What motivates people to provide help to, or seek help from other groups? And what are the psychological consequences of receiving help from another group?

The aim of 'Intergroup helping' is to provide an overview of psychological research on intergroup helping, such as between countries or organisations, or in case of international crises. Co-editor Esther van Leeuwen has been an assistant professor at Leiden University in Social and Organisational psychology.…

Would you like to do something for the victims of the war in Ukraine? Several actions have been set up to help the people in Ukraine. Read below what you can do.

Are you a staff member and do you have questions about the war in Ukraine? Or are you looking for help?

Are you a student from Ukraine, Russia, or any other country and do you have questions about the war? Or are you looking for help or advice? Find out who you can turn to and what you can do to help yourself and others.

Our information activities can help you make the right study choice. Throughout the year you can get to know Leiden University, our bachelor's programmes and student life in Leiden and The Hague in various ways.

Spontaneously helping one another, why do we bother? It is believed that lending a hand to others promotes social bonding, helping us to connect with each other and even build friendships. In our experiment, in which the adult researcher ‘accidentally’ dropped matches on the floor, most adolescents…

Magistri Symonis (?) Questiones secunde partis Doctrinalis Alexandri de Villa Dei First Critical Edition from the Manuscript with Introduction, Appendices and Indexes

PhD defence

To investigate the effectiveness of an online self-help programme for people with HIV and depressive symptoms.

When we think of politics, we tend to think of adversary, antagonism, polarisation, a struggle for power. But politics should serve positive purposes, as well. Political psychologist and meditation teacher Femke Bakker (Leiden University) thinks that positive politics is first and foremost about tolerance.…

‘I would never want to be treated by a computer,’ says Boudewijn Lelieveldt, Head of Radiology at the Laboratory for Clinical and Experimental Image Processing and Medical Delta professor in the Bioinformatics group at Delft University of Technology. No matter how intelligent a system, we have to continue…

Serge Rombouts is a physicist whose PhD thesis was about functional MRI (fMRI). This visualises activity in regions of the brain. The appealing images of glowing brain regions that emerge from the computer are the result of calculations. According to Rombouts, this isn’t proper artificial intelligence.…

Biodiversity and healthy ecosystems continue to decline in Europe, which has serious consequences for human welfare. These are findings of a report that was formally approved by delegates from 127 governments during a UN plenary in Medellin, Colombia. Leiden researcher Alexander van Oudenhoven was one…

‘I didn’t have that answer’ .. ‘No idea’ … ‘Did I have to read the whole judgment? … Sorry, I haven’t prepared for today’s class.’ These are a few comments from students that our teaching staff hear all too often. Usually, after trying some gentle encouragement followed by slight disappointment, you…

We are looking for students who are 16 years or older and are studying at a Dutch mbo, hbo or university. Our aim is to gain insight into the needs and perceptions of students regarding stress and burnout. In short, we aim to carefully listen to the students’ needs: how can we help you?

The World Food Programme (WFP) uses mobile technology to predict potential famine more rapidly. Leiden University's Centre for Innovation is developing a Leiden University online course for professionals to learn the technique.

A team of scientists, including Leiden Astronomer Alice Booth, has discovered silicon monosulfide molecules in the dust disk around a young star. Such molecules indicate planet formation. The team made the discovery using the ALMA telescopes. This method provides an alternative when direct observation…

If a pill containing no active ingredients still helps, this positive expectation is called a placebo effect. A negative expectation is called a nocebo effect. Both can be produced by verbal suggestions and conditioning. According to Andrea Evers’ research group, combining these is the most promising…

Heavy rainfall can cause streets to flood and basements and tunnels to overflow. Jan van Rijn investigated, together with Christiaan Lamers (formerly of Leiden University) and Ton Beenen (STOWA, RIONED), how data science can help to predict which areas are at greater risk of flooding. Van Rijn presented…

Modern optimization algorithms offer solutions for architectural decisions like spatial, structural and energy efficiency. A young computer scientist from Leiden University co-authored a paper that won the Best Paper Award at a leading conference in Krakow during the summer.

Cramming from a book, making notes or learning summaries. In the past these were about the only ways to memorise your course material. But that has long since changed. Multimedia is the code word. But is it effective?

People are keen to make a contribution that will be valuable for scientific research. Many thousands are taking part in the Major Flu Survey. Leiden researcher Anne Land is publishing on this subject in the Journal of Science Communication.

Jamie Korporaal, who started as a junior lecturer at Leiden Law School during her master's studies and has now joined the faculty as a lecturer, will start the Labour Law specialisation after the summer. She discusses her career and this postgraduate training course with Marije Schneider, lecturer in…

What is the effectiveness of (booklet or online) self-help programmes for people with somatic stressors and depressive symptoms? What works best for whom? How to improve motivation and adherence?

