Over the past two centuries, the concept of human dignity has moved from the fringes to the centre of the international legal system. This book is the first single-authored detailed historical, theoretical and legal investigation of human dignity as a normative value, the intellectual sources that shaped…

This book investigates the effects of brain lesions in the left hemisphere, specifically Broca's area, on the production and perception of vowels, of word tones and of the linguistic use of sentence melody.

What will the future be like? This is something that every student wonders about as graduation approaches. What will I do? How can I find a good job? And even more importantly: How do I land that job once I have found it? If a student has a disability, additional questions may also arise. A symposium…

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most frequent neurodegenerative disorder and the primary cause of dementia. The neuropathological features of AD include the occurrence of senile plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, decreased synaptic density, and loss of neurons. An obstacle in the study and treatment…

How does task context affect children’s word productions?

This project contemplates an ethics of difference and singularity that can effectuate a displacement of anthropocentrism and radical transformation in the way we understand and approach relationality across species borders. PhD defence on 16 December 2019.

For many years, human rights have mostly been a theme where states constituted the most important actors. Influenced by globalisation and the worldwide integration of the economy, multinational corporations have grown to feel more responsible for compliance to human rights.

Can Russia be prosecuted for war crimes against Ukraine? The International Criminal Court does not have this jurisdiction. To fill this void in jurisdiction, a new commission has been created: an International Centre for the Prosecution of Crimes of Aggression, the ICPA.

After an initial suggestion of a move toward Israel, India’s Prime Minister Modi has signaled a significant recalibration of his government’s engagement with the Middle East region. Now, India seems to be prioritising strong ties with the Gulf states.

Photosynthesis is the origin of life on earth, but it is a phenomenon that is still barely understood. Take, for example, the extremely efficient mechanism of electron transport. Leiden researchers demonstrate for the first time where one particular cause of this might be found.

Now that university buildings have closed, most staff members have started working from home. How are Faculty of Science colleagues faring in their new offices?

I would like to start with my “personal safety risk”. In the last years I noticed it is becoming more accepted to listen to music using earphones in the hallways, offices and laboratories. But how does this affect our safety and should we accept this?

Mariana Gkliati participated on Monday 11 April in an expert meeting organized by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin, entitled: 'Round Table on Potential Litigation Against FRONTEX for Human Rights Violations'.

Mariana Gkliati participated on 4 April in the course International Human Rights offered by the SIM, Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, at the University College Utrecht.

Western thought has often dismissed shadows as fictional, but what if fictions reveal original truths?

An investigation by Dutch news site RTL Nieuws reveals that an error at the Regional Institute for Juvenile Outpatient Mental Healthcare (Jeugdriagg), has led to the files of children, many with serious psychological problems, being leaked.

Find out how to apply for Public International Law at Leiden University by following our step-by-step guide.

Find out how to apply for Law and Society (MSc)  at Leiden University by following our step-by-step guide. 

National and international actors have attempted to provide accountability for the events at Srebrenica in July 1995. This research project aims to draw lessons learned from those multiple efforts in assessing whether securing a measure of ‘justice’ for the victims has been successful and how national…

Melanie Fink has been awarded the APART-GSK grant of the Austrian Academy of Sciences to carry out her research project ‘No right without a remedy: Making EU fundamental rights enforceable’ for a period of four years.

The Ra’s al-jinz project tackles economic diversification and social complexity in non-urban societies, from the perspective of Eastern Arabia, by exploring the Early Bronze Age settlement of Ra’s al-jinz RJ-3.

An assessment of Libyan legislation

On 24 May 2017, the Hazelhoff Centre for Financial Law welcomed Shen Wei, Dean and Professor of law at Shandong University School of Law in China, for the 14th Hazelhoff Guest Lecture.

Mariana Gkliati co-organised and chaired on 14 September a PhD Masterclass with the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Agnès Callamard.

LeidenGlobal Annual event

Governance of the internet is chaotic, says Professor Jan Aart Scholte. Can we learn from this relatively new form of governance?

