Medicines can work even if they have no active ingredient. The first international scientific conference on placebos will take place in Leiden from 2 to 4 April. Placebo researcher Andrea Evers, who is also chairing the conference, answers some pressing questions.

Lecture

Misinformation spreads easily and fast. It gets presented as news, whereas actual news gets dismissed as fake. Conflicting streams of information allows all sides to cherry-pick whatever is most comfortable, boosting degrees of confidence and confusing the deliberation of both politicians and voters.…

The ability to collect and interpret huge quantities of data has become indispensable to society and academia. Leiden University is a knowledge and expertise centre for data science that places the emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation.

Sound Arguments is an innovative laboratory-atelier for creative artists and researchers dealing with sound. Presented by the Orpheus Institute, Ghent (BE), and the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, University of Leiden (NL), Sound Arguments transcends the boundaries of art school or conservatory,…

Knowledge that benefits society is the domain of the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA). FGGA provides high-quality interdisciplinary education on and research into social and governance issues such as terrorism, organisation of public administration, climate change and economic crises.

First set up in 2015, the Language Learner Corpus (LLC) project collected language data of over 150 language students. We have now launched new communicative tasks to collect longitudinal data of language learners at Leiden University.

Here you can find the recordings of previous Florence Nightingale Colloquia.

African oral literatures, new media and technologies: challenges for research and documentation

The Leiden Leadership Programme (LLP) employs experts in the field of leadership. They equip master's students from Leiden University, TU Delft and Erasmus University Rotterdam with the necessary leadership knowledge, insights and skills to increase their social impact.

During the Latin American Studies Master's programme you will focus on key social, political, linguistic and cultural developments which are currently shaping the complex reality of Latin America.

Social and Behavioural Sciences, Psychology

Lecture, LACG Meetings

Lecture

Ten Leiden social and behavioural scientists have successfully applied for the NWO Open Competition. With this Open Competition, NWO gives researchers the chance to start small, high-risk, innovative or promising research projects.

How has evolution shaped our curiosity? And how does that curiosity ensure that we now have the technological ability to discover whether we are alone in the universe? This was all covered during the celebration of Leiden University’s 449th Dies Natalis.

Lecture

PhD defence

Since 2009, at ACPA, 86 candidates received their PhD in Creative and Performing Arts. On this page you will find an overview of ACPA's alumni.

PhD defence

Konstantinos Zoumpoulakis, Research Assistant at the Institute of Criminal Law & Criminology, has written a report on this conference

A virtual hand that feels as if it is your own. Feeling happier because a virtual face is smiling with you. Cognitive Psychologist Ke Ma discovered using virtual reality that the way we experience our body is more flexible than we thought. Ma: ‘We can think up some fantastic applications.' PhD defence…

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW) has awarded an Academy Professorship to Ewine van Dishoeck, Professor of Molecular Astrophysics at Leiden University.

How does it feel to be spied on by robots? Did you know that they too discriminate? Our entanglement with technology makes life easier, but there’s a downside too. Artists and researchers will show all aspects of this in the SAILS online talk show The Future of AI is Human. Join in on Tuesday 15 December…

Comparison between babies and song-birds when they are learning a non-existent language—a study of this kind has never been tried before. But this is what Claartje Levelt, Carel ten Cate (Leiden University) and Jelle Zuidema (University of Amsterdam) are attempting.

In the 1960s at MIT, cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky told a couple of graduate students to program a computer to perform the simple task of recognising objects in pictures, thinking it would be a nice summer project. Scientists from Leiden and the rest of the world are still working on it today.

Neanderthals at Pech-de-l'Azé I in South Western France had a striking use for manganese dioxide 50,000 years ago.

As of the 1st of January 2021, Lisa Cheng, Professor of General Linguistics, will be the next Scientific Director of the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). She tells us about LUCL and shares some of her thoughts about her upcoming role.

The Leiden archaeologist Wil Roebroeks has been awarded the Spinoza prize for his original observations about early hominins and the development of human society, NWO (Netherlands organisation for Scientific Research) announced on Monday 4 June.

