This thesis manuscript explores the use of video games as tools for conceptual exploration and academic research.

Are you mad about board games? Then we’ve got good news for you: we’ve developed our very own University game, HORA EST! It’s a fun way to learn more about the University. Get your family and friends together for an evening of fun and games!

How do games work? How do you make them? And how do games make us and our societies and cultures? The minor Game Studies will provide you with both the perspective and practice to give your own answers to these questions.

The Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs of Leiden University in The Hague has developed two Serious Games, 'het Grote Migratiespel' and 'het Schipholspel' to introduce secondary school students to their study and research programmes.

The Game Research Lab (GRL) uses digital games as a medium for academic research, and consider ‘serious’ games and entertainment games equally valuable objects of study.

The Game Research Lab uses digital games as a medium for academic research. It considers entertainment games and 'serious’ games as objects of study, develops novel approaches for creating, playing, and analysing games, and studies the interactions between games and AI.

Having open conversations about diversity and inclusion is an important first step towards change. Yet, such conversation can be emotional and vulnerable, and at times uncomfortable to initiate and sustain. The 'What’s Your Story?' Card Game aims to enable participants to exchange and respond to stories…

How well children learn depends to a large extent on good teachers and effective learning materials. Wilfried Admiraal investigates such issues as gaming as a modern learning tool. He concludes that this tool has little to offer less talented students.

In what way can the qualities of an existing context be used as guiding and enriching principles rather than limiting factors in the process of spatial transformation?

Promotor: F. Arbab, R. De Nicola, Co-Promotor: M. Tribastone

Combinatorial games are games for two competing players, moving in a turn-by-turn fashion, in which there is no chance nor hidden information⁠. Chess, checkers and the simpler tic tac toe are well-known examples of this class of games, as well as game of go⁠.

Can playing certain games decrease cognitive decline or even enhance cognitive performance in the aging population?

While it has traditionally been seen as a means of documenting an external reality or expressing an internal feeling, photography is now capable of actualizing never-existed pasts and never-lived experiences.

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. Zaanen & Prof.dr. K.E. Schalm

Over the last decades, aviation safety has improved strongly. As a downside, airline pilots do not have as many opportunities to develop through experience the competencies that they need in critical situations.

A defining fixture of our contemporary world, video games offer a rich spectrum of engagements with the past.

In deep reinforcement learning, searching and learning techniques are two important components. They can be used independently and in combination to deal with different problems in AI, and have achieved impressive results in game playing and robotics. These results have inspired research into artificial…

The project aims to develop an escape room-style game to teach students cyber crisis management and prepare them for real-world cybersecurity challenges

Political games have existed throughout history, but what is the role of 'play' in the way the American political world has developed? University lecturer Sara Polak has received an ERC Starting Grant to investigate this.

Not many scientists can claim to have received funding from NWO to blow bubbles and play with sand, but Martin van Hecke definitely can. Van Hecke, Professor of the Organisation of Disordered Matter, delivered his inaugural lecture on Friday 4 September, under the enigmatic title of: ‘Bellen, bollen,…

On Thursday 18 December, 170 first-year pupils from Gymnasium Haganum visited Leiden University’s Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA) in The Hague. The faculty has developed The Great Migration Game (Het grote Migratiespel) as a fun way to introduce pre-university pupils to its fields of…

The newly opened Culture Arcade exhibition is a place where cultural heritage and video games come together. It is co-organized and curated by the VALUE Foundation of which Faculty staff members Aris Politopoulos and Csilla Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke are part of, together with the Prince Claus Fund.

Infecting each other with viruses and bacteria while protecting yourself with medicines and vaccinations. Sounds like a fun evening, right? Master students Life Science & Technology Rafael Jezior and Dennis de Beeld certainly think so. Together, they developed ImmunoWars: an exciting card game based…

Academia and games. One is for serious people who only have time for research, the other is a pastime best avoided if you are or want to be one of these serious people, right? Not at all!

In her daily life, she is a student of Life Science and Technology, but not this summer. Guusje van Bolhuis is participating in the Olympic Games with the French hockey team. ‘Studying and playing hockey at top-level are very different, but with the right mindset, you can go far in both.’

In his lectures Aris Politopoulos combines archaeology with video games. He is one of the three nominees for the 2020 LUS Teaching Prize. 'A good teacher is always open to feedback from students.'

How do games help shape our perception of the past? Associate Professor Angus Mol receives a Vidi grant to answer this question.

