How does having limited access to the social world affect Deaf or Hard of Hearing (DHH) children’s emotional development? And in turn, how do impairments in emotional functioning affect social development and the development of psychopathology?

Dissertation

Why do children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have difficulties with acquiring emotion regulation skills; and how is this related to their social impairments and comorbid psychopathology?

Development and validation of instruments that can measure different aspects of emotional competence in children with normal and atypical development, and in different cultures

This dissertation aims at enhancing our knowledge of whether a CI provides sufficient access to auditory speech input to acquire verbal morphology by comparing outcomes of CI children to those of their normal hearing peers and to those of children with specific language impaired (SLI).

In this commentary, Sabine Witting, Assistant Professor at eLaw, provides a comprehensive analysis of the Second Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

Can we reshape school playgrounds through data and design? By using AI and wearable sensors, data scientist Maedeh Nasri discovered ways to create environments where children, including those with ADHD and autism, can connect, play, and grow.

Reading emotions from others’ faces strengthens social relationships. But how is that for children with hearing loss? Can they learn to read faces just as easily as hearing children? The study by Yung-Ting Tsou and colleagues shows that daily

On October 20th, at 13:00-15:00 in Grotiuszaal (A051 KOG) the advanced International Children’s Rights program and the Leiden Institute of Immigration Law will co-organize a lecture by Ms. Margaret Tuite, the European Commission Coordinator for the Rights of the Child.

In the last five years the Dutch children’s ombudsman has developed into a full-fledged supervisory body monitoring compliance with children’s rights in the Netherlands. A fuller engagement with its statutory tasks, greater involvement of children and strengthening the autonomous position of the children’s…

Growth and development affect the metabolism of drugs administered to neonates, infants, and children.

Adoptees in the Netherlands generally do not use more medication than their non-adopted peers.

The KNAW Early Career Award 2019 has been awarded to lecturer in children’s rights Stephanie Rap. She receives the award for her research into international children's rights.

On the occasion of the conferral of an honorary doctorate to children’s rights activist Graça Machel, a fund has been established that will enable two female students from South Africa to come and study in Leiden.

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded Veni funding to Stephanie Rap. This award offers promising young scientists the opportunity to develop their own ideas over a period of three years.

An integrated approach of physiological concepts, advanced statistical approaches and large clinical datasets.

The book 'The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child' is the result of the international academic conference – ’25 Years CRC’ – which was held in November 2014 in Leiden on the occasion of the 25th birthday of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) by the UN General Assembly. How do countries implement this treaty and how does it relate to their own national legal system? PhD defence on 3 December 2019.

On 22 June, Anneke Koning defended the thesis 'Return to sender: a multi-method study of guardianship against transnational sexual exploitation of children'. The doctoral research was supervised by Joanne van der Leun, Masja van Meeteren and Johan van Wilsem.

This longitudinal study is focused on neurodevelopmental problems in young children with XXY, XXX and XYY, aged 1 to 6 years.

From descriptive to physiological models that can predict oral absorption and elimination of CYP3A substrates across the pediatric age range.

Contraband and forced recruitment: How rebels' exploitation of natural resources can increase their willingness to forcibly recruit children.

On 18 October 2017, Leiden Law School was honored to welcome a group of experts upon invitation of Prof. M.R. Bruning, professor of Child Law and head of the Child Law Department of Leiden University, to discuss current and future research projects in the field of international child abduction law and…

From 23-25 August the Child Abuse & Violence Congres ‘ Broken 2018’ took place. Mariëlle Bruning was one of the keynote speakers and talked about the child’s right to protection against all forms of violence and the implementation of this children’s right in domestic child protection systems.

Organised in collaboration with the Bosnia and Herzegovina State Ministry of Justice, UNICEF’s Europe and Central Asia Regional Office and UNICEF’s Bosnia and Herzegovina Country Office, the conference took place from 25-27 February 2020, in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina).

