A central and much debated topic in the study of language acquisition concerns the nature of the learning mechanisms that are required. Are the computational and learning mechanisms that guide learning about language structure special and specific to language or humans?

Large telescopes can look so deep into the Universe that they can also look back billions of years in time. From 2018, the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, will be able to see the period just after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies formed. Astronomers…

The Data Science Research Programme at Leiden University combines data science with PhD projects in a wide range of disciplines. The programme has been running for over two years, and is producing the first astonishing results. A number of PhD candidates talk about their experiences and research bel…

When to launch a next-generation product in a competitive market and how much capacity should be allocated to it

Leiden University's interdisciplinary research programme SAILS funds young interdisciplinary scientists working at the intersection of AI and other fields. How do these researchers experience the work?

Leiden University Library and related museum holdings in Leiden contain a body of materials showing the unique role of Dutch-Japanese trade relations as a node in the history of global flows of knowledge, materials and culture during the early modern period.

Researcher: Hieke Huistra MSc. This PhD-project is directed at the historical and educational import of the Leiden University nineteenth-century pathological collections.

The aim of this project is to foster a historiography that does justice both to the realization that scientific knowledge is constructed by local, contingent, and contextual processes, and the claims of science to objective validity.

Read about experiences of former students.

Researchers from the Institute of Public Administration study the mechanism of lobbying and influencing political parties and the behaviour of these parties to see how solutions are found to problems. This enables them to reach conclusions as to how best to effect changes in political focus and poli…

An Investigation into the role of copper-alloy craft production in the early medieval economy of northwest Europe.

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Learn all about the writing systems used in the famous wall poems of the city of Leiden.

Sentencing is becoming increasingly complex for the courts. Legal scholars and criminologists from Leiden document the process of sentencing in the Netherlands. They use this knowledge to advise legislators and those who implement this legislation on how to make sentencing more consistent and effect…

Whereas when we started the first Project the chief aim was pure research, to find out more about the past in a region, now we see that the countries of Europe are faced with the great problem that there are far too many archaeological sites for them to deal with by excavation, but yet some kind of…

To construct catalysts that can produce fuels from CO2 innumerable times, we need to learn much more about how catalysis works. Irene Groot is conducting groundbreaking research into catalysis at the atomic level.

On the 24th of June Hossein Pourbagheri successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Being a supervisor is a demanding job. With these golden rules in mind, you'll do just fine. You can keep reading below, or you can download the PDF in which you find a visual representation on the rules.

No one can tell you what it's like to work for us better than your future colleagues themselves.

Under what circumstances is politicization more likely to occur than others, and what impact does politicization have on government legitimacy and performance?

The routine assumption that Upper Palaeolithic early modern humans in Europe were regular fire users who produced fire at will has never been tested against the archaeological record. Utilizing literature, database and microwear analytical approaches, this project seeks to establish the role and forms…

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…

We would like to present to you a simple guidebook about living a sustainable life as a student in the cities of Leiden and The Hague. Whether you are a first-year student still trying to find your way around or already doing your masters – students wanting to explore more sustainable options and save…

This project is a close and sensitive contextual study of Jacob of Sarug's (ca. 451-521 AD) metrical homily

On 10 November Guanmian Xu successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Dutch archaeologists are making three-dimensional virtual reconstructions of archaeological objects lost in the Syrian civil war.

High-quality education, a broad choice of bachelor’s programmes and personal support in a student city. And that’s just for starters. Leiden University offers you the ideal basis for enjoying the time of your life and a world-class career.

Since the late 1990s Leiden University has been located in two cities: Leiden and The Hague. Leiden is where the University was founded and still forms its heart, with six of the seven faculties being housed there. The faculty of Governance and Global Affairs is located in The Hague and most of the…

To safeguard the quality of research within Leiden University, a committee of external experts evaluates the University’s institutes once every six years according to the Standard Evaluation Protocol, which is drawn up by the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), the Royal Netherlands…

The need for novel drugs as well as innovations in their development and application is as urgent as ever. Below we present our vision , mission, and our key research areas.

For Arabic and Islamic Studies and Middle East Studies

For Arabic and Islamic Studies and Middle East Studies

We are doing all we can to save energy at the university. Find out how you as a member of staff or student can do about energy and help reduce CO2 emissions.

The one-year master's in Politics, Society and Economy of Asia, a specialisation of Leiden University’s master's in Asian Studies, offers a large and varied selection of subjects and the freedom to choose the areas on which you will focus.

How did colonial law work to turn people into property? This project argues that colonial ideas about households and domestic authority were critical to legal processes of enslavement in the early modern Dutch empire. Using colonial court records from Dutch Brazil, Suriname, and the Moluccas, the project…

This research project, that started in September 2008, aims to explore how personal and public memories of the Dutch Revolt in the seventeenth century evolved and interacted to create new political and cultural identities for the societies that eventually were to become the kingdoms of the Netherlands…

This paper examines cyber intelligence in the context of national and international security.

LUCIS is an interfaculty knowledge centre offering a multidisciplinary and comparative view on Islam and Muslim societies.

The research will touch upon the communal role of text and the actions of interpretation and discussion that developed among Jews in exile.

Proceedings of the International Colloquium Leiden, May 29 and 30, 2008

This project compares and contrasts how and why several Turkish and Iranian women were compelled to participate in leftist guerilla movements in the 1960s and 1970s.

How has migration affected Irish and Italy society since 1945?

What forms does Muslim religiosity take in daily life? What is the relation between representations of Islam and Muslims by scholars and the views that exist in the ‘real world’?

The principle aim of the project is to study the genesis and the quantitative properties of the Early Roman urban network of the Balkan and the Danube provinces.