Leiden University · Faculty of Humanities

Thesis & Research Supervision

Ethics

The ethics rules, university policies and regulations that apply to thesis research.

Ethics Review

BA and MA students: your supervisor, not the Faculty Ethics Committee, reviews the ethics of your thesis research. We discuss the ethical side of your design in supervision meetings, especially if you work with human participants, sensitive data or vulnerable groups. If you are unsure whether your project raises ethical questions, ask early.

Research Master students may apply to the Faculty Ethics Committee for formal review, with their supervisor’s explicit approval.

Checklist: use the faculty’s Ethics Checklist and Flowchart (PDF) with your supervisor to screen for risks. If it points to formal review, your supervisor or program decides the route.

Code of Ethics

All thesis research must follow the Code of Ethics for research with human participants. It covers informed consent, confidentiality, data storage and the rights of participants.

Generative AI Policy

My own rules for AI use in supervised and take-home written work, and the evidence behind them, are on the Working with AI page. They add to the Faculty guidelines below, which apply to all assessed work.

The Faculty of Humanities guidelines on generative AI (GenAI) in assessment come down to the following points.

  • You may not use GenAI in assessed work unless your supervisor has explicitly allowed that specific use and its conditions. Discuss any planned use before you build it into your workflow, and agree on what you will document.
  • Procedural help, such as file organization, scripting, corpus cleanup, documentation, grammar support or machine translation, must still suit the assignment, and you must check the output.
  • You remain responsible for the thesis. You must be able to explain and defend its research question, evidence, interpretation and claims.
  • Disclose and cite any permitted use as Faculty guidance requires. Keep your prompts and outputs and make them available on request.
  • Do not upload confidential, personal, copyrighted or otherwise protected sources or research data to GenAI tools.

Required resources:

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own without attribution, from any source (printed, online, GenAI output or other). All theses are checked for plagiarism. The consequences range from failing your thesis to referral to the Board of Examiners.

Academic Integrity

You are expected to follow the university’s academic integrity rules. In practice this means you:

  • report your methods and findings honestly
  • cite all sources in a recognized style, applied consistently (see your program overview for requirements)
  • disclose limitations, conflicts of interest, AI-tool use and other relevant caveats
  • respect the intellectual property of others

The governing documents:

Disability Accommodation

If you need accommodations because of a disability, contact your study advisor early. Thesis accommodations, such as extended deadlines or alternative formats, are arranged through the formal university process.

Ethics Committee

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