Many Western defence strategies concentrate on maintaining the status quo. Actively promoting universal values can also be a good strategy for resilience, according to Theo Brinkel, Professor by Special Appointment in Military-Social Studies. Inaugural lecture 15 January.

Expert in public affairs and politics Arco Timmermans advised the informer Kim Putters.

Over 30.000 pages of new material have been added to the online collection of unofficial poetry publications from China in the Leiden Digital Collections. Produced outside the system, these journals and books are hugely influential yet very hard to find. To address this paradox, Leiden University Libraries…

In the late 19th century, the Dutch government introduced a tax system in the Dutch East Indies, with the intention of transforming the colony into a modern state. PhD student Maarten Manse wrote his thesis on this development and discovered how grandiloquent colonial ideals became bogged down in daily…

On Thursday 19 and Friday 20 September the PROSEPS conference took place in The Hague under the auspices of the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs of Leiden University. During the two-day meet up, working group meetings and workshops took place in the New Babylon Conference Centre in the heart…

Festival

News articles have only a limited influence on the course of legislative processes. This is the finding of political science expert Lotte Melenhorst in her PhD dissertation. Defence 21 March.

A Spanish translation of Herman Paul’s 'Key Issues in Historical Theory' has appeared under the title 'La llamada del pasado: claves de la teoría de la historia'.

Exchanges between different cultures and institutions of learning have taken place for centuries, but it was only in the twentieth century that such efforts evolved into formal programs that received focused attention from nation-states, empires and international organizations.

This book explores the lasting legacy of the controversial project by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, funded by the CIA, to promote Western culture and liberal values in the battle of ideas with global Communism during the Cold War.

The Rutte IV cabinet is more or less complete. It includes more women than ever. For the first time ever, the Netherlands will have two ethnic minority ministers, and ministers without political experience but with plenty of professional expertise will also be making their debut. However, political…

Political philosopher Nicholas Vrousalis (Leiden University) has been awarded a EURIAS Fellowship at Aarhus University’s Institute for Advanced Study (AIAS). From from 1 October 2018 to 31 July 2019 Vrousalis will work at the Danish research institute on his project ‘Inequality against Freedom: Economic…

Political scientist Tim Mickler (Leiden University) receives a grant from The Dutch Research Council (NWO) for his quantitative research into post-parliamentary positions of parliamentarians. The grant is a result of the SGW Open Competition XS, with the aim of stimulating innovative scientific rese…

This September, Adina Akbik received the Political Science Teaching Award at Leiden University. Created by student members of the Bachelor's and Master's Programme Committees (OLC), the award recognises remarkable teaching at the Institute. Akbik was chosen from five finalists after receiving several…

Lecture, LIAS Lunch Talk Series

Webinar

Security seems to most people a basic necessity of life, a prerequisite for a good life. But if you think about it a little longer and deeper, as political philosopher Josette Daemen has done, you realise that security sometimes comes at the expense of other important goods, such as freedom and equality.…

Transparency is seen as an important value for democratic government policy. Does that mean that we should do away with state secrets, such as confidential information involving intelligence agencies and political deals made behind closed doors? Political philosopher and ERC grant recipient Dorota Mokrosinska…

Boyd Leupen has won the Institute of Political Science MSc Thesis Prize 2015. With 'Refuting asymmetrical Kantianism: On the moral standing of animals', Leupen completed his Political Science master studies and contributed an excellent piece of scholarly work. According to the jury, his thesis stands…

Nationalism is commonly regarded as posing a challenge to international stability and regional and global order more generally. Arguably, nationalism encourages narrowly defined and zero-sum security policies; it works against compromises and consensus; it undermines international trust and cooperation.…

The English edition of Rijpkema’s Weerbare democratie is published in Routledge’s Extremism and Democracy series, one of the leading series in the field, edited by Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin.

The Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA) is pleased to introduce a new research seminar series. The FGGA Research Seminar will be a forum for the presentation and discussion of current, high-quality research on topics covered by the faculty.

