The master thesis: for many students it is a true crowning glory. Some theses are truly excellent. Those are rewarded with the FSW Thesis Prize. This year, this award was won by Roosmarijn Goldbach (master’s Psychology) and Matija Čuljak (research master’s Psychology), who respectively researched borderline…

Stress among students is a growing problem. A new Student Wellbeing taskforce will be looking at the mental health of students at Leiden University.

With what skills do Humanities students distinguish themselves on the labour market? How can we offer students insight into their personal profile? Can they train and monitor their skills and increase their chances on the labour market this way?

Adolescents with good friendships experience fewer anxiety and depression symptoms, PhD student Iris Koele discovered in her research on high school students' social relationships. 'As a psychologist, I include friends in the treatment plan: who do you call when things are not going well?'

For two decades, language experts were certain that babies were able to learn language rules from as young as the age of seven months. However, recent research carried out by a consortium of four Dutch baby labs led by researchers from Leiden cast doubts on this certainty. We spoke to researchers Andreea…

In zoos, at festivals and in a mobile lab at the market: everywhere, Mariska Kret tries to understand human and animal emotions with her distinctive behavioural research. Now she has received the Mercator Sapiens Stimulus of €1 million for her efforts.

Synchrony in heart rate, skin conductance and pupil diameter plays a big role in human social interactions, such as gaining trust or being attracted toward each other. This is what Eliska Prochazkova found in several lab and field experiments. PhD defence on 4 March 2021.

Sinologist Florian Schneider was awarded the LUS Teaching Prize, officially making him this year’s best Leiden University lecturer. Schneider was commended for his innovative teaching methods based on role-playing.

Memory loss and confusion are signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Physicists Serge Rombouts and Martina Huber have developed new methods to help medical science get to the bottom of this insidious disease.

Can David Bowie’s death be seen as a carefully staged hype, just one last version of the musician’s ever-surprising public persona? Cultural Studies researchers Gerlov van Engelenhoven and Bram Ieven look into it.

'You’ll know right away when you meet your true love’ or ‘Opposites attract’: Some persistent beliefs exist about love and attraction, but are they true? Researcher Iliana Samara investigates the dynamics of attraction and explains which love myths we can let go of.

This year will see the start of not one but two citizen science projects in Leiden and The Hague. This is the outcome of a large survey among residents and researchers in both university cities. The Citizen Science Lab will help the winners implement their ideas, with support from the University and…

Can Zebra finches learn to distinguish two very similar Dutch words? Research by behavioral biologist Verena Ohms proved that they can identify 'wit' and 'wet'. Ohms published her findings in

Can we truly connect with each other through video calls? Yes, according to a recent study. Psychologists found our bodies synchronise almost as much in digital conversations as in real life. But this doesn’t mean we should skip in-person meetings altogether, says researcher Fabiola Diana.

Janna Marie Bas-Hoogendam, Stefanie Meeuwis, and Eliška Procházková have all been awarded a share of the Aspasia diversity grant obtained by Mariska Kret. These three promising young psychologists will each receive 10,000 euros as a stepping stone towards a career in science. This gives them three months…

For the next couple of years, Joris van der Voet, Associate Professor and researcher at the Institute for Public Administration will be heading a research project on top-level bureaucrats and how they go about making choices and prioritizing issues. He has been awarded a Vidi grant by the Dutch Research…

Starting 2 July 2022, a new exhibition will be opened to the public at the Old Observatory: More-than-Planet. This exhibit asks the question: how do we imagine our planet?

On 12 January ten driven lecturers obtained their Senior Teaching Qualification (SKO). Rector Magnificus Hester Bijl congratulated them in the Academy Building. We asked three of them how the SKO programme had benefitted them, what they think ‘good teaching’ is and what makes them so passionate about…

Older people are often approached from the perspective of their limitations when there is often much they still can and want to do. According to Professor Tineke Abma, art is a good way to continue to participate.

EUROTYPES is a research project developed by political scientist Adina Akbik, for which she recently received a European Research Council Starting Grant. Her aim is to examine the impact of cultural stereotypes in European multi-level policy enforcement. One of EUROTYPES' innovations lies in its focus.…

Her plan was to obtain a PhD, but, during her master’s, alumnus Sangbreeta Moitra discovered that her true interest lay in applying neuroscience in everyday life.

In the new ‘Educatips’ column, Psychology lecturers share their most important lessons about teaching. This month: Elise Seip wants to help students get out of their head and into their body. She starts every work group with mindfulness.

Earning some quick money by drug trafficking, committing an act of violence or almost collapsing under performance pressure. In the four-part NeurolabNL Young vodcast young people talk openly with neuroscientists about high-risk behaviour and performance pressure. How did they find their way back?

Professor of Higher Education Estela Mara Bensimon approaches diversity from a specific viewpoint. Examine and reflect on your own motives, is her advice to lecturers. Do you know for sure that you don't treat students from minority groups differently?

