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…

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…

Conference

What influence do children’s upbringing and education have on their world view? This is the question Professor Judi Mesman is trying to answer. For her research and public outreach activities, she has just been awarded the prestigious Stevin Prize, the highest award in the Netherlands for a researcher…

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

Many primary school children suffer from anxiety and their numbers are increasing. Psychologists from the Knowledge Center Anxiety & Stress (KAS) are developing and researching preventive training.

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…

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

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?

Dr Mamadou Hébié, Associate Professor of International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, served last week as legal counsel in the world’s first advisory proceedings concerning climate change before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), on the one hand, and…

I was disgusted by the recent Ongehoord Nederland broadcast on 15 September. The racist and hateful comments made by alumna Raisa Blommesteijn were, as far as I am concerned, way over the line and in my opinion also violate Article 1 of the Constitution of the Netherlands.

The impact of war extends beyond destroyed buildings and torn families. In bilingual Ukraine, the ongoing war with Russia is a major driver for increasingly discarding the Russian language. What does this mean for the position of Russian in Ukraine?

Brothers and sisters within a family, with the same parents, experience their upbringing differently. As well as the impact of their own negative experiences, the way siblings experience their upbringing also plays an important role in anxiety and depression. This is the conclusion reached by Marie-Louise…

Nikki Ikani (ISGA) and Bernardo Ribeiro de Almeida (LUC) have received Veni-funding. A total of 188 scientists received grants in this round. Veni grants are awarded annually by NWO.

Using mathematics to help children with bone cancer. It sounds a little strange, but for statistician Marta Fiocco, it's just her job. She gets a substantial grant from KiKa for it. With that money, she is going to study the effect of chemotherapy adjustments.

All students receiving their bachelor diploma in Political Science last week had a reason or two to celebrate. Two of them especially so: they won the annual award for the best thesis in the International Relations and Organisations and the Politicologie/Internationale Politiek programmes. Congratulations,…

The European Commission adopted a proposal regarding common rules promoting the right to repair for consumers.

Academics increasingly face threats, intimidation and abuse. The WetenschapVeilig platform has been launched to address this. Academics who are being threatened or intimidated can seek help from the platform 24 hours a day. It’s good that we now have this platform. But at the same time, it’s awful that…

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…

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.

Lecture

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.

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…

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

PhD defence

People in the Early Bonze Age used bronze artefacts as a means of payment. This is the conclusion reached by archaeologists Maikel Kuijpers and Catalin Popa in a PLOS ONE article published on 20 January.

Showing your face at dinners and parties at court: it was the way to get noticed by the king in William I's time. Joost Welten's latest book reveals how, during the reign of William I, the elite danced around his throne both literally and figuratively.

Since the demonstration over a year ago on the Wijnhaven campus, Leiden University has developed plans and initiatives to create the safest possible work and study environment for our university community. The Executive Board would like to explain what has happened since and what else we can expect…

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…

Workshop

Workshop

Workshop

Workshop

Workshop

Workshop