On Monday 10 December, the Polish Commissioner for Human Rights dr. Adam Bodnar delivered the eighth Raymond and Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture on Human Rights at Leiden Law School. The event marked the annual celebration of International Human Rights Day, which was proclaimed to commemorate…

In January 2014, the research project The Promise of Organization hosted a fruitful three-day conference:

Few details, relatively few words. The coalition agreement presented is one of the shortest in the past 20 years, Arco Timmermans knows. Consequently, the outlines were not negotiated for very long, which has its advantages and disadvantages. 'Over the next few weeks, we are mainly going to see the…

Lecture, Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series

Mathematical biologists from Leiden have developed a model that helps to explain how the spine and vertebrae, among other things, form during embryonic development. The same process, the other way around, plays a key role in cancer metastasis. Publication in iScience.

A new mathematical model may explain how body cells get their shapes and what makes them move within a tissue. The model provides fundamental knowledge for applications in tissue engineering, amongst other things. Publication in open-access journal iScience.

Three Leiden researchers have been awarded a prestigious Vici grant by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). They each receive 1.5 million Euro to develop their own research project in the coming 5 years.

University lecturer Casper Wits wrote an opinion piece on the ongoing diplomatic tensions between the European Union and China for POLITICO. In this article, he argues that 'rather than shrinking from the fight, the EU must develop a China policy that prioritizes progressive values and human rights.…

This summer, political scientist Thijs Vos received the Kaare Strøm prize for his paper ‘Power or Ideology? What structures legislative voting behaviour in Dutch municipal councils, ideology or coalition-opposition dynamics?' He was awarded the prize during the ECPR summer school on parliaments in F…

Dr Thomas Fossen (Institute for Philosophy) has been awarded with an NWO Veni grant for his research project 'Critical moments: How do events affect how we should judge the legitimacy of political authorities?'

Lecture

The Rutte-III coalition agreement has been presented and the commentary is flooding in. Public administration experts Arco Timmermans and Gerard Breeman examined the new agreement – as they have done for every coalition agreement since 1963 - and made a systematic analysis of it: it is very much about…

Maritime conflict management is the regulation of conflict in relation to the sea. It comprises conflict enforcement, conflict resolution and conflict avoidance. How did victims of maritime conflicts claim and obtain damages or demand compensation or reparation?

In Sri Lanka, a prominent Singhalese Buddhist monk publicly proclaims that it is not a sin to kill Tamils. In Japan, the family register kept in a Buddhist temple and specifying the outcaste status of a lineage is provided to private detectives investigating the marriageability of a young woman. Throughout…

Peter Grol and Edwin Bakker, professor of Terrorism and Counterterrorism at the University, presented their book ‘Dutch Jihadists’ for a large audience. The book tells individual stories of jihadists in Holland and of Syria-goers and should contribute to a better insight into their backgrounds and m…

How have British cities changed in the years since the Second World War? And what drove this transformation? This innovative new history traces the development of the post-war British city, from the 1940s era of reconstruction, through the rise and fall of modernist urban renewal, up to the present-day…

The historiography of the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944 is dominated by the personal clash between the principal negotiators, Harry Dexter White of the United States and John Maynard Keynes of Britain.

Lecture

My research project aims to analyze reasons of the European Union’s (EU) inadequacy to develop a strong Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) with regard to the role of main EU member states, namely Germany and the United Kingdom (UK) and find the answer of how the EU overcome the CSDP question…

In the nineteenth century many Dutch people believed in the end of time and the coming of God's thousand-year reign. This belief effectively slowed down the process of modernisation that was taking place in the Netherlands at that time, concludes historian Rie Kielman. PhD defence 13 April.

That it was students who started the protests in China against its zero Covid policy makes things more dangerous for politicians. China expert Frank Pieke explains the role of students in China, what makes the protests unique and what might happen next.

On May 13, prof. Tom R. Tyler (Yale Law School) will hold a lecture at Leiden Law School on