The curriculum of the master's specialisation School Psychology is in total 60 EC and can be completed within one year. The programme offers a variety of courses and a supervised master's thesis.

The Second Chance project aims to promote recovery and re-integration of entrepreneurs who have recently undergone bankruptcy.

Can epigenetic changes explain associations between early life stress and health outcomes?

Leiden researchers are helping develop safe COVID-19 vaccines.

How to come to valid risk stratification of alcohol use disorder?

Can excessive worrying be reduced via stimulation of the vagus nerve?

Can SMILE, our multi-component intervention, which combines cognitive-behavioural therapy for insomnia, mindfulness, stress, and lifestyle components, improve sleep quality? Can it also improve mood and quality of life and prevent depression and anxiety in the long term?

A master's degree in Psychology at Leiden University combines theoretical knowledge with academic and professional skills, making you an attractive candidate for many employers. However, there are far more graduates than vacancies, especially in mental health care, and competition is therefore fierc…

Research in the group Clinical Neurodevelopmental Sciences is focused on understanding and influencing developmental mechanisms in children and adolescents.

On the 23rd of September, George Saad successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates George on this achievement!

How does task context affect children’s word productions?

When you apply for admission, you’ll be asked to submit several documents.

The Greek and Roman History Team concentrates on the study of the economies, societies and cultures of the large empires of the Graeco-Roman world, starting with the empires of Alexander the Great and his successors.

Are you considering starting a master’s programme in Psychology at Leiden University and are you planning on pursuing a career outside of the Netherlands? If so, then before your start your studies, make sure to check if your preferred country has special requirements to work as a psychologist, in…

In order to deepen your knowledge of psychology, Leiden University encourages you to continue your studies with a master programme.

Researchers in Bilthoven, The Netherlands, have recently unraveled the defense against whooping cough bacteria in unprecedented detail. The outcome of the project, conducted at Intravacc (Institute for Translational Vaccinology) in Bilthoven, provides opportunities for a new approach in the development…

Good news for international collaboration: the EU’s International Credit Mobility programme has awarded 163 grants to students and researchers from Leiden University and partner universities in 19 countries outside the EU. The grants are for 19 projects that have arisen from existing partnerships.

In autoimmune diseases such as rheumatism and diabetes the immune system attacks autologous proteins. Leiden researchers are trying to discover how this comes about.

Through metabolism, biochemical processes give rise to the complexity of life. Acquired and inborn errors in metabolism underlie many diseases occurring in man. The challenge for present day medical biochemistry is to find, and integrate, pieces of information at molecular, cell and organismal level…

Life returned to something resembling normal after Covid but other crises soon took its place. These great challenges are also being felt at the University and our researchers are working on solutions. The nitrogen crisis, problems with young people’s services and an increasingly urgent climate crisis:…

The research in this dissertation aims to optimise blood donation processes in the framework of the Dutch national blood bank Sanquin. The primary health risk for blood donors is iron deficiency, which is evaluated based on donors' hemoglobin and ferritin levels.

The Center for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies Leiden (IPS) aims to advance the understanding of placebo and nocebo effects, their underlying mechanisms, and their potential applications in clinical practice. IPS consists of a group of interdisciplinary researchers working at Leiden University with…

Our ability to learn and control movements is essential for engaging in goal-directed behaviour. From buttoning your shirt and driving a car, to cooking dinner and brushing your teeth -- our actions in daily life rely on this ability.

About nine million people worldwide contract tuberculosis each year. Research into new treatment for this disease has received fresh stimulus with more efficient techniques and a new understanding of how the tuberculosis bacteria works.

Music can affect how we feel, think, and behave. But how do we learn about the specifics of people's responses to music so that we can apply this to health and well-being? By looking at characteristics of the music, as well as the differences between listeners, we hope to better understand as well as…

Which criteria do ED patients and therapists evaluate as most relevant for recovery? Do patients and therapists differ in their evaluations? Do eating disorder patients differ from a healthy control group in their scores on the Recovery Scale?

On this page, you will find the recordings of the Tuesday Talks since April 2025. Recordings of the precursor to the Tuesday Talks, This Week’s Discoveries, are also available here.

The aims of the project are to: further clarify 'inhibition by safety'; explore and describe all possible sagety factors, with a special focus on the primary human safety source: social connectedness; reviewing prolonged stress responses without stressors.

One of the most crucial aspects of our behaviour is our motivation to explore novel environments and interact with new people. This became painfully clear during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when many people suffered from lack of new experiences and real-life social interactions. The relevance of novelty…

In the ‘Cool Little Kids’ research project, we investigate a parenting program that focuses on the prevention of the development of anxiety problems in young, anxiety-prone children.

Can we predict fluctuations in suicidal ideation in a person’s daily life, from hour to hour?

The research master’s specialisation Clinical and Health Psychology prepares you for a PhD trajectory.

It often takes longer for women with heart problems to get the right diagnosis. In her Annie Romein-Verschoor Lecture, Professor Hester den Ruijter will talk about how hormones influence the heart and the importance of medical research that focuses specifically on women.

In July 2022, Leiden hosted the ESOF conference.

Issue 1

Neuroimaging research has greatly advanced our insights on how the brain is organized. Now is the time for the next step: Imagine what would be possible when we cannot only map brain-functioning, but use neuroimaging to voluntarily regulate brain-activity!

We study how communication can heal and harm when patients are confronted with an illness. Most of our studies focus on serious illnesses such as advanced cancer. Communication lies at the heart of medicine, yet we do not always know which specific communication helps patients. Moreover, many complaints…

PhD defence

Clinical psychologist Bernet Elzinga has been appointed as Professor of a personal chair at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. This professorship will contribute both nationally and internationally to the broader promotion of Leiden University in the field of stress and psychopathology.

Can process-oriented dynamic testing be applied to everyday educational practice?

What is the relationship between outcomes of dynamic testing and cognitive flexibility in young children?

What is the effectiveness of two school-based skills-training programs in promoting mental health?

Why are not all children equally responsive to variations in the social environment?

Knowledge on how to adjust a drug dose in special patient populations such as (prematurely born) neonates or children, obese individuals or critically-ill patients, is not only crucial for novel compounds, but also for existing drugs which are often used in an off-label manner in these special patient…

The Department of Child Law and Health Law is a knowledge centre dedicated to academic research and education for both students and professionals in two fields: child law (and children's rights) and health law.

What is the effect of a dynamic training in children’s inductive reasoning skills and how is it related to children’s school performances and language development.

Children with a specific phobia are excessively afraid of certain objects, animals or situations. Specific phobias are common in children, but they can make the child’s life at home, school and outside quite difficult. Together with a large international team, we developed the KibA-program to help children…

In this project we followed children of parents with an anxiety disorder. We wanted to examine how these children develop and try to better understand why it is that some children develop fears, whilst other children do not. In this project, we mainly focus on social anxiety disorder and panic disor…

Can a virtual character’s friendly non-verbal responses stimulate eye-contact in individuals with varying levels of social anxiety?