In this article Vanessa Newby discusses how the ANZUS states of United States, Australia, and New Zealand that sit on the fringes of the Asia-Pacific, are increasingly using their armed forces to deliver Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Response (HADR) as a way of engaging with the region.

On the brink of war, what influences decision makers to attack another country? Using innovative theoretical angles, Femke E. Bakker explores whether the basic assumptions of democratic peace theory are indeed correct. She stresses the microfoundations of conflict, questioning the assumptions on…

For early modern Europeans, the past was a measure of most things, good and bad. For that reason it was also hotly contested, manipulated, and far too important to be left to historians alone.

Human Rights at Risk brings together social scientists, legal scholars, and humanities scholars to analyze the policy challenges of human rights protection in the twenty-first century.

Political scientists Huib Pellikaan and Niels van Willigen (Leiden University) use and elaborate on the theoretical insights from game theory in order to understand nuclear security in changing environment. Now that the relations between the US and Russia have deteriorated and smaller nuclear states…

Where did the new generation of antislavery activists get their inspiration to organize in large-scale pressure groups?

On Friday, April 5, the Ecuadorian police stormed the Mexican Embassy in Quito to arrest former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas Espinel.

Earlier this week, a working group of the United Nations, comprising all 193 of its member states, adopted a consensus report on norms for responsible state behaviour in cyberspace. Dennis Broeders, full professor of Global Security and Technology at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden…

Under what circumstances is politicization more likely to occur than others, and what impact does politicization have on government legitimacy and performance?

What does a 19th-century exhibition of traditional utensils from the province of Zeeland tell us about the current rise of populism? A lot, Ad Maas will say in his inaugural lecture.

This study is an attempt to reconstruct the muted violent past by breaking the monopoly of the Turkish state over the memory of the Armenian genocide.

Book project on how European policy is made and implemented, with a focus on how that process can be understood and lead to policy change.

For every period, it is a challenge to unearth the details of political trafficking; yet the effort needs to include all relevant persons, groups, and institutions – not only those wielding formal responsibilities. We hope to reinvigorate this effort by inviting specialists to present their research…

The gripping story of a collective passion for freedom that shook the world.

22 November 2018.

Leiden’s Institute for History has an exceptionally strong expertise in premodern European history in its global context, with specialists whose interests cover virtually the whole continent. We have a strong track record in leading larger research teams and work together with colleagues across Europe…

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.

Since the decentralizations in the social domain in 2015, nearly all Dutch municipalities use district teams to organize care. However, the management, organization and composition of these district teams vary considerably between municipalities: each municipality tries to reinvent the wheel by itself.…

The center studies the many ways in which issues of law and justice are dealt with in art and literature with a focus on liminal issues and cases. These are issues and cases where law comes to the limits of what it is capable of dealing with and art and literature explore the implications of what is…

After Zelensky and Putin, President Biden has also used the word ‘genocide’. We should not use the term genocide too loosely, says Professor of Public International Law Larissa van den Herik.

To address the relevance of Christianity to the ideological negotiations with the officially established authority, this research will be conducted by asking how the history enthusiasts negotiate the Christianity-related ideology through reconstructing the Christian past and reproducing religious histories…

In September 2013 I moved to Leiden from the UK to take up the position of Assistant Professor covering politics and international relations on the BA Russian Studies and International Studies programmes and the MA Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Leiden University invites pre-applications from scholars who wish to spend 12-24 months in the Institute of Political Science as part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship Programme.

Tom Long (2022). A Small State’s Guide to Influence in World Politics. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780190926212, 240 pp. (hardback), £19.99.

Why do some civil wars experience quagmire, a situation in which belligerents are trapped in fighting? To explain this puzzle, Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) analyses the overlapping strategic interactions between foreign powers and the warring parties. Studying…

Where does Europe begin and end? How have the European Union and its precursors decided which countries are eligible to join the community and which are not? Few issues are more hotly debated, more important for the course of European integration, or more consequential for individuals in and around…

Citizens, journalists and scholars notice that foreign policy in, and of, the European Union, is ‘de-Europeanising’. Political scientist Daniel Thomas (Leiden University) offers a theoretical exploration of the likely implications. He expects that it will become more difficult for the EU to achieve…

From 1 September 2014, Glen Newey takes up the post of Professor of Practical Philosophy in Leiden University’s Institute for Philosophy.

Research conducted by Dutch news programme ‘Nieuwsuur’ into the work carried out by Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands for victims of the childcare benefits scandal raises many questions. Legal experts are puzzled as to how the Cabinet at the time assigned the tasks. Geerten Boogaard, Professor…

Workshop