to our personal and social lives. As a result, the general population reports more stress, loneliness and decreased quality of life. At the same time, there…

Anne Marieke van der Wal-Rémy, assistant professor of African History and International Studies, has received a Comenius Teaching Fellow grant of 50,000 euros. She intends to use the grant to set up an online archive of digital primary sources, together with her students. Van der Wal-Rémy: ‘ “Once on…

At the Annie Romein-Verschoor Lecture on 8 March, former Minister of Education Jet Bussemaker expressed her surprise at the commotion again raised by the theme of the economic independence of women, within and outside politics.

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The place of European states and institutions in world politics is the core focus of this pillar. Research on this theme concerns European actors’ ability to promote peace, security and justice in their neighbourhood and to shape the future of global governance by translating its economic size into…

Speeches and speech acts have been crucial in settling the question at the centre of every political debate: who gets what, when and where?

In hun klinische stage leren Psychologiestudenten mentale steun bieden aan anderen, maar hoe zorgen zij als toekomstige therapeut ook voor zichzelf? Met video’s, podcasts en een panel wil Kelly Ziemer haar studenten de nodige zelfzorg-skills bijbrengen.

PhD defence

The Clinical Psychology Unit is organized as follows:

Professor of Cognitive Psychology Mariska Kret has been awarded the Dr Hendrik Muller Prize by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) for her pioneering research into emotions. Kret: ‘This prize offers a wonderful opportunity to give a boost to emotion research.’

We should assume that animals can have feelings too. From an ethical point of view this should inform our dealings with animals, researchers from Leiden University and Utrecht University argue in an opinion article that was published in the scientific journal Affective Science on Thursday 10 March.

This dissertation examines what network in the human brain is involved in the perception of prosody and whether activity within this network is modulated by the personality trait alexithymia.

Neuropsychologist Mariska Kret is through to the next round in the 2016 Science Talent contest organised by New Scientist magazine.

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.

Since 1 September 2017 Aagten works at the Institute. Her main area of interest includes asylum and refugee law and therefore she will be co-teaching the courses European Asylum Law, Immigration Law (Dutch course), Migration Law and Policy in the EU and Children and Migration (Dutch course).

Het project heeft plaats gevonden in de Gorter LUMC groep onder begeleiding van Dr. J.W.M. Beenakker en prof.dr.ir. T.H. Oosterkamp . De titel van de presentatie is:

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

Boys who are bullied develop more fear and shame; boys who bully develop more anger and less guilt, which makes it easier to justify more bullying. Boys with autism respond more angrily to bullying than others, and thus make for an easier target. Developmental psychologist Carolien Rieffe and her colleagues…

How does preschoolers’ play style relate to their aggressive impulses?

How does loneliness work? What sometimes makes friendships complicated for autistic people? And why can the school building be such an unpleasant place for some pupils? Pupils explored this during their pre-university classes. 'I now have a good idea of what studying psychology entails.'

Lecture

How do young people react when an unknown person gets under their skin in an online game? A sense of control over their social environment can prevent young people from quickly resorting to anger in such a situation, development psychologists Sheida Novin, Carolien Rieffe and colleagues discovered.…

Leiden psychologist Wilco van Dijk and communication scientist Jaap Ouwerkerk of VU University Amsterdam published a book about the emotion Schadenfreude. Van Dijk tells about Schadenfreude on BBC radio 4 All in the Mind.