Professor Jenny Doetjes at Leiden University researches similarities and differences in languages, specifically in the area of numerals and quantifiers. Her research provides insight into language patterns, bu also in the working of the human brain. Inaugural lecture on 26 January.

There are effective treatments for people with autism, says Wouter Staal, professor of Autism Spectrum Disorders, in his inaugural lecture on 4 May. However, it is not yet clear which treatment is most effective for which individual.

An NWO Veni application by Linda Geven, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, has been honoured. She will spend the next three years conducting research into false confessions in police interrogations.

When focussing attention, the neurotransmitters noradrenaline and acetylcholine play an important role. This new finding made by psychologist Stephen Brown provides clues for further research on how focussed attention comes about. Dissertation defence on 16 June.

In the CSM-elective ‘Governance of Crime and Social Disorder,’ Dr. Elke Devroe challenges her students to engage in an interactive group role-play on various themes related to the governance of crime. During this exercise, each group of students brings to life a sensitive security topic – such as mass…

The monthly ILS Lunch Seminars have slowly developed into somewhat of a tradition. During this seminar series, all researchers from Leiden Law School can present their research and apprehend in a comfortable setting what researchers from other research programs and institutes are working on. On Thursday…

Good education is the basis for a fair and sustainable society. To maintain a high level of education, teachers, pupils, lecturers and students need new resources. One of the ways that Leiden University supports them in this is by conducting academic research, largely together with practicing teaching…

Leiden physicists Alexandre Morin and Samadarshi Maity study self-organisation and flocking phenomena. They shed light on flocking, which helps to understand how it is possible that birds in a flock don't collide. With plastic microbeads, they create an experimental setup and they developed a mathematical…

Psychology teacher of the year is Marc Molendijk. The Master Thesis Awards are for Kim Houwaart and Linda Bomm. Hans van Lennep wins the PhD Publication Prize; Nina Komrij wins the PhD Wild Card: Societal Impact. The Support & Management staff Prize is for the whole Psychology Institute Office and Remond…

'Working on your leadership starts tonight,' says lecturer Sandra Groeneveld at the introductory meeting of the Leiden Leadership Programme. The programme has been renewed this year, and students are ready to dive into it: 'I hope to get to know myself.'

Last year, Dr. Henk van Steenbergen received a Grass Shoot grant to completely redevelop the research master's course 'Experimentation I: Programming Psychological Experiments'. The revised course was taught for first time last block and has just come to an end. Time for a brief recap.

Three new PhD candidates at the Faculty of Humanities will receive funding from the Programme Office Sustainable Humanities and NWO. The aim of the grant is to boost young talent within the humanities.

Language is omnipresent: when you talk, app or meet in Teams. Understanding how we communicate with one another and what communication does to us is essential. In her inaugural lecture, Nivja de Jong will call to redress the balance between the sciences and the humanities.

Leiden biotech startup Azafaros has successfully completed a funding round, raising 25 million euros of investments for developing treatments of rare metabolic disorders. The company holds exclusive license to a library of novel patented compounds discovered by experts from Leiden University.

New sampling and analytical strategies give archaeologists a better understanding of the nutrition and survival of ancient populations. Publication in PLOS One.

As climate change and ecological degradation’s effects on our mental health becomes more severe, we must all do our best to protect not just the environment, but also our mental well-being. Therefore, on this Sustainability Day, we have collaborated with Healthy University Leiden to focus on the relationship…

Some children start life with a disadvantage. Sometimes even before they are born. A new research project involving Professor Wessel Kraaij of Leiden University investigates how data science can help give these children a good start in life.

When under duress innocent suspects can make a false confession. Why is this? Legal psychologist Linda Geven will give a talk about this at the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition’s Brain & Law event. At this symposium (in Dutch) on 16 September you can attend talks on fascinating brain research…

Undesirable associations with sex can be unlearned, but return if the circumstances change. They must therefore be unlearned in different situations. The drug D-cycloserine may help here. These are the findings of psychologist Mirte Brom.

Children with hearing loss often fail to pick up on nuances in other people’s emotional responses. As a result, they do not always understand what is going on. Yung-Ting Tsou, a PhD student at Leiden University, found that having more knowledge of emotions and social conventions can help them in their…