Morality, mathematics, geometry, geography, music, navigation, and language are traditionally viewed as uniquely human cultural achievements and abilities. The study of their development and variation is classified as part of the humanities and social sciences. These fields have been mainly studied…

Teaching reading comprehension in secondary education

Mazatec chants and ancient Mesoamerican pictography

With Knowledge through the Neighbourhoods, we collect and share science, knowledge, art and expertise from all the neighbourhoods of Leiden and the surrounding area.

Local Knowledge Syndrome and Donor-Promoted Public Sector Reforms in Developing Countries. Effective development often fails because relief organizations don't study the local knowlegde and problems, says Moosa Elayah. A Local Bank of Knowledge can be the answer.

Researchers have the whole world as their work area. Dutch researchers collaborate with Chinese, Australians give lectures in Lithuania, Koreans move to America and back. Who can contribute to academic knowledge, who benefits from it and who pays for it? A fair and effective system for this has not…

The master's programme in Philosophy of Knowledge at Leiden University is your opportunity to investigate the connections between philosophy and science in historical perspective.

The Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) aims on doing applied research with partners. You can be involved in our research, and in the knowledge transfer of our research results.

Osteoarchaeologists help forensic scientists solve crimes. They also study bone material from the Second World War in order to identify victims.

Knowledge is everywhere at Leiden University. It is also accessible for those who do not study or work at the University.

Today, knowledge is the most crucial element to stimulate organizational competitiveness and economic development.

Industrialised countries mine raw materials in areas inhabited by Indigenous Peoples and appropriate the knowledge and culture of these peoples. Leiden anthropologists work to protect their rights.

The studies reported in this thesis were situated in the context of an innovation of Dutch secondary school biology curricula. As in any innovation, the practical knowledge of teachers determine the outcomes through the decisions they make while planning and teaching their lessons. The aim of the studies…

The objective of this project is to understand the content and structure of science teachers’ knowledge and beliefs, and how these change in the context of pre-service teacher education and educational innovation.

Schemas are knowledge structures that allow us to make efficient judgments about the world without the cost of memorizing every detail of previous experiences. It has long been known that schemas can enhance long-term memory for related information.

Together with members of indigenous communities Leiden researchers preserve and disseminate philosophical, historical and medical knowledge.

The experimental approach of science applied to artistic research

Over the past decades the role of writing in the development of human civilizations has been the subject of much discussion. The adoption and development of literate skills has been linked to many developments in human history, be they cultural, social or even cognitive.

It is integral to many cluster members’ research to use Medieval and Early Modern Arts as a lens for studying the medieval and early modern periods at large:

Natural history collections provide invaluable sources for researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds, aspiring to study the geographical distribution of flora and fauna across the globe as well as other evolutionary processes.

The research reported in this thesis is concerned with the knowledge development of a small sample of experienced science teachers in the context of a broad innovation in Dutch secondary education, including the introduction of a new syllabus on Public Understanding of Science.

Material Crossovers

How did early modern people find out about new knowledge? And did that make them more willing to accept innovation? In the coming years, we will study how and to what effect, new knowledge anchored among the wider public in the early modern Low Countries.

Research practice, funding agencies and global science organizations suggest that research aimed at addressing sustainability challenges is most effective when ‘co-produced’ by academics and non-academics. Co-production promises to address the complex nature of contemporary sustainability challenges…

This project aims to situate the current policy concept of ‘valorization of scientific knowledge’ in historical and epistemological perspectives. Conceptual understanding of the utility of scientific practices is developed in dialogue with historical analyses of the politics of knowledge in European…

This project develops a scientific method to extract clinically relevant new information from patient forum websites that discuss patient experiences concerning e.g. medication, nutrition, co-morbidities, genetic factors etc.

In what way is constructivist logic able to account for both the role of the judging agent in inference and the universal claims of logical validity?

Knowledge and culture subproject 2:

The ability to create objects and structures with our hands has been essential to human development. This ability is something modern society is at risk of losing. Leiden archaeologists gather knowledge about ancient processes of ‘making and creating’ over the centuries, knowledge that helps our current…

This study looks at the question of how and at what level students in primary teacher education can integrate theory and practice, and how the organisation of their learning environment, focusing especially on mathematics and pedagogy, can contribute to that.

What is the most effective way to eliminate tumour cells? The DNA repair mechanism could play an important role in increasing the effectiveness of chemotherapy in the fight against cancerous cells. If we are to influence this mechanism, we need fundamental knowledge about how the mechanism works.

Does knowledge of environmental performance change farmer's behaviour?

In this article, Lydie Cabane, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, discusses the emergence and diffusion of ‘global health’ as a concept. In addition to bringing a fresh perspective on the origins of global health, the paper contributes to the globalization debates by…

Social aspects of the learning environment, also called classroom climate, are important for students’ cognitive and affective learning outcomes. In this thesis the classroom climate is operationalised by means of two components: the teacher-class relationship and classroom discipline.

This dissertation reports on the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of science teachers during a professional development program. This research intended to help us understand why and how teachers make their classroom decisions as they teach science.

Investigating the intercultural connections that shaped practices of knowledge production in colonial Dutch Brazil.

How we think about and act on the usefulness of scientific research has epistemological and political implications: what knowledge consists of, how it comes about and to what ends. In this dissertation, I situate the usefulness of scientific research in concrete places for knowledge exchange. The exchange…

What practical knowledge do mentor teachers have of adaptive mentoring and of individual differences between student teachers?

This project is situated within the context of an innovation of the biology curriculum in Dutch secondary schools. The main purposes are (1) to clarify the relation between teachers’ practical knowledge and the decisions they make when planning and implementing their lessons and (2) to develop a professional…

TRANSAUTOPHAGY is a European COST action to promote multidisciplinary research on autophagy and translation of knowledge to applications.

The archaeology domain produces large amounts of texts, too much to effectively read or manually search through for research. To alleviate this problem, we created a search system (called AGNES), which combines full text search with entity and geographical search.

Johannes Boer's research intends to question the way explicit knowledge is applied in order to restore and perform music from the past with the intention to get as close as possible to its original meaning.

Patients share valuable advice and experiences with their peers in online patient discussion groups.

This thesis reports on a study that examined the development of L1 teachers’ practical knowledge when they researched and implemented concept-context rich education in an action-research setting.

In this project we investigate how the professional development around the theme of inquiry based teaching of teachers from three international schools takes place.

Promotor: A.P.IJzerman Co-promotor: A. Bender

The goal is to establish an intuitive search and querying service that allows researchers to quickly retrieve the most valuable digital resources, in order to allow them to integrate and synthesise the results into a coherent narrative of the past. The current focus of the project is to implement…

This project aims to uncover a series of sites of difference and innovation. In particular, it locates itself in two kinds of distancing: geo-cultural (ie. in the non-European space of Japan) and medial (ie. in innovative expressive media).

Lecture, LUCIS Keynotes

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F. Smets, Co-promotor: T.R. van Andel