‘I could hardly believe my ears when I heard that we had been awarded the Gravitation grant,’ says Berna Güroğlu, professor of the Neuroscience of Social Relations. This grant is awarded by the state, via NWO, to pioneering scientific top research. In terms of grants, this really is something special,…

Ineke van der Ham has been appointed professor of Technological Innovations in Neuropsychology on 1 January. She researches how virtual reality and games help people navigate better. And this matters, as good navigation skills are about more than coming home safely.

On 22 January, Annemarie Madani-Abbing will defend her dissertation 'Art therapy and anxiety' regarding her research into the effectiveness of anthroposophic art therapy in treating anxiety in women. We asked her about her research and what it was like to combine a job outside academia with studying…

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.

It does not happen very often that a research project for a second-year bachelor's course gets turned into a proper academic paper. But International Studies students Pia Kurz, Coleen Gonner and Monika Bartnicka did just that. How did they manage it?

Livia, aged 7, was in class four. She loved to chat and was good at reading aloud. At least, at home. At school she never read aloud and she hadn't spoken a single word. What was going on? Selective mutism was the subject of the inaugural lecture by Maretha de Jonge, Professor by Special Appointment…

Aesthetic attraction plays a big role in orangutans’ mate choice, behavioural biologist and PhD candidate Tom Roth has observed. But to discover just how big that role is, more research is needed into the emotions of the great apes.

Neanderthals were able to make fire on a large scale with the aid of pyrite and hand-axes. This means they could decide when and where they wanted fire and were not dependent on natural fire, as was thought earlier. Archaeologist Andrew Sorensen has discovered the first material evidence for this. Publication…

Brain researcher Elseline Hoekzema has discovered that the structure of the brain changes during pregnancy, particularly those areas related to social functions. These changes persist for at least two years after the mother gives birth. Publication in Nature Neuroscience on 19 December.

Light makes us flourish – in this respect we humans are just like a rose or an azalea. Light can also be used to treat people who are ill. In Leiden, Sylvestre Bonnet and Esther Habers are working – each in their own discipline – on new applications of light in a clinical context.

‘What a relief,’ was psychologist Mariska Kret’s reaction to the news of her Vidi grant from the national science financier NWO. The grant makes it possible for her to carry out new research into emotions and trust in patients with a social anxiety disorder and patients with autism.

We are all at home in familiar surroundings. Not only is this boring but it can also have a negative influence on our learning, explains cognitive neuropsychologist Judith Schomaker. ‘Discovering new environments gets our brain learning and remembering. We are now missing this stimulus.’

Which young scientists are best at explaining their research in three minutes and can take part in the national finals? These questions were answered on 14 February in the Academy Building. Researchers Laura Steenbergen (cognitive neurosciences) and Christian Eistrup (astronomy) impressed the judges…

How does our brain interpret traces of evidence? Can someone who is suffering from brain damage be held accountable for criminal offences? And should it be possible to adjust a criminal’s behaviour with deep brain stimulation? These questions were addressed during the Public Scientific Day Brein & Recht…

Most students of Psychology want to work in mental healthcare (GGZ). This makes the master’s specialisation in Clinical Psychology a logical choice. It was an option for alumna Ruth van Vugt for a long time, but she decided to explore further and has since successfully completed the Health and Medical…

We know we should do it, and we often want to, but… Why is it so hard to live a healthier life? Professor of Behavioural Interventions in Population Health Marieke Adriaanse explains.

Knowing whether or not a treatment is working just by wearing your watch? Data scientist Ahnjili ZhuParris has identified a lot of opportunities for the use of machine learning in clinical research to monitor test subjects at home.

Parents’ talk about new stimuli such as persons or objects strongly affects how avoidant or fearful their child will react. No stronger effect was found when parents had an anxiety disorder or in children with fearful temperaments. Publication by a team of Leiden psychologists in 'Clinical Child and…

Professor of Psychiatry Anne Speckens studied medicine in Leiden and did her psychiatry training there too. She opened the Radboudumc Center for Mindfulness in Nijmegen. What does she do there and how does she look back on her time as a student?

On 21 March 2024, the ‘learners’ at Wolfert Bilingual in Rotterdam were not teenagers, but some 180 teachers and teacher educators from around the Netherlands and beyond. Those delegates were bound by a common interest in exploring and engaging with teaching and learning in linguistically and culturally…

Security seems to most people a basic necessity of life, a prerequisite for a good life. But if you think about it a little longer and deeper, as political philosopher Josette Daemen has done, you realise that security sometimes comes at the expense of other important goods, such as freedom and equality.…

Fear of repayment demands is causing people to forgo benefits and financial support, even when they are eligible. This was one of the finding of Olaf Simonse in his PhD research on financial stress and the non-use of social services. His proposal: 'Let the government take the initiative.'

Flitsinterview met alumnus Kees van der Staaij: ik ben en blijf een jurist in hart en nieren

Dialysis patients experience a range of physical and mental symptoms that interact and influence each otherIn her doctoral research, psychologist Judith Tommel wanted to find the optimum approach to help these dialysis patients improve their quality of life. ‘We need to make sure we avoid excluding…

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