On 3 December 2019, Meda Couzens defended her thesis 'The application of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by national courts'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. T. Liefaard and Prof. J.J. Sloth-Nielsen.

The aim of this thesis is to expedite and ensure the systematic accuracy of clearance scaling from adults to paediatric patients, with a special focus on drugs undergoing hepatic metabolism.

Stephanie Rap and Yannick van den Brink, both assistant professor at the Department of Child Law, presented their research at the 11th EU Forum on the rights of the child: Children deprived of their liberty and alternatives to detention, which took place in Brussels from 6 to 8 November 2017.

On Thursday 15 December, Elisavet Alexiadou has defended her doctoral thesis ‘The Right to Health. A Human Rights Perspective with a Case Study on Greece.’ at the Academy Building of Leiden University. Supervisor was Prof.dr. A.C. Hendriks.

A pregnant woman from Drenthe will lose her baby directly after it is born. A juvenile court has already ruled during her pregnancy that the infant will go to a foster family. The court believes that the child would risk physical neglect.

Prof. Ton Liefaard has been appointed as member of the Council for the Administration of Criminal Justice and Protection of Juveniles.

Almost three years after receiving her honorary doctorate, Dr Graça Machel returned to Leiden University. Over the course of two days she spoke with students, researchers, and other interested persons, about human rights – particularly those of women and children – in a world in which these are continually…

Lecture, Sociolinguistics & Discourse Studies Series

This thesis aims at thinking through the ethical position of animals in a way that differs radically from the manner in which this ethical position is thought within contemporary animal rights discourse.

Dr Yannick van den Brink, Assistant Professor at the Department of Child Law, has been awarded a grant from the Rubicon programme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) to conduct research for a period of eighteen months at the University of Cambridge, Institute of Criminology,…

Dr. Yannick van den Brink’s PhD thesis, titled ‘Pre-trial detention in the Dutch juvenile justice system’, has been awarded the FJR Prize 2018.

Jasmina Mačkić, Assistant Professor of Human Rights Law at the Europa Institute, has published her book, Proving Discriminatory Violence at the European Court of Human Rights. This work is based on her doctoral dissertation, which she defended in May 2017 and which was funded by the Netherlands Organisation…

In this article, Maria-Elena Kisyova, Yannick Veilleux-Lepage and Vanessa Newby shed some light on how a small but highly visible group of influencers are actively working to promote a dangerous far-right ideology.

From 27-29 August, the Conference of the International Society for Child Indicators (ISCI) took place in Tartu (Estonia). Prof. Ton Liefaard was one of the key-note speakers during that conference.

PhD defence

Teacher training should do more to prepare teachers for the pedagogical aspects of teaching, Professor of Educational Sciences Tim Mainhard will argue in his inaugural lecture. ‘Children who find learning difficult particularly benefit from a close relationship with their teacher.’

It is difficult to deny the value and importance of human rights, and yet their application in the context of climate change is increasingly contested. While some argue that it is difficult to establish the violation of human rights by climate change processes, others contend that human rights are anthropocentric,…

Clearance is the most important pharmacokinetic parameter for drug dose selection. Pharmacokinetic information is typically first available in the adult population, and in general only limited pharmacokinetic data are available in children when drugs enter into the market. It is therefore of the utmost…

On Wednesday 13 December, Melanie Fink defended her doctoral thesis ‘Frontex and Human Rights: Responsibility in “Multi-Actor Situations” under the ECHR and EU Public Liability Law’. The supervisors are Rick Lawson and Jorrit Rijpma from Leiden, as well as Manfred Nowak, and Stephan Wittich from the…

On 30 May, Gert Jan Boeve defended the thesis 'The general right of suspension'. The doctoral research was supervised by Bart Krans and Alex Geert Castermans.

Dr Claire Achmad has taken up the role of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Chief Children’s Commissioner from 1 November 2023, for a term of five years.

This Justice for Children Call to Action offers a new starting point to place children at the heart of an emerging global movement for justice. It strives to ensure that, in collective efforts to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, no child is left behind.