On June 22, the week of data literacy started. The week was organized by PublicNL in close collaboration with LCDS. The essence was: How do we deal with data in the future? What major changes did we see in the past five years and what expectations may we expect for the future? Are there any pointers…

The brains of adolescents react more responsively to receiving rewards. This can lead to risky behaviour, but, according to Leiden University research, it also has a positive function: it makes learning easier. Publication in Nature Communications.

Why would someone choose to learn a language like Arabic? For Wessam Semida, teacher at the Academic Language Centre (ATC), the answer goes far beyond grammar and vocabulary. 'It really opens your perspective on life,' she explains. 'Language is a key to understanding people, cultures, and different…

Movement behaviours, such as physical activity, sleep, and the amount of time we sit each day, impact our health. Recently, more researchers are looking at the influence of these behaviours combined, but this is a challenging task. For example, it is difficult to monitor in what way movement behaviours…

How does a farmer decide if his cow is a prize winner? An anthropologist studying these farmers should not only look at the farmers themselves, but should in particular learn how they see the world. This is what Cristina Grasseni, the new Professor of Anthropology contends. Inaugural address on 30 O…

Engaged, active students who can see the links within their discipline. These are key aims of the University vision on teaching and learning, but how do you achieve them? An interdisciplinary research team led by ICLON has developed an inventive method that helps lecturers do just that.

Novel entities may pose risks to humans and the environment. The small particle size and relatively large surface area of micro- and nanoparticles (MNPs) make them capable of adsorbing other novel entities, leading to the formation of aggregated contamination.

This dissertation is concerned with the development of grammar. Starting from a usage-based perspective, which holds that children use domain-general learning mechanisms to acquire the grammatical patterns of their mother tongue, Beekhuizen shows how to operationalize various concepts from this tradition…

To what extent do aspects of fluency fluctuate throughout time? And how do raters take the dynamicity of fluency into account when rating performances?

Self-directed learning is more suitable for intermediate and advanced language learners than for beginners.

Which collaborative learning approaches already exist in conservatoire education, and how could such approaches be implemented? This is the subject of Tamara Rumiantsev’s (PhD candidate at ICLON) thesis. Defence on 14 April 2022.

Sang-Ah Yoo is a freelance journalist and is following the lateral entry programme Dutch at ICLON Leiden University. She enjoys showing students what language can do for you.

In this thesis we explore machine and deep learning approaches that address keychallenges in high dimensional problem areas and also in improving accuracy in wellknown problems. In high dimensional contexts, we have focused on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations.

In the Educatips column, Psychology lecturers share their most valuable insights on teaching. This month: Laura Nawijn and colleagues are designing an e-learning programme to improve the thesis supervision of clinical psychologists. ‘You don’t want to hold students’ hands, but you do want to give them…

Na Zhou (PhD at ICLON) researched how vocational teachers’ learning takes place in a work placement programme and how their learning supports their teaching in school. Defence on 1 March.

Leiden University and VU Amsterdam are developing a joint research project for a digital platform on which you can compose and share storylines with the use of images. Such interactivity will make a boring high school history lesson much more exciting and personalized. Furthermore, it will stimulate…

Leiden University has received a Lifelong Learning grant that will enable it to significantly expand its learning for professionals, for example for the government in The Hague and the Leiden Bio Science Park.

Mind of the Universe is a series of portaits of worldwide leading scientists broadcasted summer 2017 by the VPRO. This populair series gets a follow-up in an online learning programme: ‘Mind of the Universe Online Learning Experience‘, developed and executed by scientists and learning developers of…

Using musical cues to learn a physical task significantly develops an important part of the brain, according to a new study co-authored by Leiden psychologist Rebecca Schaefer. The results are published in the journal Brain & Cognition.

A large interdisciplinary NWO research project attempted to discover the cognitive origin of the human ability to learn linguistic rules. This is not so simple, according to linguist Andreea Geambaşu and her colleagues. PhD defence on 11 December.