One of the ambitions of the Learning@LeidenUniversity vision on teaching and learning is to foster an international and inclusive educational community in which everyone feels welcome, regardless of religion, sex, sexual orientation or cultural background. One student service that promotes inclusion…

In the documentary ‘Pretend Student’, former students talk about why they let everyone believe they were still studying. How can you make sure you don’t end up in such an impossible situation? Four questions for Leiden Student Dean, Romke Biagioni, who worked on the documentary.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should have ended poverty, inequality and climate change by 2030. In a special campaign, the Dutch universities are showing how they are helping to achieve these goals.

The most commonly used method for the taxonomic identification of tree trunks is wood anatomy. The number of experts in this area is decreasing, and education to become an wood anatomists takes many years. With the help of technology computer scientists of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science…

Researchers at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) are collaborating on the development of a conversation tool for patients with breast, prostate and skin cancer. The aim is to create a conversation tool that can support cancer patients in their care and help them make decisions.…

Like spoken languages, sign languages evolve organically and do not always have the same origin. This produces different ways of communication and annotation. Manolis Fragkiadakis wrote his PhD thesis on this.

Anke Klein and her team have devised a fun and useful app to help anxious children. In the app, children can upload a video of themselves showing, for example, something that went well for them and share their success with parents, granny or grandad. Developmental psychologist Klein talks about the…

Its idyllic setting and white sandy beaches have made the Maldives a hotspot for tourists. This provides an income but is a problem for the fragile natural environment. Students from various universities worked with the local people to make the soil more fertile. How did they go about it?

Drones are proving to be a good means of mapping man-made changes in the landscape. Geophysicist Till Sonneman and his colleagues (archaeology) are experimenting with drones in inaccessible areas of the Caribbean.

Professor of Media Law and Information Society Tarlach McGonagle is concerned about the increase in online disinformation and hate speech. He argues that human rights should guide new policies for the online world. McGonagle will give his inaugural lecture on 9 May.

How do surgeons avoid causing nerve damage or leaving cancerous cells behind? An interdisciplinary research group at the LUMC hopes to improve operations and make them less invasive with the aid imaging techniques. They are working with medical companies to make these techniques widely available.

People who are often stressed can feel calmer by making certain adjustments to their breathing. Possibly this also positively affects concentration and attention. Psychologist Roderik Gerritsen studied the effects of breathing differently for the first time, and explains them. Gerritsen receives his…

Coronavirus is generating a great deal of uncertainty throughout the world. Fortunately, there are some bright spots, such as the residents of Italian cities who are in quarantine trying to keep everyone's spirits up with their clapping and singing. Closer to home, Leiden historian Suze Zijlstra took…

This week Leiden student Roos Kolkman will be campaigning throughout the country to win the votes of Dutch youth in order to become the next UN Youth Delegate for Sustainable Development.

Professor of Fungal Genetics and Biotechnology Arthur Ram explains how fungi can help us be more sustainable.

Artificial intelligence can help doctors analyse images such as MRI scans. In future it may even be able to predict how a tumour will grow. And that is badly needed to relieve the pressure on healthcare workers.

Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) has just launched its COVID Radar app. Users of the app are asked to regularly complete a short questionnaire about their health, regardless of whether they are ill or not. This will give the researchers a good idea of the current spread of coronavirus in the…

Receiving positive support and seeing yourself as being a quitter may help smokers quit, say Eline Meijer and colleagues. The health psychologists published their study in Social Science & Medicine.

Do you like running or helping charity? Then join the Leiden Science Run on 29 September! Form a team together with friends, colleagues, roommates for this relay race of 5 km at the Bio Science Park in Leiden and Oegstgeest. Leiden University is organising this sponsor contest for the UAF, in collaboration…

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.

Winning gold in speed skating at the Olympic Games is not just a matter of training hard; data science can also lend a hand. Jeroen van der Eb of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) developed the measuring skate for this purpose, with which he recently won the Nationale Sportinnovator…

AI can help scientists to collect data about the earth faster. This saves them a lot of time on trying to figure out how to analyze all the data they collect. Julia Wasala, PhD student at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Sciences(LIACS), tells us how AI can be used to save time.

During your studies you have to make a lot of choices. And there are so many possibilities, you sometimes can’t see the wood for the trees. Where do I want to do an internship? What are my options on the job market? Students Justin and Seif were also struggling with these questions, so they called on…

Electrical inner ear prostheses like Cochlear Implants (CIs) help deaf and severely hearing-impaired persons to regain many of their communication abilities. The performance of CI in social environments is, however, not optimal. The new