The experiments described in this thesis employ local lentiviral knockdowns in brain areas of female zebra finches followed by behavioural assays consisting of preference and Go/Nogo tasks.

A study in the Behavioral Biology group of Carel ten Cate at the IBL showed that experience-dependent and -independent preferences influence song learning in zebra finches.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

How do secondary school teachers’ professional learning preferences relate to teaching experience and the school context?

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Political scientists Marijn Nagtzaam (Leiden University) and Patrick van Erkel (University of Antwerp) investigate how electoral rules affect intra party preference voting. Focusing on the effect of two specific rules—the option to cast a list vote and on a single versus multiple preference vote—and…

Female and male songbirds sing equally elaborate songs in some species, but in others, females do not sing like males or not at all. How did such pronounced differences in male and female communication evolve?

How is it possible to play a song that is part of the rituals of other people? How to transpose an idea to the stage while maintaining respect for indigenous communities? Are these performances a way of throwing light on these indigenous communities looking for a strategy of decolonization? How is it…

For a long time, bird song was considered as a typical male trait. But over the last twenty years, research has shown that a lot of female songbirds sing as well. Female scientists turned out to be the key factor in these findings, amongst others from the Institute of Biology Leiden.

This case study demonstrates how to design and effectively deploy a (survey embedded) conjoint experiment.

This study adds nuance to the empirical literature that interrogates the link between exposure to mass violence and post-conflict justice preferences.

In this thesis it is posed that the central object of preference discovery is a co-creative process in which the Other can be represented by a machine. It explores efficient methods to enhance introverted intuition using extraverted intuition's communication lines.

Marie-Jeanne Holveck and Katharina Riebel from Behavioural Biology at the Institute of Biology at the Faculty of Science published their research in Proceedings B of The Royal Society.

Citizens’s attitudes towards trade are not only about the (perceived) economic effect. Commerce also has a variety of security implications. Employing an original experiment, political scientists Matthew DiGiuseppe (Leiden University) and Katja Kleinberg (Binghamton University) demonstrate that security…

I think we should go this way. This way! THIS! WAY!! Making yourself heard in a city can be difficult. That is not only the case for humans, but birds seem to be hindered by urban noise as well. Researcher Hans Slabbekoorn of Leiden University already showed that great tits in Leiden communicate differently…

Cláudio de Sá predicted the preferences of people using rankings. He adjusted ‘classical’ machine learning approaches, making them suitable for predicting preferences. His work can be applied in the prediction of election results. PhD defence on 16 December.

As the year draws to a close, many music lovers are looking forward to the Top 2000. How high is their favourite song and who is number one? But the list is often very predictable and the same songs are always in the top 10. According to neuropsychologist and associate professor Rebecca Schaefer, it’s…

Promotor: J.N. Kok, Co-promotor: C.M. Soares, A.J. Knobbe

Knowledge and culture subproject 4:

For some time blackbirds have been settling in towns as well as in woods. As a result, town blackbirds have now begun to develop differently from their counterparts in forests. These are the findings of the PhD research carried out by behavioural biologist Erwin Ripmeester who defends his dissertation…

People are more likely to cooperate with their compatriots than with people from other countries. This tendency can frustrate collaborative projects, such as cross-border cooperation for the provision of public goods. This is the conclusion of Leiden social psychologist Angelo Romano.

How tolerant is the Netherlands on the work floor? Jojanneke van der Toorn, Professor of the Workplace Pride Chair, the first in the world dealing exclusively with LGBT inclusion in the workplace, answers questions on the International Day against Racism and Discrimination.

What Accounts for the Variety of National Policy Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Europe?

How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

PhD Defence

Birds sing to be heard, but how do they cope with increasing noise levels? Which species persist in cities and why? And do they thrive or suffer in the urban soundscape?

Can birds - like people- ‘see’ voices and learn how to sing by listening and watching?

What kinds of vocal music were not typically transmitted in written musical notation? Can specific ‘lost’ song forms - siciliane, giustiniane, le Grechesche, gli stili “regionali“ nel canto del quattrocento - be more precisely identified than they have been until now, both in musicological research…

The core of this project is the safeguarding and recording of Dogon funeral songs.

This project aims at recording and safeguarding parts of the intangible cultural heritage of the Dogon in central Mali. A major song cycle, the baja ni, forms an integral part of Dogon funeral traditions. The song cycle is attributed to Abirè, a blind Dogon poet/prophet, probably from the 19th c., who…

Shafa’Atussara Silahudin defended her theses on 18 May 2021.

Vocal learning is a trait shared by songbirds and humans. It is also a trait that is restricted by the brain rather than by a species' vocal apparatus. In this dissertation, functional MRI is employed in both species in order to explore potential common neural mechanisms underlying the ability to develop…

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Lecture, Sociolinguistics Series

Arts and leisure

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

During the master’s programme in Modern Dutch Literature at Leiden University you will learn to scientifically analyse literary texts, as well as other Dutch cultural texts, such as those found in hiphop songs and diaries.

On 3 June, Annetje Ottow (chair) and Hester Bijl (rector magnificus) met the Humanities faculty. Although a physical introduction was preferred, this visit also had to be done digitally.

The aim of this project is the linguistic documentation of Bakola, a Narrow Bantu language.

Before 1936, musical practices in Palestine relied heavily on colloquial poetry, especially in rural communities, which constituted most of the population. In this dissertation, Issa Boulos has examined historical records that revealed many differences and similarities between Palestinian communities…

Knowledge and culture subproject 4:

-

This thesis describes the use of a combined approach of computational and experimental techniques to gain novel insights to understand the glycosylation reaction and its reactive intermediates.

Lecture

PhD Defence