ILS organizes monthly Lunch Seminars in which all researchers from Leiden Law School can present their research. The idea is to share in an open and accessible way what researchers from other research programs and institutes are working on. During a seminar, two or three speakers will present their…

All languages use melody in speech, primarily via rises and falls of the pitch of voice. Such pitch variation is pervasive, offering a wide spectrum of nuance to sentences – an additional layer of meaning. For example, saying “yes” with a rising pitch implies a question (rather than an affirmation).…

The magazine New Scientist selected 25 nominees from candidates proposed by all Dutch and Belgian universities for the New Scientist Science talent 2015 election. One of these nominees is dr. Marieke Liem, who works at the Centre for Terrorism & Counterterrorism.

Syntacticians study how words combine into larger units (phrases and sentences) in human languages and how the combinatorial possibilities determine word order and grammatical relations between parts of a sentence.

Zhaole Yang defended his thesis on 25 June 2020.

Are terrorist suspects willing to reintegrate back into society? Can they reintegrate?

Herewith we are happy to announce the winners of the Meijers PhD-positions 2019.

Public organizations have been confronted with severe budget cuts as a result of the most recent crisis. Public managers are tasked with the implementation of cutbacks. Using different case studies within Dutch ministries and the prison sector, we assess public managers’ change leadership in times of…

‘Criminal law is still an inequality machine’, argues Folkert Jensma in his fortnightly column for Dutch newspaper NRC. After attending the conference ‘Ongelijkheid en de Strafrechtpleging’ ('Inequality and the criminal justice system'), he concludes that ‘nothing has changed’ since his time as a st…

Last Thursday, Leiden Leadership Programme (LLP) students were once again introduced to a big name with tons of leadership experience. This time, Femke van der Meulen, prison director and founder of PrisonWatch, addressed the students. The many personal experiences she shared will stay with them for…

How to strengthen mutual trust between agencies in the criminal justice system and youth with a migration background or weaker socio-economic position. The Netherlands Science Agenda has awarded 1.5 million euros to a consortium to find out.

Fiction is more effective than autobiographical non-fiction when it comes to conveying the sensation of enforced solitary confinement. That is the conclusion of writer and lawyer Maarten Asscher in his study 'Het uur der waarheid. Over de gevangenschap als literaire ervaring' (The Moment of Truth: Imprisonment…

Semantics and pragmatics are united in the study of linguistic meaning.

Prof. Ton Liefaard has been appointed as member of the Council for the Administration of Criminal Justice and Protection of Juveniles.

Lecture, CHiLL series

For justice to be done after a crime, most people feel that retribution alone is not enough. These are the results of research by Leiden University and the University of Mannheim (Germany). Publication in Plos One.

On Thursday 15 February, the second ILS Lunch Seminar of 2018 took place. Prof. Jean-Pierre van der Rest and Maria Berghuis gave two excellent presentations on their particular research topics.

Description of 20th century changes in the Dutch flora: Description and interpretation (1999 - 2005)

Lecture, CHiLL series

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Schaye, Co-promotor: Marcello Cacciato

In dit unieke uitwisselingsinitiatief volgen studenten van de Faculteit Rechtsgeleerdheid samen met gedetineerde personen een vak, binnen de muren van de gevangenis.

How can we help children and adults to acquire better reading comprehension? Paul van den Broek and his colleagues at the Brain and Education Lab are searching for an answer to this question by investigating reading and the related brain activity.

There are frequent calls from society for heavier prison sentences, but the question is whether longer sentences result in a safer society. Judges are seeing more and more offenders with social and psychological problems and they therefore often prescribe a programme of treatment and monitoring for…

Dr. Pauline Aarten tries to find answers of the impact a road traffic accident has on the victims and surviving relatives and how we can improve their position.

This volume explores the nature of ellipsis, the core phenomenon that results in various types of omission in sentences.

Leiden University was founded in 1575, thanks to William of Orange. According to tradition, he founded the University to reward the citizens of Leiden for their resistance to the Spanish occupiers.

With the dramatic growth of the image data on the web, there is an increasing demand of the algorithms capable of understanding the visual information automatically.

On April 4th, Zohreh Shiamizadeh succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Zohreh on this great result.

Lecture, LUCL Colloquium 2023-2024

Terrorism experts Daan Weggemans (Leiden University) and Beatrice de Graaf (Utrecht University) conducted one of the first scientific studies on the societal reintegration of jihadist former detainees. They showed that the reintegration process isn't without problems. Their conlusions are presented…

Students stream into the lecture hall, handing in their mobile phones at the door. Once everyone’s seated, silence descends and all eyes turn to the large screen at the front of the lecture hall. A live connection has been set up with the prison where Marco is a long-term inmate. Today, the students…

Theft, prostitution, fortune-telling or murder. Historian Manon van der Heijden and a group of students are researching court records from The Hague from 1600 to 1800. They are tracing crimes and offenders and shedding new light on The Hague’s Gevangenpoort (or Prison Gate). Among their many discoveries…

On 18 January 2018, the inaugural ILS PhD Workshop took place, featuring two Interaction Between Legal Systems lectures by the invited academics Prof. Gareth Davies and Aristi Volou, as well as presentations by the six ILS PhD researchers.

Criminal Justice as a concept refers to the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts. While the definition seems rather clear-cut,…

The monthly ILS Lunch Seminars present the perfect opportunity to unite the different Institutes situated within Leiden Law School. On Thursday 14 March 2019, the next edition of the ILS Lunch Seminars will take place. This time, Nienke van Heek and Esther van Ginneken will present their research.

On the 21st of September, Carlos Benítez-Torres successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Carlos on this achievement!

Quincy Promes has been arrested in Dubai at the request of the Netherlands Public Prosecution Service. The Dutch judicial authorities now want Dubai to extradite Promes. But how does that work? Professor Jannemieke Ouwerkerk explains on ‘RTL Nieuws’.

Existing work in probabilistic language modeling can be mostly divided into two categories:

The presents thesis investigates the extent to which Chinese, Dutch and American speakers of English are mutually intelligible. Intelligibility of vowels, simplex consonants and consonant clusters was tested in meaningless sound sequences, as well as in words in meaningless and meaningful short sent…

Lecture, China Seminar

PhD defence

Overview of the CML reports

This study focuses on violence involving juveniles in conflict with the law who are deprived of their liberty in different institutions within the framework of the (juvenile) criminal justice system (inter alia, police detention, pre-trial detention and deprivation of liberty after conviction or sen…

This dissertation contains the further development of a method for linguistic-stylistic research, which provides a systematic means to interpret global impressions of a text through choices in formulation at word- and sentence level.

On January 30th, Lennart van der Velden succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Lennart on this great result.

Today Mikhail Khordorkovsky visits the Leiden University Campus of The Hague to debate with students about the future of Russia. It is the first time this critic of Putin and former captain of industry visits the Netherlands. This event has been organised by the organisation Raam op Rusland and the…

Away from the public eye, the court case in Turkey against the Dutch jihadist Reda N. came to a close this week. The verdict has far reaching implications for the case against Reda scheduled to appear in front of a Dutch court next week. Edwin Bakker, Professor Terrorism and Counterterrorism at the…

Benjamin Marius Telders, professor of international law, died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen on 6 April 1945. He was an example of civil courage before and during the occupation. He spoke up against inequity and injustice.

On 26 November 1940 Rudolph Pabus Cleveringa (1894-1980) gave his now famous protest speech.

My current research focuses on criminality and gender interactions in nineteenth-century Europe. This project uses a comparative methodology to explain gender constructions in a criminal and in a court setting.