Conference, Seminar

Poama and Theuns co-wrote an opinion piece on why voting in prison should be mandatory worldwide. It appeared on National Interest's website on February 12.

Saskia van Otterloo works as a policy advisor on climate adaptation at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management in the Netherlands. She graduated in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in cultural anthropology and development sociology. How does her knowledge of anthropology help her in her job…

The project explores the role of modernization theory in the development of two foreign and domestic service programs: the Peace Corps and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). The Peace Corps has long been understood as a modernizing effort in a Cold War context, and this project will further investigate…

Today, humanity produces sufficient calories, in theory, to feed the 7.7 billion people on the planet: the amount of food produced per person on the planet has gone up more than 40% since the 1960s. Yet, ironically, the prevalence of undernourishment – which had been declining for decades – has started…

That Tessa Schiethart finished her bachelor's degree in International Studies with a thesis on Indonesian women's reasons for veiling was a coincidence. Or so she thought. Six years later, her book Seeing and Being Seen, in which she writes about her life with a wine stain and vision loss, is in the…

The postdoc received the 2020 Thesis Prize for her PhD research on the role of the EU Member States in regulating and remedying corporate human rights violations.

Graduation Ceremony

On November 23, 2017, Professor Simone van der Hof chaired a panel on age verification in the digital world at the Safer Internet Forum 2017 in Brussels.

People from the Dutch islands of Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius say that violence (mainly verbal) is fairly common in families. This is according to research by Leiden University, the University of Curaçao and UNICEF Netherlands. The researchers make recommendations for preventing such violence over…

On 14 March 2016 the LLM in Immigration Law Programme and the Centre for European and International Legal Affairs (Queen Mary University of London) hosted the Expert Round Table ‘The Deadliest Frontier: Taking Stock of Mediterranean Crossings in 2015’.

Dr. Kosta held a presentation on her research ‘The EU Fundamental Right to ‘Freedom of the Arts and Sciences’: Exploring the Limits on the Commercialisation of Academia’ at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance in Munich on 25 May 2020.

Mariana Gkliati was invited by the Lawyers Without Borders Student Division of Aberdeen University to participate in their Annual Human Rights Conference dedicated to refugee protection.

Prof. Julia Sloth-Nielsen has been awarded the Schim van der Loeff grant by the Leiden University Fund to conduct research on unaccompanied migrant children in Zambia.

Tracking early human behaviour through plant processing and -exploitation.

From 23-25 August the Child Abuse & Violence Congres ‘ Broken 2018’ took place. Mariëlle Bruning was one of the keynote speakers and talked about the child’s right to protection against all forms of violence and the implementation of this children’s right in domestic child protection systems.

Between 7 and 11 August, Freya Baetens gave three presentations at the 77th International Law Association (ILA) Biennial Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, on the theme of 'International Law and State Practice: Is there a North/South Divide?'

Bringing together the most current research on the relationship between crime and gender in the West between 1600 and 1914, this authoritative volume places female criminality within its everyday context.

On the occasion of the conferral of an honorary doctorate to children’s rights activist Graça Machel, a fund has been established that will enable two female students from South Africa to come and study in Leiden.

On 23 June 2022, Kristof Gombeer succesfully defended his dissertation entitled ‘Relations of Duty in an Age of Rights: A study of the supply side of human rights in the context of maritime migration’.

The central subject of this dissertation is the influence of Fichte’s theory of self-consciousness on Søren Kierkegaard's philosophical notion of the self in the way Kierkegaard describes the self in his philosophy in the writing 'The Sickness unto Death' (1849). The main question this dissertation…

On 22 November 2018, Henk Hulshof and dr. Yannick van den Brink from the Department of Child Law participated in a juvenile justice conference in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The central theme of the conference was ‘establishing a child-friendly criminal justice system in Mongolia’.

This doctoral project by artist and educator Luiz Zanotello engenders a postcolonial understanding of time, space and movement by means of artistic research methods. The project examines the contradictory effects of the abyssal line of thought within the tropics as a starting point.