This project studies social distance—the degree of sympathetic understanding that exists between people—in relation to state foreign policy making. Does, and if so how does, social distance shape political biases, aid narratives, and, ultimately, state foreign policy priorities and decisions?

This paper explores how citizenship is enacted and experienced in welfare encounters for Egyptian migrant parents in Paris, Amsterdam, and Milan, highlighting the importance of social citizenship and personal interactions in shaping belonging.

Terrorist groups adapt to environmental changes to maintain power. This project provides new insights by developing a theory of strategic target selection and using big data analytics and machine learning to test these hypotheses.

The Labour Law and Social Security department provides both bachelor’s level and master’s level teaching.

Emily Wolff, PhD candidate at Leiden University, wrote a paper about the inclusion of imperial citizens in the Dutch post-war welfare state.

Welcome to the Social Anxiety and Specific Phobia (SASP) Research Group!

Recent years have seen a vibrant scholarship on health policy and politics. While much is now known about changes to health policies and institutions over time, this study finds that scholarship still lacks research on the linkages between health policies and health outcomes (Marmor & Wendt, 2012).…

Is blended care a feasible and effective treatment method for social anxiety in adolescence?

This website showcases Leiden University’s contribution to the SSH Sector Plans.

From basic science to real-world interventions

Across cultures, parents help their children master the social and linguistic codes needed in adult life. Recent research on language socialization found important cross-cultural differences, pointing out the need for more diversity for a full understanding of this process.

On 24 January 2024, Vethaak defended the thesis 'Empirical Analysis of Social Insurance, Work Incentives and Employment Outcomes'. The doctoral research was supervised by Koen Caminada and Pierre Koning.

In this project, researchers from computer science, law, psychology, and public administration research in practice how artificial intelligence (AI) can be leveraged to make decision-making in the security domain more effective, while also keeping it safe and accountable.

LIACS is committed to inclusive work and study experiences, respectful of all students and staff, and free of discrimination, harassment, bullying, or retaliation. An inclusive and respectful atmosphere is vital to free expression and the open exchange of ideas.

A warm welcome to the Graduate School of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Leiden University.

Social assistance and minimum income benefits are important instruments as a safeguard against low income and poverty. There have been major developments in minimum income benefits both in developed and developing countries over the last decades. Our study collects several empirical studies regarding…

Intelligence scholars have been struggling to find the conditions under which international intelligence cooperation occurs. Most focus on transactional motives and guaranteed returns, the so called ‘Quid pro Quo’. At the same time, trust is often mentioned as one of the foremost conditions, yet it…

Professor Ton Liefaard has worked to improve the position of children since his academic career began.

On the occasion of prof Paul van der Heijden’s stepping down as Rector Magnificus and President of the Executive Board of Leiden University in 2013 the Chair bearing his name on Social Justice was established. It was a “farewell present” of the Leiden University to it’s Rector.

Which adolescents are more at risk of developing social anxiety disorder later in life?

Day-to-day activities are important in the development of social identities, the establishment of social standing, and the communal understanding of societal rules. This perspective is broadly referred to as practice theory and relates to the power of an overarching social structure and the individual…

This thesis, conducted in the framework of ERC Starting grant project BABYLON (PI: Caroline Waerzeggers), presents an investigation into Babylonian society, focusing on the city of Borsippa during Neo-Babylonian and early Persian rule (c. 620-484 BCE).

New Approaches to Understanding the Eastern Mediterranean during Byzantine and Ottoman Times

To what extent are individuals socialised with heteronormativity and gender norms by the national context in which they live, by Dutch schoolbooks, and within Dutch families?

Across cultures, parents help their children master the social and linguistic codes needed in adult life. Recent research on language socialization found important cross-cultural differences, pointing out the need for more diversity for a full understanding of this process. Deaf communities form…

Nina Baranowska and Gianclaudio Malgieri have published a new blog post on Verfassungsblog: 'Towards a Legal Concept of Digital Well-being: Insights from the EU Commission’s Preliminary Findings on TikTok’s Addictive Design'.

The car we buy is made out of thousands of components, which are produced using different types of materials. These materials need to be sourced from different places, sent to production facilities and assembled. Once the car is dismissed, the components need to be taken care of by either reusing, recycling…

This article by Danielle Goldwert, Sara Constantino, Jaroslaw Kantorowicz and colleagues presents one of the largest behavioral 'megastudies' to date, testing how different interventions can stimulate public, political and financial climate advocacy.

For this project we delve into children's digital media use during the transition from kindergarten to group 3 and investigate its impact on their social development.

The lecture series “Humanity in the Automated State” held its second session on January 12, 2026, at Leiden Law School. Dr. Aya Rizk from Linköping University brought her expertise on Information Systems whit a focus on how digital technologies and data drive organizational change, particularly in decision-making…

How did the slave peculium function in the socio-legal context of the Roman Empire?

Written by a select international group of leading privacy scholars, Social Dimensions of Privacy endorses and develops an innovative approach to privacy.

PhD defence

This paper written by Vydra and Kantorowicz answers the research question ‘What policy-relevant information does Twitter contain?’ as well as the research question ‘How does this information change between a period of normalcy and a period of crisis?’

Sanne Kellij and colleagues systematically reviewed 142 articles, examining evidence for three hypotheses on the relation between victimization and social information processing.

Robotics, using social mechanisms like hormonal modulation, may accelerate our understanding of core sociality principles. By looking at social robotics through an evolutionary lens, we propose this field as a promising framework to investigate the fundamental bricks of sociality from an evolutionary…

The availability of indicators based on social media has opened the possibility to track the online interactions between social media users and scholarly entities.

The author researched the motivations of bureaucrats to integrate refugees into welfare services even when they do not have any legal obligation to do so.

Grassroots heritage initiatives and community engagement

How is the development of physiological responses to social evaluation in adolescence affected by other normative developments, such as pubertal, socio-cognitive and psychosocial development? Are social anxiety and public speaking anxiety associated with characteristic patterns of stress responses…