In Poland the commemoration of acts of resistance is being misused to distort the history of the Holocaust. That is what Cleveringa Professor Jan Grabowski said in his inaugural lecture on 26 November. In her lecture, the second Cleveringa Professor, Barbara Engelking, pointed to the often indifferent…

Leiden University’s Political Science and International Studies programmes have consolidated their firm academic reputation. In the 2017 QS World University Rankings, Leiden ranks 26th among the most valued institutes worldwide. Within the Netherlands, Leiden has retained the first position.

Meet the newest Full Professor at the Leiden Observatory: Joe Hennawi. All the way from Santa Barbara, California, Hennawi will strengthen the astronomy institute. In Leiden, he will use his recent ERC Advanced Grant to study how supermassive black holes come into existence.

Opera, more so perhaps than most other forms of art, is deeply intertwined with philosophy and politics. For some composers this was explicitly so. Think of Wagner’s relation with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer or Verdi’s role in Italian unification. But almost any opera raises, and tries to grapple with,…

In this blog post, Paweł Surowiec and Ilan Manor draw on insights from their edited volume Public Diplomacy and the Politics of Uncertainty.

The Dutch Student Orchestra is performing at Stadsgehoorzaal, Leiden’s concert hall, on 11 February. Several Leiden students have sacrificed many a free hour to the rehearsals. Days before the big performance we present them with three dilemmas.

Leila Demarest, Assistant Professor of African Politics at Leiden University, has recently been awarded with a Leiden University Fund research grant to study adolescents’ political attitudes and inter-group tolerance in Lagos, Nigeria.

Law and peace in the work of Hans Kelsen. A re-evaluation of Kelsen’s legal philosophy: legal pacifism as tacit meaning of his Pure Theory of Law

Gisela Hirschmann, lecturer and researcher at Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science, has been awarded a 2-year grant of € 170.000 by the German Fritz Thyssen Foundation to study how international organisations react to budget cuts, membership withdrawals and systematic non-compliance by…

Adina Akbik has been appointed as a new member of the Young Academy Leiden (YAL) as of 1 September 2024. Akbik is Senior Assistant Professor of European Politics at Leiden University. YAL serves as a platform for early career academics, and Akbik is keen to promote the needs and interests of young researchers…

Monday 5 September 2016, the political science bachelor’s and master’s programmes kick off. We are looking forward to meeting our new students. And we will happily help them to find their way around.

Working on superconductivity, finding an exoplanet or learning how to program with Python. More than one hundred girls visited Leiden University on Thursday 13 February during the Girls in Science Day.

The latest book by political scientist Matthew Longo came out this spring: 'The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain'. In addition to its many favourable reviews, the book received the prestigious Orwell Prize this summer, which highlights exceptional books on politics.

Following the fall of the fourth Rutte cabinet, Dutch Minister of Justice and Security Dilan Yesilgöz addressed the Dutch media about the ‘influx’ of family reunification applications by asylum permit holders. In her view, it would put enormous pressure on Dutch society and could jeopardise security.…

The word bureaucracy does not have negative connotations for Ken Meier. Meier, Professor of Bureaucracy and Democracy, has a clear grasp of the relationship between elected politicians and bureaucracy, or the civil service. Inaugural lecture on Monday 20 May.

Anyone can tell a story. That is the guiding principle Hans Dekker, Senior programme leader at the Centre for Professional Learning (CPL), and his colleague Suzanne Verhees use to kick off their multi-day Storytellling course. Arjan van Unen participated in the course over the summer and learned how…

Parents’ talk about new stimuli such as persons or objects strongly affects how avoidant or fearful their child will react. No stronger effect was found when parents had an anxiety disorder or in children with fearful temperaments. Publication by a team of Leiden psychologists in 'Clinical Child and…

Research & Politics (RAP) is a peer-reviewed open access journal which focusses on research in political science and related fields through open access publication of the very best cutting-edge research and policy analysis. The journal achieved a high score for the impact factor, which puts it in 49th…

Jan Erk, political scientist at Leiden University, has been selected as the 2016-2017 Smuts Memorial Fellow at the University of Cambridge. During his residency at the renowned British academy, he will work on his research project ‘The Enduring Impact of Africa’s extinct kingdoms and invisible chief…

In the 60s and 70s, Black Power groups were also active in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This is what PhD candidate Debby Esmeé de Vlugt has discovered.

