One of our talented researchers is Anne-Laura van Harmelen. As Professor of Brain, Safety and Resilience, she studies distressing childhood experiences, such as abuse, bullying or trauma.

The Leiden University Thesis Prize was awarded on Alumni Day on 16 February. On this sunny Saturday, the seven nominees, one from each faculty, came with their family and friends to the Kamerlingh Onnes Building for the award ceremony of this annual prize for the best thesis.

On 14 January 2019, Shermarke Hassan boarded a plane to Milan. This young PhD candidate was going to spend the next three months doing research at the ‘Angelo Bianchi Bonomi Hemophilia and Thrombosis Centre,’ one of the world’s biggest research and treatment centres for haemophilia, a rare condition that affects the blood’s ability to clot.

Why do innocent people sometimes spend years in prison? EUREX is a registry of miscarriages of justice in Europe that ultimately led to exonerations. The aim is to prevent such mistakes being made in future. One of the initiators is Leiden legal psychologist Linda Geven.

A book with a fake printer, a pamphlet with a treaty that does not exist and an execution print with a supportive crowd: just some examples of forgeries from the early modern Dutch Republic. They are exposed by LUC-historian Jacqueline Hylkema.

To cover up their deportation plans which targeted Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Nazis re-opened schools. In her inaugural lecture, historian Sarah Cramsey demonstrates with examples how care was used ‘as a weapon’ during the Holocaust. She also stresses that care is a unifying cement in society and calls for more historical research.

A unique multicenter study, including about 3,500 youth between 10 and 25 years old from across the globe, shows that artificial intelligence - specifically machine learning - is able to identify individuals with anxiety disorders based on their unique brain structure.