LIACS is committed to inclusive work and study experiences, respectful of all students and staff, and free of discrimination, harassment, bullying, or retaliation. An inclusive and respectful atmosphere is vital to free expression and the open exchange of ideas.

A new bill is currently under debate in the Netherlands, advocating raising the prison sentence for manslaughter from 15 to 25 years. ‘This very serious crime (...) evokes feelings of disgust and insecurity in society’, Dutch Minister for Justice and Security Grapperhaus comments on the sentence that…

The League of European Research Universities (LERU) makes recommendations for the future of the Social Sciences and Humanities research in Europe. Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) research is vital to build an innovative and resilient Europe.

Social assistance and minimum income benefits are important instruments as a safeguard against low income and poverty. There have been major developments in minimum income benefits both in developed and developing countries over the last decades. Our study collects several empirical studies regarding…

The overall objective of ECS is to widen and strengthen the European Citizen Science community through capacity building and awareness raising activities such as the creation of a European Citizen Science Academy and the establishment of a network of 28 ECS Ambassadors.

Climate change is made up, the secret services murdered Pim Fortuyn and JFK, and the moon landing was a fake show. Conspiracy theories are of all times, providing sensation and entertainment, but also unrest and fear. The corona pandemic is new fuel for conspiracy theorists who set fire to 5G masts,…

How do people vote? How rational are voting choices? How much do external factor weigh in? In this article social scientis provide some background.

Which adolescents are more at risk of developing social anxiety disorder later in life?

PathOS aims to contribute to a better understanding and measurement of Open Science impacts and their causal mechanisms. This is pivotal in order to develop effective OS policy in the EU (European Union). It will do so by collecting concrete evidence of OS effects, by studying the pathways of OS practices,…

Intelligence scholars have been struggling to find the conditions under which international intelligence cooperation occurs. Most focus on transactional motives and guaranteed returns, the so called ‘Quid pro Quo’. At the same time, trust is often mentioned as one of the foremost conditions, yet it…

On the occasion of prof Paul van der Heijden’s stepping down as Rector Magnificus and President of the Executive Board of Leiden University in 2013 the Chair bearing his name on Social Justice was established. It was a “farewell present” of the Leiden University to it’s Rector.

Reflective dialogue is an effective instrument for professional learning of teachers. This research considers the characteristics, development, stimulating and limiting conditions for reflective dialogues in the context of Dutch primary school teachers who collaborate and learn together. The goal is…

Day-to-day activities are important in the development of social identities, the establishment of social standing, and the communal understanding of societal rules. This perspective is broadly referred to as practice theory and relates to the power of an overarching social structure and the individual…

This thesis, conducted in the framework of ERC Starting grant project BABYLON (PI: Caroline Waerzeggers), presents an investigation into Babylonian society, focusing on the city of Borsippa during Neo-Babylonian and early Persian rule (c. 620-484 BCE).

The mission of the Plant Science research programme is to contribute to the sustainable production of high quality crops, flowers and high-value bio-based products. This is realised by generating fundamental knowledge of basic biological processes related to development of plants and their interaction…

To what extent are individuals socialised with heteronormativity and gender norms by the national context in which they live, by Dutch schoolbooks, and within Dutch families?

New Approaches to Understanding the Eastern Mediterranean during Byzantine and Ottoman Times

This NWO-funded research programme focuses on the assumptions and methodology of the writing of history of science. History of science is in many respects a flourishing discipline: it currently yields an impressive volume of studies. Systematic reflection about the ways in which history of science may…

Across cultures, parents help their children master the social and linguistic codes needed in adult life. Recent research on language socialization found important cross-cultural differences, pointing out the need for more diversity for a full understanding of this process. Deaf communities form…

Dutch knowledge institutions are taking steps to recognise and reward open science. On 13 December, the Open Science NL Steering Board approved a total of 1.2 million euros in grants to 23 institutions. The Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) leads the national coordination of the local…

For this project we delve into children's digital media use during the transition from kindergarten to group 3 and investigate its impact on their social development.

