Simone van der Hof, professor of Law and Digital Technology at eLaw, has joined the EU Special Group on Code of Conduct for age-appropriate design as an expert.

Simone van der Hof is a member of the Comparison Committee set up as part of the Online Content Moderation Project (PrOCoM).

On November 23, 2017, Professor Simone van der Hof chaired a panel on age verification in the digital world at the Safer Internet Forum 2017 in Brussels.

Dr. Simon Willmetts from the University of Leiden’s Institute for Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) has been selected for a stay at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS-KNAW) in Amsterdam.

As part of the euCONSENT consortium, the Center for Law and Digital Technologies (eLaw) has been awarded European Commission funding to create a child rights’ centred cross-border system for online age verification and parental consent.

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.…

Geometric phases lead to a nontrivial interference result when an electron's different quantum mechanical paths choices encircle a magnetic coil in an Aharonov-Bohm experiment.

Is aggression always bad? PhD research by psychologist Simone Dobbelaar shows that it is not. In fact, children who occasionally fiercely defend themselves and stand up for their peers often feel better mentally.

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.

On November 17, 2017, Professor Simone van der Hof gave a duo lecture with her colleague Professor Eva Lievens from Ghent University during the 'Children and Digital Rights' conference at the Information Law and Policy Centre, which is part of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (University of L…

Children have the right to play and relax. Games, social media and video platforms are attractive new ways to do that. However, hardly any online games are designed specifically for children, nor do they factor in children's rights.

In this dissertation, electrophysiological (EEG) and behavioural measures are used to investigate how allophonic tonal variants and sub-phonemic features are processed during Mandarin and Dutch speech production, visual processing of written words and reading aloud.

Promotor: C.J. ten Cate, Co-promotor: H.W. Slabbekoorn

On the 16th of December, Yachan Liang successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Yachan on this achievement!

Do natural soundscapes affect migratory decisions of fishes moving up and down rivers and is this process disturbed by vessel sounds?

Sonorous phenomena are always on the verge of becoming something else. As it unfolds, sound constitutes spaces, mediates presence, articulates time. Furthermore, it may prompt emotions, generate awareness, organise patterns of behaviour or trigger a sense of belonging. As sound becomes audible, it is…

In February 2026, Leiden University’s new Sport Centre opened on a prominent new site directly on the Campusplein. Its relocation brings sport visibly into the heart of campus life, with the outdoor fields seamlessly connected to the building. Substantially larger than its predecessor, the centre offers…

On October 31st, Margarita Gulian succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Margarita on this great result.

Anthropogenic noise has been shown to affect marine animals in various ways, this may have fitness consequences at individual and population level. This thesis aims to increase insight into the quantification of sound-induced behavioural responses that are relevant to fitness, and into factors that…

Animal Sciences’ contributions to the Biodiversity & Evolution research theme include evo-devo research, the evolution of cognitive and behavioural traits, and the evolutionary mechanisms of stress adaptation. This research involves both indoor and outdoor studies.

Animal Sciences’ contributions to the Development & Disease research theme include the mechanisms and evolution of embryonic development, the development of cognitive mechanisms, and animal models for understanding mechanisms of human disease.

Promotor: Carel J. ten Cate, Co-Promotor: Hans W. Slabbekoorn

This dissertation aims at discussing the nature and the linguistic factors assumed responsible for speech intelligibility problems of Sudanese learners of English.

Promotor: M.A.G.J. Orrit

This thesis investigates the connection between tonal realization and tone change (tone sandhi) in Wenzhou Chinese, and whether and how such a connection is conditioned by prosodic structure and focus marking.

If, as the works of John Cage suggest, there is “no such thing as silence,” then what are the markers that show us we are experiencing silence? - what are the performative cues during musical silence? - what are the auditory and visual bookends of silence in performance, i.e. what anticipates and…

A seven-metre glass tunnel, filled with running water, and equipped with speakers and cameras. An artificial river for investigating what light and sound pollution do to migrating fish.

An overview of our infrastructure at the SPP division:

Speech Prosody 2024 includes several poster sessions, the description of which you can find below.

How can we understand the drum-set – and thus drummer – as technological? How have technological developments affected change in drum-set performance and drum-set construction? Are the relationships between new technologies and the drummer symbiotic, or one way? To what extent are instruments and (reactive)…

How do animals choose their partners? The answer is simple: it’s all about quality. While humans tend to wear clothes that happen to be in fashion, animals do nothing without a reason. Behind beautiful plumage or a deafening roar is only one message: I am in great shape. The evolutionary courtship displays…

Speech Prosody is the biennial meeting of the Speech Prosody Special Interest Group (SProSIG) of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA).

These awards honour researchers who turn scientific insight into real-world impact. From master’s students to postdocs, they highlight exceptional work in life sciences, health sciences, biotech, or environmental health sciences with data science at the core. Meet the 2025 winners.

In this chapter, Linde Desmaele & Luis Simón examine NATO’s strategic adaptation since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Conference

In his dissertation Gabriel Paiuk explores the variable ways in which what is heard is formed. To address this, he postulates a novel concept of sound image in a post-anthropocentric context in which both mind and material artefacts are instances across which the image occurs, rather than hosts on which…

Knowledge and culture subproject 4:

ACPA Professor of Auditory Culture and Music Philosophy Marcel Cobussen and ACPA PhD Supervisor Vincent Meelberg are, together with composer and Simon Fraser University Professor Barry Truax, editors of the recently published Routledge Companion to Sounding Art.

What are the precise identities, possibilities and current practice examples of the various time frames in music and what bearings do they have individually and in combinations on the speed of the music?

The effects of anthropogenic noise on interactions between predators and their prey are still little understood.

A British English Pronunciation Course Book

Viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) is a group of acute diseases caused by highly infectious viruses including Ebola, Lassa, Dengue viruses. Its high mortality rate poses high risk to public health, however, studies on VHF have been hampered due to the non-availability of proper models and incomplete knowledge…

Developing new methods for performing improvised music

The goal of this study is to systematically investigate how intonation (speech melody) is conveyed in whispered speech.

Does Artifical Light at Night (ALAN) disrupt seasonal physiological and behavioral patterns in migrating freshwater fish?

We study the interplay of topology and geometry with chirality for several passive and active systems, employing both analytical and numerical methods.

On the 11th of January, Rasmus Puggaard-Rode successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Rasmus on this achievement!

The project 'Data use, online consumer needs, business strategies and regulatory response' aims to explore and examine the factors that impact upon the efficacy of information disclosure duties pertaining to customer data use in online business.

Although the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) harmonizes the protection of personal data across the EU as of May 2018, its open norms in combination with cultural differences between countries result in differences in the practical implementation, interpretation and enforcement of personal…

Parassign is a program to assign protein nuclei solely on the basis of pseudocontact shifts (PCS). The PCS from several paramagnetic tags are required, in order to produce several restraints per nucleus.