Bright explosions appear all over the radio and gravitational-wave sky. This dynamic side of the universe which has just been discovered, can be mapped by self-learning machines. The National Science Agenda granted 5 million euro’s to CORTEX, the Center for Optimal, Real-Time Machine Studies of the…

The mission in Uruzgan Province in Afghanistan was a formative experience for Dutch soldiers in which many lessons were learned. But most of those lessons have already been forgotten.

Novel language learning activates different neural processes than was previously thought. A Leiden research team has discovered parallel but separate contributions from the hippocampus and Broca's area, the learning centre in the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere of the brain also seems to play…

Andrea Cuomo (Ghent University), Baukje van den Berg (Central European University), and Katharina Preindl (Ghent University) are pleased to invite you to the workshop "Teaching and Learning Greek in Byzantium 2: Learning and Using Vocabulary in Byzantium and Beyond" on Friday October 4 at Ghent University…

To what extent does using 360 immersion to a speaking task change the elicited speech, compared to conditions with 2D presentations?

From recurrent oil disasters to the outbreak of contagious diseases or major fires. Public organisations often learn too little from such crises, according to public administration specialist Wout Broekema. Staff frequently fail to communicate information adequately, which means that lessons are often…

Transport inspectorates are looking for novel methods to identify dangerous behavior, ultimately to reduce risks associated to the movements of people and goods. We explore a data-driven approach to arrive at smart inspections of vehicles.

This thesis investigates the application of deep learning techniques in image analysis across various domains, focusing on four main themes: feature extraction, classification, segmentation, and integration, demonstrating the transformative potential of these technologies.

Traditional school tests, like the Dutch CITO, largely reflect students' existing knowledge and abilities. However, dynamic testing sheds light on students' learning potential, discovered Mirjam de Vreeze in her PhD research. This approach is especially promising for children with learning challenges,…

What is the impact of research-based learning on critical thinking competence and academic achievement in undergraduate education? What are underlying factors of research-based learning in the learning environment?

With more than 20,000 Omani students registered in British programmes in 2017/2018, the number of transnational students is quite substantial in Oman. The transnational learning environment is new to practically all the teaching staff as well as the students. Antonia Lamers, PhD at ICLON, researched…

Prison and student life are worlds apart. But in the Learning Behind Bars project, Leiden criminology students get the chance to study inside prison walls with people incarcerated there.

There are still things we can learn from the Ancient Greeks. How they managed to make sure that innovations were accepted, for example. A group of classics scholars, led by Leiden, will be carrying out research on this question funded by the largest ever NWO subsidy.

Bart Barendregt, Ratna Saptari, and Annemarie Samuels co-organised a two-day workshop on

Over several decades, a variety of computational methods for drug discovery have been proposed and applied in practice. With the accumulation of data and the development of machine learning methods, computational drug design methods have gradually shifted to a new paradigm, i.e. deep learning methods…

Ivo Wolsing (Leiden), Jacqueline Burek (George Mason University) and Lottie Thompson (Durham) are organizing a panel on Classical Learning in Medieval Europe at Leeds International Medieval Congress 2025. You are invited to submit an abstract by September 15.

This doctoral thesis comprises four studies on the content and structure of physics teachers’ belief systems about teaching and learning physics in secondary education in the Netherlands.

This report concerns itself with terrorist technical innovation, particularly with regards to terrorists’ incorporation of emerging technologies into their practices. More specifically, it investigates, through the elaboration of a theoretical learning framework, how terrorist groups can adopt the practices…

Plants and soils from natural ecosystems harbor great diversity of soil microorganisms, which could potentially contribute to the sustainability of horticulture. The knowledge about using wild plant species and soil from natural ecosystem to improve the crop health will advance the application of ecological…

On 22 January 2018, the Massive Open Online Course ’A Circular Economy of Metals: Towards a Sustainable Societal Metabolism’ kicks off. This course is developed and taught by associate professor Ester van der Voet.

Graduates Bruno and Plym took part in the National Think Tank last year. Together with 20 other students and recent graduates, they spent four months pondering the future of our digital society. ‘You learn so much in the space of four months, not just practical skills but also about yourself.’

Wout Broekema highlights how organisations not only learn from crises but also forget, losing crucial knowledge and practices over time.