The Leiden Lectures in Media | Art | Politics (MAP) is a series of talks organized by Pepita Hesselberth and Yasco Horsman. Speakers from various academic backgrounds and in different stages of their careers reflect on diverging ways in which technological and social changes challenge and transform…

Are you thinking about studying Arts, Literature and Media? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Visual art today is strongly interlinked with today’s society, a connection which is reinforced and deepened by social and other media. In Arts, Media and Society you will explore this relationship and analyse how it reflects and impacts the issues of our time, while also learning practical and academic…

Study information, Online Experience

This interdisciplinary research master offers the best of three worlds: arts, literature and media. The courses provide period-specific training that focus either on the medieval and early modern or the modern and contemporary period.

The purpose of LENS is to foster, coordinate and support research of visual media of analog and digital photography, film, and video, and the visual arts.

'Politics of Withdrawal' considers the significance of practices and theories of withdrawal for radical thinking today.

Study information

Sophie Ernst’s doctoral thesis is an artist’s contribution to media art theory.

Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in the Age of New Media is dedicated to art practices that mobilize the model of the archive, demonstrating the ways in which such archival artworks probe the possibilities of what art is and what it can do.

In what ways can visual art play a vital role in countering the discriminating stigma experienced by transgender communities?

Exploring cultural production in Europe, Latin America and Africa, the institute’s research programme focuses on the continuous interconnectedness of the Arts and Society in both the textual culture of literature, learning and public debate and the visual culture of art, architecture, film, photography…

This project aims at studying the social media reception of African publications as covered by the most important “altmetric” sources.

Recently Cambridge University Press published dr. Jan Osters monograph “Media Freedom as a Fundamental Right”.

Read the latest (news) articles and how the Leiden Science Run appeared in the media.

Both play and politics have the potential to create worlds in which new rules apply, meanings are created, and possibilities emerge for collaboration, strategy and creative solutions. In this sense, play and politics have always been very much alike. But what happens to this kinship in a post-digital…

On this page, you can find video's explaining the research of LUCAS members.

The research at the Living lab attracts a great deal of press attention. Please find below a small selection of the many news reports that have been published. Also take a look at the Zembla programme about the Living Lab.

Investigation of 1.) The whereabouts of the epistemological dissonances in art criticisms on Post-war contemporary art from Japan between two different language realms, in this case in English and Japanese; and 2.) What the dissonances disclose, disturb, and contribute in the process of the establishment…

Intermediality, Media Practices and Media Literacy is one of the six research themes of the LUCAS Modern and Contemporary cluster.

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.

Are you thinking about studying Book and Digital Media Studies? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Do you have to be able to say everything on Twitter and Facebook? Is Instagram morally obliged to remove photos from attacks? Should we allow the terrorist group to recruit new members on the internet?

Nowadays children grow up with social media. This may influence the development of brain regions involved in social interaction. In their review article in Nature Communications, Crone and Konijn illustrate how neuroscience can contribute to a better understanding of how media and peers influence adolescents'…

Find out who to contact with press enquiries and how we tell the world our news.

This dissertation focuses on a new field of artistic research in which a visual artist takes on the role of researcher. The main research question is whether performance art integrated in an ecumenical service, combined with artistic directions from the artist, can enhance the religious experience of…

The Secret Life of Art Works. Exploring the Boundaries between Art and Life is the first collection of essays to present case studies from the visual arts, architecture, sculpture and numismatics, and to engage critically with theoretical perspectives from art history, psychology, aesthetics and ant…

Are you thinking about studying Media Technology (as of September 2025: Creative Intelligence & Technology)? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Knowledge and culture subproject 3:

Media & interaction is where artificial intelligence and machine learning meet philosophy, cognitive science, and the creative arts. Examples of research questions in this domain are: 'Can an algorithm be creative by human standards?', 'Can creative processes, such as composing music or writing poetry,…

There are several ways to stay up to date via social media.

What are the critical elements in sonic materialization of fixed media electroacoustic music and how can these parameters be classified? How would interpretation be defined in performing fixed media music? What are the creative and new ways of presenting fixed media music by incorporating all the presentation…

The MA Media Studies consists of four different programmes in the fields of Journalism and New Media (Dutch taught), Book and Digital Media Studies, Film and Photographic Studies and Cultural Analysis: Literature and Theory.

Media & interaction is where artificial intelligence and machine learning meet philosophy, cognitive science, and the creative arts. Examples of research questions in this domain are: 'Can an algorithm be creative by human standards?', 'Can creative processes, such as composing music or writing poetry,…

Conducting research on reliability of journalism and the trust in media.

Are you eager to bring your own questions and curiosity into scientific research? Do the creation of media and use of technology drive your research interests? Could you be a researcher who challenges scientific practice and pushes its boundaries?

Play and Media is one of the six research themes of the LUCAS Modern and Contemporary cluster.

Denk je erover om Journalistiek en Nieuwe Media te studeren? Leer meer over deze master en bekijk onderstaande introductievideo.

When you walk into the Gorlaeus Building, you will notice it immediately; the artwork 'The Cloud' hangs prominently in the hall and cannot be missed. Artist Jos Agasi designed it especially for this location. ‘Intuition, imagination and creativity. Scientists and artists have more in common than they…

The master’s programme Media Technology (as of September 2025: Creative Intelligence & Technology) at Leiden University focuses on creative exploration as well as the understanding of science and technology.

Art of Captivity / Arte del Cautiverio tells a compelling story about Central America's drug war through a series of rich photographs. The book, which is entirely bilingual in English and Spanish, focuses on Guatemala, which has become the primary point of transit for cocaine produced in the Andes and…

The Computer Systems, Imagery & media (CSI) research programme performs research on methods and techniques for the design, implementation and application of advanced computer systems, in particular parallel, distributed and embedded computer systems.

The goal of the LIACS Media Lab (LML) at Leiden University is to conduct state-of-the-art research in the areas of deep learning, artificial intelligence and computer vision.

Experts and initiatives related to Academia in Motion (AiM) regularly appear in the media. Below are some examples of news coverage to date.

How can we bridge the gap between experts and the general public?