UnMiSSeD studies the interaction between misinformation and science in societal debates using a mixed qualitative-quantitative approach.

'Academics who share their knowledge with the outside world on social media are often insulted or even threatened. Especially female academics and academics of colour seem to regularly be the victim of sexist and racist comments.' This is what Ineke Sluiter, Professor of Greek Language and Literature…

On Thursday 28 September, the Committee on Social Minimum, of which Koen Caminada is a member, presented its second report to outgoing minister for poverty policy in the Netherlands, Carola Schouten. The Committee was established by the minister at the request of the House of Representatives.

Africa is online. Leiden Africa expert Mirjam de Bruijn is fascinated by the fast development of mobile telephony and social media in Africa. She maintains a website on the topic, focusing on isolated, marginalised and conflict-ridden areas in Middle Africa.

Nowadays children grow up with social media. This may influence the development of brain regions involved in social interaction. In their review article in Nature Communications, Crone and Konijn illustrate how neuroscience can contribute to a better understanding of how media and peers influence adolescents'…

In June the Final Festival took place, the closing event of the 'Social Science Lab'. New participants of Honours College Science and Society presented their solution for a current social problem.

In the present-day United States, to what degree(s) are far-right men and women similar and/or dissimilar in their motivating factors for engaging in far-right social movement activism?

Compare human social behaviour at a country level and you will find differences. Japan has the highest score whereas the Netherlands is just above average. This is what psychologist Niels van Doesem discovered in research with an international team of 64 colleagues in 31 industrialised countries. Their…

On Friday 17 November at 15.30h Prof. Simon Deakin will give the first seminar of the Reform of Social Legislation Speaker Series

The aim of the project is to contribute to the process of archive formation ongoing in Post-Apartheid South Africa through the inclusion of photographs that have been either unacknowledged or excised from the national canon.

During the event 'Fout?' by De Jonge Akademie, Ellen de Bruijn held a lecture about the social context of making mistakes and the psychological elements of learning from it.

Monday 26 September, 2016 saw the first confrontation between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Expectations were high – not only about the content of the debate, but also about how the two presidential candidates would behave, and how this might influence their campaigns. We asked three researchers…

A 5 million euros grant from the Dutch Research Agenda allows Anouk de Koning and co-applicants Femke Kaulingfreks and Maartje van der Woude to study social interventions in eight Dutch cities in an innovative and interdisciplinary way.

Understandably, coronavirus is often viewed from a medical perspective. However, researchers in the social sciences and humanities possess a great deal of expertise that could improve our understanding of the virus outbreak and its impact on society. A new portal is consolidating this knowledge.

How do people living in a remote part of Northern Mongolia experience the post-socialist transition that occurred twenty years ago? Based on extensive fieldwork, cultural anthropologist Richard Fraser argues that this is not at all clear. In his PhD dissertation, he developed a new framework based on…

Double Bind. Public service professionals coping with contrasting demands. How do public service professionals align their PSM with contrasting demands set by the organizational and social contexts in which they work?

The Social Resilience & Security interdisciplinary programme broadens its scope by embedding two research projects lead by Dr. Joanne Mouthaan. The projects adress suicide prevention skills and mental health of Ukraine refugees. Both projects will be integrated in the programme with the aim to improve…

Could policies aimed at preventing radicalisation undermine the very trust and social cohesion they aim to strengthen?

The Netherlands has also announced special measures to fight SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. These measures have at times caused questionable behaviour, such as stockpiling or charging exorbitant sums for masks. But the intentions behind this seemingly antisocial behaviour are not necessarily bad, says Professor…

From the 19th century, Dutch colonisers on Curaçao relied heavily on the Catholic church. Missionaries provided not only teaching and spiritual care for the Catholic Afro-Caribbeans, they also ensured social order and peace. However, these benefits came at a price. The gap to good education and participation…

Following the New Year's speech of Dean Hanna Swaab a total of 4 prize winners were showered with praise and flowers during the new year's reception 10 January, 2017. Anthropologist Igor Boog won the Casimir Prize for best lecturer, pedagogue Ilona Schoep the Master Thesis Prize, political scientist…

The Developmental and Educational Psychology unit nominated Jiemiao Chen's paper

Nature, nurture and neural mechanisms of social emotion regulation in childhood

Slavoj Žižek is one of the most prominent public intellectuals of the left. His central claim holds that “today, it is more crucial than ever to continue to question the very foundations of capitalism as a global system”.

It’s not a regular occurrence at Leiden University: two professors giving their inaugural lecture on the same day. Berna Güroğlu and Ellen de Bruijn specialise in related disciplines: they both research the influence of social context on processes in the brain – Güroğlu in adolescents and De Bruijn…

Extremist users of Telegram are moving en masse to other chat apps, such as the anonymous SimpleX. In this way, they hope to avoid detection, now that Telegram founder Pavel Durov is going to share personal data of criminal users with authorities.

Milou Deelen (24) rapidly rose to prominence as the Dutch advocate of frank talk about women’s sexuality. It has cost her dear, but she has received so much assent, praise and support that she won’t be giving up anytime soon. In the Annie Romein Verschoor Lecture on 5 March, Leiden University’s celebration…

Empathic or anxious mistakes? A neurocognitive investigation of the development of social performance monitoring in youth growing up in stressful versus non-stressful environments

Tahir Abbas, associate professor at ISGA, has been appointed as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. The Academy of Social Sciences is the UK’s national academy of academics, learned societies and practitioners in the social sciences. Its purpose is to promote social science in the United Kingdom…

On 11 March, Oliver Rathkolb (University of Vienna) held a lecture about Social Democracy.

Half the world's population is introverted and comes home drained after an evening of drinks. Their social battery is empty. 'People with autism have a similar experience, but much more intense,' says Boya Li, who researches emotional regulation in children with autism and hearing impairment. Does this…

Vietnam’s record of expanding access to education, and especially its performance on international assessments such as PISA, has raised questions about what Vietnam got right, how, and why and what insights Vietnam’s experiences might offer for efforts at improving the performance of education systems…

This year’s Staatsrechtconferentie (Constitutional Law Conference) was held at the University of Amsterdam on 13 December 2019 and dedicated to the topic of the Economic Constitution. Dr. Eduardo Arenas Catalán, lecturer at the Europa Institute, presented his paper Where do social rights begin? Dr.…

Commentators and scholars view both social media and cities as sites of fragmentation. Since both urban dwellers and social media users tend to form assortative social ties, so the reasoning goes, identity-based divisions are fortified and polarization is exacerbated in digital and urban spaces.

At the beginning of July, a committee appointed by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) presented its report 'Social Safety in Dutch Academia. From Paper to Practice', to the Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Science. The committee was chaired by Professor Naomi Ellemers…

Adva Eichengreen starts a fellowship focusing on enhancing social participation of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. Eichengreen has been offered a postdoc position at Leiden University as part of the Marie-Sklodowska-Curie “LEaDing Fellows” Project within the collaboration of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus…

KWR Watercycle Research Institute and the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University are collaborating in the area of social impact.

Working towards resilient communities, transparency in science and connecting with the employment market – these are the three key themes being addressed by the departments of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Dutch universities. On 11 February, they presented a joint sector plan to Marcelis Boereboom,…

Marie Schwed Shenker, PhD candidate at eLaw, has successfully completed an intensive summer school on Social Robotics at Utrecht University. The program offered a comprehensive mix of theoretical instruction and hands-on experience, providing her with the skills to design and experiment with social…