Hoye proposes that concerns about virtues of the sovereign are essential for understanding Hobbes's both his political thinking and his political critique.

Lecture, China Seminar

On 7 September, Francesc Claret Traid defended the thesis 'On the nature of the right to resist: a rights-based theory of the ius resistendi in liberal democracies'. The doctoral research was supervised by Afshin Ellian and Gelijn Molier.

This study investigates how the tenure of security (proxied by both inter- and intra-party electoral advantage) affects the engagement and political performance of members of parliament.

The production of history is a process of power. This is particularly relevant in Africa, where during both the colonial and the post-colonial era history has been written by hegemonic regimes. This historiography has in turn (re-)produced structures of domination, social exclusion and division.…

The Dutch Government recently announced measures to limit the loss of purchasing power. These include, for example, raising the minimum wage and healthcare benefits. Another way for households to maintain purchasing power is to work more. Olaf van Vliet, Professor of Economics, explains the effects…

The postwar Liberal International Order faces grave challenges today mostly in the form of geopolitical competitions among great powers and exclusionary identity politics unfolding across different countries.

Lecture, Seminar

On 22 May, the Dutch House of Representatives invited one hundred citizens to pose critical questions regarding the Ministries’ annual reports. This followed on from the annual ‘Accountability Day’. Caspar van den Berg, Associate Professor of Public Administration, helped think about how citizens could…

On Thursday 3 March , Prof. Margaret Moore will give the annual Centre for Political Philosophy lecture.

A big performance by André Rieu, food trucks in The Hague and more contact with the Royal Family: grand plans were announced in April to make the State Opening of Parliament (Prinsjesdag) a real ‘crowd puller’. For this year, however, we will just have to make do with slight differences in emphasis.…

In this chapter, Kohei Suzuki aims to provide a brief overview of Japan’s local government system.

In April, the Honours Class 'Law, Power and Inequality: Global Perspectives’ will start. Professor of Law & Society Maartje van der Woude has developed and coordinates this unique class which is innovative both in content and collaboration as in design.

A Leiden literary scholar, paintings of the Winter King and Queen and a string of pearls brought together by an exhibition in the Hague. Dr Nadine Akkerman: ‘The Winter Queen was a highly political person who used every means – including pearls - to showcase her royal lineage.’

The Queens of the Nile exhibition at the National Museum of Antiquities finally affords the wives of the pharoahs the attention they deserve. Thanks to guest curator Olaf Kaper, students and PhD candidates gained valuable experience in museum curating.

On Wednesday 27 September a new book by Prof. Luuk van Middelaar will appear, entitled The new politics of Europe. Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s first vice-president, presents the book that evening during a symposium around the same theme.

During the guest lecture on 9 February, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Rob de Wijk and Frans Osinga discussed the situation in Ukraine and Taiwan. The crises in eastern Ukraine and the increasing tensions around Taiwan highlight the challenges the West faces in deterring aggression in the new era of key dynamics…

The Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies in collaboration with the University of Geneva, the Chinese Journal of International Law (ChineseJIL, OUP) and the European Society of International Law (ESIL), are pleased to invite public international scholars and researchers to attend a conference…

Dutch right-wing political party Forum for Democracy has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no lower limit when it comes to morals. Should the courts in the Netherlands protect democracy by banning parties like Forum? Several legal experts from Leiden University commented on this question in newspaper…

Xinrong Ma defended her thesis on 13 February 2018

This book brings together contributions on topics related to the Dutch EU Presidency Agenda 2016 from a number of scholars who are affiliated with Leiden University.

Both Europe and Latin America face challenges globally and at home. Conflicts over land and resources have been resurgent in recent years.

The widespread idea that politics is mediatised needs to be revised. Although media attention heavily influences some political processes, this is not the case when it comes to lawmaking. Lotte Melenhorst, a political scientist at Leiden University, analysed three heavily covered legislative processes…

In the midterm elections in the United States on 6 November, the Democrats won the majority in the House of Representatives, thus regaining control of the House over the Republicans. But the Republicans expanded their majority in the Senate. Three of our researchers, experts on US politics, share their…

Nikoleta Yordanova, a political scientist at Leiden University, will lead an international research consortium funded by the European NORFACE Network to complete a multi-disciplinary project ‘Willingness and Capacity for EU Policy Action in Turbulent Times: Conflicts, Positions and Outcomes’ (EUINACTION).…