On 30 November, Florian Theissen defended the thesis 'Sincerely believing in freedom: a reconstruction and comparison of the interpretation of the freedom of religion and belief on the Canadian Supreme Court, the South African Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights'. The doctoral…

Although official law generally conceives of personal injury victims as individual rights holders, the actual experience of physical injury and its consequences is relational. Indeed, many researchers in the global North as well as the global South have contended that the very concept of the Self should…

Ramesh Ganohariti will examine legal identity in three post-Soviet aspirant states and outline four common scenarios in this article.

ACPA alumnus Budhaditya Chattopadhyay explores sound practices across South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America in his new publication 'Sound Practices in the Global South: Co-listening to Resounding Plurilogues'.

Mozambican politician and child rights activist Graça Machel will receive an honorary doctorate from Leiden University for her commitment to the rights of women and children in Africa and elsewhere. She will be awarded the honorary doctorate on the Dies Natalis, the University’s foundation day, on 8…

This project aims to systematically investigate the influence of information structure on nominal licensing in a subset of Bantu languages.

The project investigates epistemicity: how the knowledge of the speaker and hearer can be expressed in the grammar. This shows us how speakers organise their knowledge, and whether this is influenced by the language they speak.

The Leiden African Studies Centre (ASCL) will become part of the University from 1 January 2016.

An environmental and palaeo-economic reconstruction.

At LUCL, researchers aim to contribute to a comprehensive and informed perspective on the human past.

At LUCL, researchers aim to contribute to a comprehensive and informed perspective on the human past.

This study aims to examine how South Korea (hereafter, Korea) and Japan, two neighboring countries in Northeast Asia, have been responding to and mitigating the spread of COVID-19.

Resilient Diversity: the Governance of Racial and Religious Plurality in the Dutch Empire, 1600-1800

Tracking early human behaviour through plant processing and -exploitation.

This project combines an extensive new open database on linguistic distributions, spatial modelling and areal linguistics in order to disentangle the roles of social and environmental factors on the emergence of linguistic diversity patterns of South America.

On Wednesday 14 February 2024 Yorum Beekman successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

SciSTIP was established on 1 April 2014 as part of the DSI-NRF Centres of Excellence Programme funded by the South Africa’s National Research Foundation (https://www.nrf.ac.za/). SciSTIP is hosted by the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST) at Stellenbosch University and…

The project seeks to explore the interplay of valuation and inequalities in science, using the interdisciplinary and planet-critical field of forest research as empirical case. It examines which/whose knowledge is recognised on what grounds, and how social dimensions like gender and geographical location…

The territories that would make up what is today the Republic of Zambia officially became British in 1891. However, this did not equate to an on-the-ground presence of colonial authority capable of affecting the destiny and daily lives of people.

On 3 December 2019, Meda Couzens defended her thesis 'The application of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by national courts'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. T. Liefaard and Prof. J.J. Sloth-Nielsen.

If you would like to apply for this programme, you should first check the admission requirements.

To be eligible for Archaeological Science at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

If you would like to apply for this programme, you should first check the admission requirements.

To be eligible for Archaeology (research) at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

North Korean workers designed and built numerous monuments, museums and other buildings in southern Africa. This is clear from research by history student Tycho van der Hoog for his master's thesis. These monuments can be an important source of income for a country that has become quite isolated on…

Our library contains around 23,000 books, journals and historical documents under the care of a specialized librarian.

This UNESCO Chair at CWTS aims to contribute to UNESCO’s agenda to foster diversity and inclusion in science. The chair has two main lines of work:

Professor Julia Sloth-Nielsen has received an A-rating from the National Research Foundation in South Africa, where she holds a Chair in Public Law at the University of the Western Cape.

Chad-born youngsters in Paris come into contact with youngsters actually in Chad via Facebook: it would be difficult to find a better way to demonstrate the possibilities social media offer for people scattered across the world by war. Mirjam de Bruijn has been awarded a Vici grant for a study of the…

Traditional leaders in many African countries have regained some of their former powers. Politicians and companies in some of these countries manage to gain access to valuable land via these leaders, at the cost of the local population. This is the message of Professor of Law, Administration and Development…

On 26th and 27th February, the South African Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor will visit Leiden University as honorary Oort Visiting Professor of Astronomy for Development. She will give a ceremonial lecture on Astronomy for Development in the Academiegebouw on 26th February and lead…

On 1 June 2022, Bruno Braak defended his thesis entitled 'Overcoming ruptures: Zande identity, governance, and tradition during cycles of war and displacement in South Sudan and Uganda (2014-2019).' The doctoral research was supervised by Prof.dr. J.M. Otto, Dr.ir. C.I.M. Jacobs, and Dr. C. Leonardi…

‘Can he do it?’ Since the remarkable victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 Nigerian presidential elections, this has arguably been the most frequently posed question in Nigerian politics.

On 8 March 2023 Helen Duffy, Professor of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Leiden, published a monograph on Global Trends in Counter-terrorism and the Implications for Human Rights in Africa.

The project GRADIENTS investigates what it meant to be European in colonial Africa where identification as European often did not depend on skin colour and was understood on a spectrum with many gradients.

The project aims at highlighting and strengthening Dutch research into the diversity of the world’s languages from a historic and a cognitive perspective.

Here you can find an overview of the Erasmus+ projects undertaken by Leiden University since 2015.

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

Africa needs a narrative that is consistent with the developments that are taking place all around the continent. In these developments, talented youth, creative tech hubs, and leapfrogging play a big role. We need to invest accordingly.

How should the international community of states respond to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity? How can the perpetrators of international crimes be brought to justice? How can international crimes be prevented? How can the international community of states promote international consensus…

The project

The aim of the project is to unravel the genetic and contact relations between the indigenous languages of Mesoamerica (Mexico and western Central America) and the Middle Andes region (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia), as part of a larger endeavor to understand the historical process of the peopling of the Americas…