An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2019, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

Many of our staff and students have won an award, received a grant, obtained an academic fellowship for their quality or have been socially engaged due to their specific expertise. See below for an overview per year.

Children and adolescents really do use their ‘smart’ brain areas. This has been confirmed by an extensive and long-running study of the brain carried out by developmental psychologist Sabine Peters . Her findings can have important consequences for education. PhD defence 27 January.

In a guest lecture, Senior Vice President at Volvo Penta, Peter Hertinge, shared his lessons on leadership with master honours students of the Leiden Leadership Programme. 'If you set expectations, people will behave accordingly.'

The NVIC has published a series of scholarly publications in Arabic and several European languages.

This project intends to provide an integrated linguistic assessment of the hypothesised migration route of the Tocharians.

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.…

In our lab, we investigate the physics and material properties of low-dimensional systems.

Conferences, Workshops and Lectures showcasing research and tools in Digital Humanities.

Is private law ready for the challenges of our time?

'Dialogues Between Artistic Research and Science and Technology Studies', edited by Henk Borgdorff, Peter Peters and Trevor Pinch, will be published by Routledge on November 18

The number of cases of coronavirus in the Netherlands is on the rise. Some mayors are now calling for measures that are more far-reaching than those at present. For example, they want it to be possible to enforce measures behind the front door. Would that be allowed?

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.

This dissertation together with the artworks documented in it is the result of an investigation across multiple media over a seven-year period of the cultural, artistic and spiritual legacy of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement.

These honors and distinctions were given to work that was done within the Media Technology program by both students and staff.

Data science is now growing fast in many places, but scholars at Leiden University have been developing data science techniques for a long time already. Thanks to their broad-based expertise, Leiden statisticians are currently combining the achievements in statistics with the latest methods of statistical…

We’re delighted to announce our plenary speakers.

Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

INFORM (Introduction of the data protection reform to the judicial system) is a project granted by the Directorate-General Justice and Consumers of the European Commission.

So you graduated from the Media Technology program? Congratulations, Master of Science! Here you find information that is relevant after your graduation.

The aim is to develop methods to assess environmental and occupational exposure to (individual) pesticides, to be applied in epidemiological studies investigating pesticide exposure and human health. Furthermore, we aim to investigate the potential association between exposure to pesticides and Parkinson’s…

Some examples of AI-research done at Leiden.

Aim: To develop and enable application of a practical, flexible, user-friendly platform to provide the scientific community with a tool to generate land surface products and its associated uncertainties and exploit these for data-intensive science.

Research report January 2020. Supported by the lectorate ‘Music, Education and Society’, research group ‘Making in Music’, Royal Conservatoire The Hague

How is social cognition shaped by our knowledge of language and stories?

Research on the global field of museums, heritage, commemoration, consumption and material culture

This project aims to revisit the ways in which religious minorities in the Middle East participated in, contributed to, and opposed the Arab nationalism of the post-war years, when the British and French ruled the region via the Mandates. Research question: How did religious minorities in the Middle…

How does stress influence cognitive performance? What is the role of selective attention to threatening information in this effect? Could we prevent stress-induced decline of cognitive performance with pharmacological interventions? Could we use resting state theta/beta ratio as a biomarker for cognitive…

This collection, edited by Sophie Vériter, Monica Kaminska, Dennis Broeders and Joachim Koops, includes six papers exploring and investigating European responses to COVID-related disinformation, specifically the responses of France, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, Serbia, and Hungary.

This part entails the analysis of an extensive sample of animal bone (c. 30,000 pieces) retrieved from well-defined archaeological contexts of the early period at Tell Sabi Abyad, c. 6800-6200 BC. It comprises aspects of taphonomy, ageing and osteometry, the reconstruction of the local spectrum of domestic…

Education and Organisation Development

What distinguishes a tumour cell from a healthy cell? Researchers are trying to answer this question as precisely as possible. Certain differences could eventually lead to new therapies.

Within the Global Ethnography specialisation, you can develop your own research project or make use of the research opportunities offered by our staff members listed below.

Research in this group, headed by Gerard van Westen, focusses on computational methods integrated in different parts of the drug discovery process. More specifically, topics include innovative treatments for cancer, selectivity modeling, translational research, allosteric modulation, drug resistance…

Ahead of the times? We’ve been that for 450 years. As the oldest university in the Netherlands, we’ve sailed through the centuries with our sights fixed firmly on the society of the future. Our anniversary in 2025 is a chance to look back too. A chance to celebrate the impact of our research and teaching.…

The new cabinet threatens to cut nearly a billion euros from higher education. This not only endangers academic work, it is a disaster for the Netherlands itself. The proposed penalty on study extensions and other financial measures will heavily impact students and will reduce education accessibility.…

The Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) is devoted to the study of places in the human world from antiquity to the present time in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective.

Conducting research on reliability of journalism and the trust in media.

How will we celebrate our anniversary in 2025?

Leiden’s expertise on the Middle East spans from ancient history to contemporary tensions in the region. By studying languages, cultures, religions, literature, art, and philosophy in in conjunction, we create an indispensable, in-depth understanding.

Op 4 oktober vindt op de Vrije Universiteit het symposium "Kronieken, 1400-1850" plaats. Dit symposium wordt georganiseerd ter ere van het verschijnen van de handelseditie van het proefschrift van Peter Bakker. Drie VU-historici belichten hun onderzoek naar dit onderwerp vanuit verschillende hoeken.…

In studies, it is an old acquaintance, the p-value. But mathematician Peter Grünwald wants to get rid of it. The p-value is too susceptible to fraud and can lead to a distorted picture of reality and chance. That is why he wants to work with the e-value. De Volkskrant spoke to him about it.

Recently, a paper by Peter Grünwald was published in the prestigious scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Grünwald is full professor of Statistical Learning at the Mathematical Institute and senior researcher at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica.

How do societies move forward with sustainable, effective and efficient management of Earth's water resources?

The "BRAVE NEW WORLD" conference is about how future technology will impact human life. On November 8-9 it is held in Leiden. Two of the invited speakers are researchers and lecturers of the Media Technology program.

Mathematics students Pim Spelier and Bob Zwetsloot both won a medal at the International Mathematics Competition for University Students (IMC) 2018 in Bulgaria. Spelier talks about the competition, his preparations, and a mistake that almost costed him his good ranking.

The brains of adolescents react more responsively to receiving rewards. This can lead to risky behaviour, but, according to Leiden University research, it also has a positive function: it makes learning easier. Publication in Nature Communications.

The collaboration between ISGA and the NIPV (Netherlands Institute for Public Safety) has been made official. This took place under the guidance of initiators Jeroen Wolbers (ISGA) and Peter Bos (NIPV) during the conclusion of the three-part lecture series on the Dutch crisis management system. Sanneke…

By measuring proteins in tears, ophthalmologists can more easily diagnose dry eyes (Dry Eye Disease). Peter Raus, a Belgian ophthalmologist and PhD student at the Institute of Biology Leiden, developed a new method for protein determination in tear fluid. The technique is also promising for the early…