We perform multidisciplinary research at molecular, cellular, and organismal levels of animal biology to increase fundamental understanding of health and disease.

In the research programme Microbial Sciences we perform state-of-the-art research in the field of biotechnology and microbial sciences.

This paper written by Vydra and Kantorowicz answers the research question ‘What policy-relevant information does Twitter contain?’ as well as the research question ‘How does this information change between a period of normalcy and a period of crisis?’

Written by a select international group of leading privacy scholars, Social Dimensions of Privacy endorses and develops an innovative approach to privacy.

Computational thinking, programming, and algorithms form the basic of many of the things that are shaping our world, the way we work, interact, organize ourselves, and even spend our free time with social networks, streaming media, and games. And this transformation is far from being complete, it is…

The author researched the motivations of bureaucrats to integrate refugees into welfare services even when they do not have any legal obligation to do so.

Sanne Kellij and colleagues systematically reviewed 142 articles, examining evidence for three hypotheses on the relation between victimization and social information processing.

Robotics, using social mechanisms like hormonal modulation, may accelerate our understanding of core sociality principles. By looking at social robotics through an evolutionary lens, we propose this field as a promising framework to investigate the fundamental bricks of sociality from an evolutionary…

The availability of indicators based on social media has opened the possibility to track the online interactions between social media users and scholarly entities.

The master's specialisation Data Science: Computer Science at Leiden University provides students thorough knowledge and understanding of statistical and computational aspects of data analysis, including their application in databases, advances in data mining, networks, pattern recognition, and deep…

Grassroots heritage initiatives and community engagement

How is the development of physiological responses to social evaluation in adolescence affected by other normative developments, such as pubertal, socio-cognitive and psychosocial development? Are social anxiety and public speaking anxiety associated with characteristic patterns of stress responses…

The research programme Statistical Science is concerned with the analysis and interpretation of masses of data, the quantification of uncertainty using probability models, and the development and benchmarking of algorithms and methods with these aims.

A Diachronic Perspective on the Aegean

The aim of this study is to further develop the Open Science Monitor, which started as a pilot study.

There are eight institutes at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences:

The Faculty of Science

Leiden University, Department of Economics

The Social Assistance and Minimum Income Levels and Replacement Rates Dataset, assembled by Jinxian Wang and Olaf van Vliet (version December 2016), provides data on minimum income benefit schemes in 33 countries from 1990 until 2009.

On 24 January 2024, Vethaak defended the thesis 'Empirical Analysis of Social Insurance, Work Incentives and Employment Outcomes'. The doctoral research was supervised by Koen Caminada and Pierre Koning.

A mosaic is the only image which can do justice to museums in the Caribbean. They are as diverse and plentiful as the many communities which form the cores of their organizations and the hearts of their missions. These profoundly social museums adopt participatory practices and embark on community engagement…

The key question addressed in this family study is whether the psychophysiological and neurocognitive abnormalities often reported in SAD patients are heritable and can thus be found in family members of SAD patients as well. Determination of heritability of these deficiencies is essential for endophenotyping.…

After your graduation, Leiden University would love to stay in touch with you. Alumni are an important part of the university; with your experience we can improve the education, and you can be part of a valuable network full of knowledge and experience. Find out what options you have to stay in touch…

What is and should be the role of universities in supporting business? How can business benefit more of relationships with science? And what is the role of policy makers in supporting a productive relationship between science and business? Professor Simcha Jong Kon Chin examines the interactions between…

The project investigates how bilingual speakers navigate lexico-syntactic features, including grammatical gender, classifier systems, and the linear order of adjectives and nouns, across Spanish and Chinese in both unilingual and bilingual contexts.

The Karlsruhe Bede in Context: Cod. Aug. Perg. 167 – The Making of a Ninth Century Manuscript. 6-7 February 2025