Admission requirements
This course is part of the Minor Violence Studies, and is open to bachelor students from all faculties. Students can also take this course as an elective course. There are no specific admission requirements, but students should be familiar with social science research or should familiarise themselves in preparation for this course. You can register through MyStudyMap.
Are you studying at another Dutch university? You may be able to participate as a guest student, provided there are places available. The study advisors can inform you after August 1st. If there are places left, you need to take these steps.
Are you studying at a university of applied sciences? Unfortunately, you will not be able to participate in our electives.
Description
Child abuse and domestic violence are urgent public health problems in the Netherlands. Each year, between 90,000 and 127,000 children experience some form of abuse—about one child per classroom. Additionally, 9% of Dutch young adults, around 1.3 million people, report experiencing domestic violence in the past year. Adverse childhood experiences are one of the strongest predictors of problems in later life, including mental and physical health problems, unemployment, crime and suicidality. As such, it is of critical importance that we prevent and reduce violent experiences before they occur, and that we help improve resilience, the ability to respond and recover well from adversity, in young people with a history of childhood adversity.
This course will provide an important first step in this process, by taking a deep dive into the concept of resilience in young people. Resilience science focusses on the question ‘why do some people who experience stress develop mental illness, and others don’t. It comprises a move away from the classical medical model that examines the aetiology of illness, towards an examination of the protective factors and mechanisms that help individuals respond and recover well to stress.
First, we will take a deep dive in the history of resilience science, and key resilience studies and their findings. Next, we will analyse key theoretical frameworks, how these have evolved over the past 70 years, and their implications for our understanding of the mechanisms of resilience to childhood adversity in young people. In doing so, we will focus on resilience to violent experiences that occur in the home environment in early life (such as childhood abuse and neglect r), and we will discuss resilience to other stressors in early life, such as resilience to community violence such as war, or environmental stressors such as earthquakes.
In this course, we will take a complexity science approach, and showcase that resilience is not explained by one single factor (such as personality). Rather, we will show that resilience arises from complex interactions between factors that reside within a person (such as genetics, brain mechanisms, cognitive functioning or personality), and factors in the social environment outside of that person, such as family support, friendships, school and wider socio-ecological influences.
At the end of this course, students will better understand why some young people who experience adversity in early life develop mental illness, and what we as scientists, professionals, teachers, clinicians and policy makers can do to help aid resilience in these young people.
Course objectives
After completion of the course, students will be able to:
Discuss the short history of resilience science, the development of theoretical approaches to resilience in young people and what we have learned from these approaches. Have a good understanding of hallmark studies and cases of resilience, and what they implicate for resilience as a conocept.
Discuss and compare theoretical frameworks and approaches, such as Developmental Systems Theory, Ecological systems theory, and skin-deep resilience.
Discuss and analyse how early life childhood adversity makes young people vulnerable in terms of their mental health and behaviour.
Discuss social, biological and cognitive mechanisms, such as social support buffering, co-regulation that aid individual resilience to early life adversity..
Discuss the difference of resilience on the individual and community level, how these concepts differ and overlap.
Discuss interventions that can help aid resilience on an individual level or community resilience.
Discuss what professionals can do to help increase resilience in young people, schools, and communities such that they can contribute to a society where all young people can thrive.
Timetable
For the timetable of this course please refer to MyTimetable
Mode of instruction
8 2-hour lectures and guest lectures in English. These lectures outline the main concepts examples from clinical and/or research practice from across different fields, including lived experience, law, ecology and neuroscience. The book ‘Ordinary Magic’ written by prof Ann Masten forms the basis of the study material, but the material from the lectures is also part of the exam literature, so attendance is highly recommended.
Assessment method
An exam consisting of 30 multiple choice questions (80% of the final grade) and two open questions (20% of the final grade). The exam will be based on the assigned reading, videos, podcasts and materials covered in class. You will be permitted to re-sit the exam if the calculated final grade is lower than 5,5.
The Course and Examination Regulations of the Bachelor Pedagogical Sciences apply.
Reading list
Mandatory material covered in this course include:
Chapters from Masten, Ann S. (2015). Ordinary Magic, Resilience in Development. Guilford Press. ISBN: 9781462523719.
Lectures (sheets).
Registration
Students with a valid minor registration will register for courses via a form, which they will receive details about in an email in June.
Registration for individual courses as an elective student is possible from Tuesday 14 July 2026 13:00h onwards.
Leiden University uses Brightspace as its online learning management system. After enrolment for the course in MyStudymap you will be automatically enrolled in the Brightspace environment of this course.
More information on registration via MyStudymap can be found on this page.
Please note: guest-/contract-/exchange students do not register via MyStudymap but via uSis. Registration via uSis is possible from Thursday 16 July 2026
Contact
Before, during and after each lecture, the instructors will be available to answer theoretical and practical questions about the course. We will also open a discussions forum on Brightspace for students to discuss questions and topics related to the lecture and book materials amongst each other. All other questions about the course can be emailed to violence@fgga.leidenuniv.nl with the subject line: Question RTV.
Dr. Elizabeth Buimer violence@fgga.leidenuniv.nl
This course is the responsibility of the Board of Examiners Education and Child Studies.
The study advisers of the Institute of Education and Child Studies can be contacted by sending an email to studieadviseurspedagogiek@fsw.leidenuniv.nl.
Remarks
This course takes place in Leiden at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
All lectures and final exam will be in English.