In the new board game Epoch – Early Inventors you explore the prehistoric landscape. You gather food and raw material to develop tools and skills, and you try to appease the gods. Dr Maikel Kuijpers was involved in its development from the start and he is very happy with the result. “There is a lot…

Studying and being an entrepreneur at the same time? Stan (21), a master's student in Crisis and Security Management, is doing it. With the knowledge gained from his master's, he developed a game about cybersecurity: HackX. Through HackX, he wants to make others aware of dangers online.

VALUE (Videogames and Archaeology at Leiden UnivErsity) is publishing an edited volume on the intersection of archaeology, heritage and video games. In this volume, both scholars and game creators are collaboratively writing to raise academic awareness, address a variety of research opportunities and…

Het project, waarbij studenten spelenderwijs kennismaken met de praktijk van het ondernemingsrecht, is genomineerd in de categorie Innovatief Juridisch Onderwijs.

The Bachelor Honours Class 'Homo Ludens: Why We Play' combines games, theory, and practice. Students dive into all aspects of humanity in which games play a part and discuss them, both on a theoretical an experiential level: 'Occasionally, you touch upon what play is, but then it eludes you.'

How did you get to where you are now? This is a key question in the Academic Life Course board game, developed by and for academics. ‘In a normal working week we hardly ever talk about the career choices we make, but with this game, we do.’

Three Leiden students will be sharing their knowledge of history while playing video games. The livestreams are part of the ‘Streaming the Past’ project and will be available on the popular streaming platform Twitch. The first livestream will be on Thursday 20 May.

How do young people react when an unknown person gets under their skin in an online game? A sense of control over their social environment can prevent young people from quickly resorting to anger in such a situation, development psychologists Sheida Novin, Carolien Rieffe and colleagues discovered.…

On 10 March students of the advanced master's in International Children’s Rights and the Dutch Child Law master's watched the documentary Shadow Game with filmmaker Els van Driel.

Have you ever wondered what your choices would be, facing a major crisis? Had your thoughts about the course of action taken bij authorities, media, law enforcement or the public in the wake of a terrorist attack?

A group of postdoc and PhDs at our Focus on Emotions lab organized an escape room for staff and students to increase their awareness of diversity and accessibility matters. It was designed particularly for this year’s EUniWell FestiWell, which ran under the headline “Towards global sustainable well-being”.…

Psychology Lab on Wheels makes science accessible for everyone. On Monday 24 June, we will be back with our mobile lab at the Old Observatory near the Singelpark in Leiden. Join our research to learn to better recognise emotions with a Serious game and read more about participant Maxime and game developer…

Morning yoga, having your resumé checked at the information market, or dancing for inclusiveness: just a small selection of the activities of the first Science PhD Day on Thursday 18 April. Around 120 PhD candidates from all eight institutes of our faculty attended the day. 'A great success', according…

The Netherlands is embroiled in a complex nitrogen crisis. Berent Baris wants to use his NitroGenius game to demonstrate the complexity of this crisis.

In order to better understand the course of Alzheimer’s disease, Frédérique Kok believes that a strategic and structured approach is needed: the Mastermind research approach. With her LUF grant, Kok wants to generate high-quality data to build a mathematical model that can recognize the onset of the…

This dissertation shows that dialogical logic constitutes a powerful and flexible general framework for the development and study of various logical formalisms and combinations thereof.

Seven years ago, Aris Politopoulos left Athens for a master’s programme at the Leiden Faculty of Archaeology. Now he has nearly finished his PhD dissertation. Furthermore, he has become a lecturer at the research group for the Archaeology of the Near East, and co-founded a foundation that deals with…

bachelorstudent Serafine Beugelink ontwikkelt kaartspel over elementaire deeltjes en deeltjesfysica. Ze zet succescol haar eigen bedrijf op.

On 7 October 2021 Simone van der Hof participated in an online talk show as part of the Dutch Media Week. The theme was the research project she is working on with Tony van Rooij of the Trimbos Institute and Max Birk of TU Eindhoven: Behavioral Design in Video Games.

Sander Hölsgens is Assistant Professor, anthropologist and the editor of Gamer.nl. In NRC he talks about his favourite moments in the online game The Elder Scrolls Online. Despite a mediocre start in 2014, the computer game based on the Elder Scrolls series now has an active community of millions of…

In the EU Law Live podcast episode ‘Tax, gambling and the internal market’, Vincent Delhomme discusses the recent Admiral Gaming Network case, dealing with the validity under EU free movement provisions of national tax measures in the field of gambling.

The LUMC, Leiden University and The Hague University of Applied Sciences want to help health professionals support behaviour change in the population. Such change would help people live healthier lives and reduce their risk of disease. The Municipality of The Hague is supporting this educational project…