Somatic symptoms, such as pain, itch, and fatigue have been shown to have a bidirectional relationship with mental symptoms. Although acute somatic symptoms serve some adaptive properties, chronic symptoms can instead lead to interference in daily activities and lower quality of life.

Here I propose to study the relationship between autonomic pupil-synchronisation and trust, at the behavioural and neural level, and examine a targeted set of possible contextual moderators.

Cognitive decline (amongst other problems with attention, concentration, memory) is a common symptom in patients with a variety of brain disorders and has been related to healthy ageing as well. People suffering from cognitive deficits are often significantly hampered in their day-to-day functioning…

The Life in Custody (LIC) Study comprises a large-scale research project into prison climate and the quality of prison life in Dutch prisons.

On 29 October, seven innovative lecturers from different faculties will join the existing ten fellows of the Leiden Teachers' Academy. The current fellows have been engaged for the past year in implementing their innovation projects. How are these progressing?

Research into our history of colonialism and slavery, heart-to-heart conversations at a Keti Koti table, exhibitions, lectures and podcasts that establish the link between present and past. Staff and students participated in the national Slavery Memorial Year in many different ways. What have we learned…

The Hazelhoff Centre for Financial Law organized the third edition of the workshop ‘Principles for effective negotiations in legal practice’ on 5 June 2018.

In this blog post Saskia Postema and Jan Melissen claim that Chinese UN celebrities’ activism under Xi Jinping has become aligned with the Chinese leadership’s ambitions.

How does ICT affect society? Mirjam van Reisen, professor Computing for Society at the Leiden Centre of Data Science, is intrigued by this question. We speak with her about innovation, changes in health care, and mobile human trafficking. ‘Innovation has many benefits, but it can also be very disrup…

Leiden health psychologist Liesbeth Van Vliet receives recognition for her research on doctor-patient communication and its influence on quality of healthcare. Van Vliet has been awarded one of four Heineken Young Scientists Award 2022 for promising young researchers working in the Netherlands.

Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) identified six top priorities where environmental interventions can make the most difference. By doing so, they hope to help researchers and policymakers make the most out of the limited, available resources to protect people and the pla…

Few details, relatively few words. The coalition agreement presented is one of the shortest in the past 20 years, Arco Timmermans knows. Consequently, the outlines were not negotiated for very long, which has its advantages and disadvantages. 'Over the next few weeks, we are mainly going to see the…

Radio interview with CML researchers Martina Vijver and Henrik Barmentlo in the NTR radio programme: Nieuws en Co on Friday 24 March 2017. The researchers gave an overview of the research which will be conducted in the Living Lab in the coming year. The Living Lab is located in the BioScience Park in…

The image of the European Union (EU) as a remote law-making machine is widespread. Quite often journalists and politicians deliberately depict ‘Brussels’ as bureaucratic, even undemocratic, bypassing its citizens. And many of us buy into that image. Nikoleta Yordanova, Anastasia Ershova and Aleksandra…

This thesis described the development of novel scanning tunneling microscopy techniques to investigate strongly correlated electronic states in quantum matter.

In this thesis, I focused on studying the above- and belowground interactions of J. vulgaris from a plant-soil feedback (hereafter, PSF) perspective. I investigated the temporal variation of negative PSF and examined the effects of root-associated bacteria on plant performance and aboveground herbiv…

We all do it sometimes: watch your favourite Netflix series, YouTuber or comfort series while you are eating. But we don't always consider the possible consequences this could have. Floor van Meer talks about this and more during an interview with BBC.

Paul Behrens and his team have won the Frontiers Planet Prize of half a million euros for their research into the effects of switching to a plant-based diet.

Prof. Andrea Evers is a health psychologist who studies the role of behavioural factors in health and disease. As a Medical Delta Professor, she is now affiliated with Leiden University, TU Delft and Erasmus University. In that position, she conducts research at the intersection of various disciplines.…

Storm clouds are gathering for the European grants for ‘excellent’ research. Researchers therefore need to explain how important these grants are. This is what Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, President of the European Research Council (ERC), had to say during a visit to Leiden University on Thursday 24 Apr…

New research published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that these changes to the behavior of the immune system are persistent and can continue even after diet is improvedAlmost everyone knows that improving your eating habits will most likely improve your health. What most people may not…

Economic Anthropologist Erik Bähre talks on the Dutch News Radio Channel BNR about the effects of the Russia-Ukraine grain agreement for African countries.

The challenge of achieving fast quantification in metabolomics is the presence of severe matrix effects during the MS analysis of complex samples.

