‘Let’s get everyone home safely!’ This was the message of an estimated 750 demonstrators as they marched through the centre of Leiden on 18 November.

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…

In Belgium Radio 1, Marieke Liem (professor of Violence and Interventions) gives a scientific perspective on serial killers and explains the typical Hollywood image of serial killers is not in line with reality.

Education, Research

Anne-Laura van Harmelen, professor Brain, Safety and Resilience will give her inaugural lecture ‘Resilience does not exist’ (in Dutch) on Monday 27 June. In her inaugural lecture she will discuss resilience after childhood adversity.

In Dutch magazine Elsevier, Marieke Liem explains the issues with using the term ‘troubled person‘ in reports on homocide.

Conference, Global Histories of Knowledge Seminar

Lecture

The Executive Board has appointed Olaf van Vliet as Professor of Economics at Leiden University, specialising in social security and labour market policy from an international perspective. The chair is affiliated to both the Department of Economics (Leiden Law School) and the Institute of Public Administration…

Political scientists study topics that affect society, but their work often remains out of the spotlight. Not always: the research of Leiden political scientist Simon Otjes does have a visible impact.

PhD defence

Lecture

Open Dialogue Session

Why do some people with adverse childhood experiences develop mental health conditions whereas others do not? A Leiden research project is looking for volunteers aged between 18 and 24 to help us understand more about human resilience.

Lecture, LIMS seminar

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) has awarded a KNAW Early Career Partnership 2023 to Philippe van Gruisen for interdisciplinary research on (labour) migration from a broad perspective on societal wellbeing.

Assistant Professor Briitta van Staalduinen has received the Best Dissertation Award from the American Political Science Association, Section on Class and Inequality. Her dissertation, Ethnic Inequality in the Welfare State, aims to reconcile the persistence of ethnic inequalities in expansive welfare…

Cognitive psychologists Eliska Prochazkova and Mariska Kret from Leiden University have won an Ig Nobel Prize for their research into the romantic click between people. They discovered that attraction between people can be predicted by synchrony in heart rate and skin conductance.

Migrants are expensive. Or are they? Professor Olaf van Vliet collaborated on a big research project from Leiden University to map the costs of migration. During the last episode of this season of the podcast Open Geesten (Open Minds), he talks about the initial results. Do migrants really put a lot…

The outreach and engagement platform BrainTrain consists of five enthusiastic students of the masters programme Forensic Family Science. As part of their project, the students visit high-schools to teach adolescents about the brain, make them experience that their own reality is not always the only…

Conference

For this interview, we spoke with Thomas Ansell: Head of Communications at The Hague Humanity Hub. The organisation facilitates and supports innovations geared towards peace and justice. They provide new connections, collaboration networks, and exchange of information. What kind of organisations is…

Wat gebeurt er op het schoolplein? Sensoren op kleding openbaren pijnlijke patronen

JSixty researchers have received a grant of approximately 50,000 Euros during round 3 of the NWO Open Competition SSH-XS pilot programme. Two of them are working at FGGA: Jolien van Breen and Honorata Mazepus. The sixty researchers received the grant to start working on a promising concept or an innovative…

Professor of Brain, Safety and Resilience Anne-Laura van Harmelen has been nominated for the Huibregtsen Prize. The winner of the prize will be announced on the Evening of Science & Society (4 October).

Seksueel grensoverschrijdend gedrag en structurele sociale onveiligheid horen niet thuis in vrouwengevangenissen, blijkt uit onderzoek van Leidse onderzoekers Esther van Ginneken en Yara Abbing. Zij vinden dat er een ingrijpende cultuurverandering nodig is en doen aanbevelingen.

How do parents communicate anxiety to their child via body language and words? Psychologist Cosima Nimphy studied this question for her PhD research. Experiments show that children of anxious parents are not more sensitive to their parents’ signs of anxiety.

Lecture

VVI Research Meetings 2022-2023

It is often thought that immigration threatens the solidarity on which redistribution relies. But looking at the post-war period, PhD candidate Emily Anne Wolff finds that this is not the case.

In prehistoric times there was a huge wave of migration, from the steppes in Russia and Ukraine to West Europe. The newcomers’ genes began to dominate. Archaeology research in Leiden into burial mounds in the Veluwe and Utrechtse Heuvelrug areas of the Netherlands yielded this spectacular conclusion.…

Middle East Studies Lecture

Conference

The theme of the Opening of the Academy Year on 4 September was sustainability and how the university could take the lead as a change agent. How is it going about this and what else can it do? There was also room for a critical note.

Kees Waaldijk has worked for many years to map the rights, or lack thereof, of the gay and lesbian community across the world. As he bids farewell to the faculty, those rights are under renewed pressure. How does he reflect on his career?

Many European citizens feel connected to the European Union and place trust in it, Eva Grosfeld found in her PhD research. Yet around a quarter do not identify with the EU at all. How can the EU regain their trust?

Can we reshape school playgrounds through data and design? By using AI and wearable sensors, data scientist Maedeh Nasri discovered ways to create environments where children, including those with ADHD and autism, can connect, play, and grow.

Gaan vaders minder werken als andere vaders dat ook doen? Helpt betaald ouderschapsverlof hen om meer op te pakken in het huishouden? Hoe bepalend zijn sociale normen voor verschillen op de arbeidsmarkt? Onderzoeker Max van Lent gaat het uitzoeken.

How do digital technologies affect adolescent mental health and resilience? How do we foster a secure online environment? How should we deal with increasing rates of online crimes among adolescents? During the mini-symposium ‘The effect of the online world on adolescents’, presented by the interdisciplinary…

Conference

Synchronised heart rates and skin conductance tell us that people are attracted to each other. This explains why we feel a romantic ‘click’ with some people and not with others. This is the result of research by psychologist Eliska Prochazkova from the Leiden Institute for Brain and Recognition, which…

When do we say violence was used in an incident? The answer may seem obvious at first. But interim results from a study by Jolien van Breen show that Dutch people are labelling events in increasingly broad contexts as violent.

What does it mean to be in a Dutch prison? What is true about the prejudices about being in jail? Criminologist Marieke Liem has released a podcast on Dutch national broadcaster NPO Radio 1: Hotel met tralies.

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.

In the ESOF2022 mini-symposium organized by the Social Resilience & Security programme, international experts with a background in psychology, philosophy, and law discussed how the online world is related to adolescent mental health issues, moral and emotional awareness and children’s rights. In three…

Distracted eating is common and has adverse health consequences. Read more about the research of Leiden social psychologist Lotte van Dillen and some strategies to combat that behavior.

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.

In a one-hour interview on Dutch radio programme Sleutelstad, Anne-Laura van Harmelen talks about her research into the role friendships in adolescents' well-being, the resilience paradox and the role of social, hormonal and genetic factors in stress-levels and resilience.