This thesis presents the results of a study on the interfaces of insulating oxides with and without the insertion of a magnetic layer.

How do digital technologies affect adolescent mental health and resilience? How do we foster a secure online environment? How should we deal with increasing rates of online crimes among adolescents? During the mini-symposium ‘The effect of the online world on adolescents’, presented by the interdisciplinary…

Psychologists Fenna Poletiek and Erik de Kwaadsteniet have received a grant from the FNV trade union to research people’s attitude to work if they receive a basic income. How do they plan to find answers?

The new Dutch government must act quickly to take rapid, far-reaching measures in three specific regions to tackle nitrogen emissions. This will create the space for a long-term strategy to deal with other urgent problems and the knot of obligations that the state will need to untangle. These are the…

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Danhof

By growing in a soil plants change the biotic and abiotic properties of the soil in which they grow.

The research aims to explore the evolutionary adaptability of enzymes and the impact of temperature on protein evolution pathways, using M. tuberculosis β-lactamase BlaC as the object of study. Enzymes inherently embody a delicate balance between activity and stability, and the acquisition of new enzymatic…

In this thesis we study the landscape of gravitational models which modify GR by introducing an additional scalar degree of freedom (d.o.f.) to source Cosmic Acceleration.

Spectroscopic studies on fluorescent single molecules in organic condensed matter does not only provide information about the molecule itself, but also its near environment. By suppression of phonon-induced broadening of spectral lines through cooling to low temperatures, small changes in the spectral…

Indonesian Law and Reality in the Mahakam Delta

Come to the Night of Discoveries art and science festival on 16 September. Various researchers from the university are speaking at the festival.

Regular users of cannabis are less aware of their own mistakes, and they are not good at creative thinking. This is the conclusion drawn by psychologist Mikael Kowal from his research on the effects of cannabis. PhD defence 6 October.

Promotor: C.U. Keller, Co-Promotor: F. Snik

Imagine that you have a chronic skin condition, characterized by red patches of itchy, scaly skin. You regularly notice people staring at your skin and sense their reluctance to shake your hand. Or imagine that you have Parkinson's Disease, causing your hands to tremble and making it difficult for you…

We are all aware of the importance of a healthy lifestyle. However, at the same time we also experience many difficulties when we are trying to change our behavior to become more healthy. For example, more often than not our good intentions to exercise more or to eat fewer unhealthy snacks fail miserably…

Health is a wonderful gift, both for humans and for society. If we are able to prevent both physical and mental illnesses, we can spare a lot of suffering and fight rising health costs. Social scientists and physicians in Leiden are working closely together to conduct research on the human mental, behavioural…

Having a chronic somatic condition can result in a variety of impairments in patients’ daily lives, including not only physical complaints such as pain, itch, and fatigue, but also problems of negative mood and impairments in social relationships. Next to disease characteristics, individual difference…

This research line is part of the living lab of the University’s Population Health interdisciplinary program, located at the LUMC Campus The Hague, where the Leiden University Medical Center collaborates with the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs and the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences…

In case of serious illness, treatment in the Intensive Care Unit (IC) may be necessary. Intensive care treatments has improved over the years and more and more seriously ill patients are surviving admission to the ICU. This favorable development however has a downside since long-term consequences of…

This thesis contributes to studying primordial cosmology theories and their detectability in future observations.

The first of April was the official start of Phase II of the collaborative “PCAD4Cod”-project on the effect of sound on fish populations. Hans Slabbekoorn, associate professor at the IBL, is the principal investigator and collaborates with three PhD-students, Dr. Erwin Winter, (Wageningen Marine Research),…

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.J. Kroes

Promotores: Prof.dr. H.J.M. de Groot, Prof.dr. J. Matysik (Universitaet Leipzig)

From the Spanish Flu during WWI to COVID-19: the role of the American government in these Pandemics. Professor Giles Scott-Smith, who together with Dario Fazzi and Gaetano Di Tommaso completed the book project Public Health and the American State, discusses a century of American responses to health…

Synthetic microswimmers take an important place within the interdisciplinary field of active soft matter.

How do you ensure that a drug has an effect on the right protein – and nothing else? Chemist Anthe Janssen explored various methods for determining the selectivity of potential medicines. He also looked at the substance BIA 10-2474, after a man died in a French clinical trial in 2016. PhD defence on…

Laura Heitman has been awarded a VIDI grant for her innovative drug research. Heitman strives to optimize a drug’s binding kinetics at its target in order to ultimately fight diseases effectively. She even pleads for a paradigm shift in drug discovery.