On 31 January 2024, Alex Schilin defended his dissertation ‘United in Distinctiveness: The Institutionalisation of Differentiated Integration in Economic and Monetary Union during the Sovereign Debt Crisis.’ What motivated him to research this specific topic, and how did he tackle this project? And…

Monday 26 September, 2016 saw the first confrontation between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Expectations were high – not only about the content of the debate, but also about how the two presidential candidates would behave, and how this might influence their campaigns. We asked three researchers…

As both old and new democracies experience increasing democratic backsliding, there is a critical societal need to rethink the design and effectiveness of democratic checks and balances. In this conference on Friday 9 June, the aim is to explore multidisciplinary insights about what makes the checks…

Joris Larik was interviewed by BBC World Service radio on the state of Brexit negotiations, the Irish border issue and ongoing Dutch preparation.

The norms, institutions and power relations that have defined the last decades of international political and economic relations in the European Union are undergoing major transformations. With the return of competition between great and ambitious powers, like the US, China, EU and Russia, the need…

Dit jaar begon het project 'Monarchy in Turmoil'. Dit project bracht twee nieuwe onderzoekers naar het Instituut voor Geschiedenis: PhD-kandidaat Quinten Somsen en postdoc Joost Welten. Hieronder stellen zij zich voor en lichten zij hun project toe.

Students taking the new bachelor’s course ‘Social Movements and Political Violence’ are about to do something new. In addition to studying textbooks and academic articles, they will actively work with multimedia materials and engage in online storytelling. Course instructor Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden…

Political scientist Rebekah Tromble (Leiden University) has been appointed as an academic advisor to the Social Science One research commission. She will assist the commission in its new partnership with Facebook, which aims to facilitate in-depth studies of the role of social media in elections and…

The 2018 King's Speech was a string of statements containing little or no substance. It was obvious that, in an attempt to keep all the coalition parties happy, the speech covered more issues than in 2017. This is confirmed by an analysis of the speech carried out by public administration experts Gerard…

Debate

Leiden University will be conferring three honorary doctorates in its special anniversary year. They will be awarded to Eliot Higgins, truth finder and founder of Bellingcat, Bonnie Honig, expert in feminist theory and legal theory, and Kelly Chibale, professor of organic chemistry, who works on prevention…

Na de 7 oktober demonstraties schoffeerde Wilders burgemeester Halsema, door op X te roepen dat zij het land moet verlaten. Volgens experts overtreedt Wilders hiermee de gemaakte afspraken met de coalitiepartijen. Wim Voermans, hoogleraar Staatsrecht, hierover aan het woord in het Parool.

Leiden law scholars prof. dr. Luc Verhey and Gert Jan Geertjes have edited a book about constitutional conventions and their added value for Dutch constitutional law. The book is published (in Dutch) by editor Boom in Amsterdam.

Lecture, Radical Spotlight seminar

Lecture

Jan de Vetten brengt zijn promotieonderzoek ook uit in boekvorm. ‘In de ban van goed en fout’ beschrijft voor het eerst - op basis van archiefonderzoek en interviews - op samenhangende wijze de bestrijding van de CP en CD, en ook de reactie daarop van die partijen. Waarom werden ze zo fel werden bestreden?…

Lecture

On 29 February there appeared a column by Maaike Warnaar in the Volkskrant on the Iranian elections.

The left is gaining more and more ground on the political map of Latin America, with the elections in Colombia as the most recent example. But what’s behind this pull to the left? Professor of Modern Latin American History Patricio Silva talks about the current political situation in the region.

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Lecture

Lecture

The 22nd of march 2023, political scientist Lukas Spielberger will defend his dissertation ‘Lessons from Europe for the study of international bank cooperation’. He wrote his thesis about the cooperation of central banks during international financial crises: ‘central banks pay more attention to shared…

What did psychology student Jessie learn while working at a psychiatric hospital in The Gambia? And why is Noman from Yemen now studying political science in Leiden? Thanks to donations from alumni, students have the opportunity to spend time abroad funded by a LUF grant. Jessie and Noman talk about…

Lecture, LAC Asia Academy

Lecture

Why are the local parties so popular? Researchers at Leiden University gave their reaction the day after the elections of 21 March.

“The ideas from society should be heard in order to narrow the gap between government and the people”. These words from Kwagjin Choi, Korean diplomat and co-architect of South Korea’s People Diplomacy sum up why, in the view of this guest speaker at ISGA, foreign ministries should pay much more attention…

Lecture

Wouter Linmans is working on a PhD thesis on visions and fears of future warfare in Dutch society (1918-1939).

Tweedejaars studenten van de Bachelor Bestuurskunde, track Bestuur Beleid en Organisatie (BBO), hebben tijdens het vak BBO II: Multi-level governance gewerkt aan een praktijkopdracht voor de gemeente Leiden. De bevindingen werden aan elkaar gepresenteerd tijdens een interactieve sessie.

“The union’s 60th birthday is not a moment for gifts and cake, but for reinvention around three new strategic idea. (…) The new Europe must protect, improvise and tolerate opposition”. This is what Prof. Luuk van Middelaa, Professor of Foundations and Practice of the European Union and its Institutions,…

Debate, Panel and Q&A session

Political scientist Femke Bakker (Leiden University) has won the 2019 Jean Blondel PhD Prize. According to the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), her ‘Hawks and Doves: Democratic Peace Theory Revisited’ is best thesis in politics of the past year.

Lecture, This Time for Africa! Series

Last Thursday the Dutch House of Representatives held a debate on children being put into care when the childcare benefits scandal (toeslagenaffaire) had caused problems for their families. Four Leiden University academics were asked by the House to produce a fact sheet for this debate, bringing together…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Lecture, Lunch Research Seminar

Lecture

A fragmented political landscape, permanent pressure from current affairs and an increasingly political civil service: our government faces many challenges. This makes it all the more difficult to make important decisions about pensions or the climate. Research and good education can help meet the challenges…

This HJD Forum will look at the implications for diplomacy of greater people involvement in diplomacy, as part of the wider governance process. The Forum will interrogate the functions and practices of varying modes of people engagement in external relations in terms of diplomatic innovation. Such participation…

Professor Henk Schulte Nordholt was made a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion on Friday 6 September 2019 for his services to the study of Indonesia. Mayor of Leiden, Henri Lenferink, presented him with his medal. This was at the end of a valedictory symposium for and a valedictory speech by…

The monthly ILS Lunch Seminars have become a regular point on the Law School’s agenda and are steadily developing into somewhat of a tradition. During this seminar series, all researchers from Leiden Law School can present their research. The idea is to apprehend in a comfortable setting what researchers…

Students from Londen, Amsterdam and Leiden visited presentations and talked to students, tutors and alumni to find out more about the Master’s Programmes Leiden University has to offer.

Bureaucrats appointed based on merit are not necessarily more professional or autonomous than those who have been, for instance, ‘politically installed’. Furthermore, patronage does not only have negative effects. These are two conclusions reached by Abdul-Nasir Abubakar, PhD candidate at Leiden University’s…

Northern Yemen; a highland region often in the news as the center of the Houthi regime, has a political, social, and intellectual history spanning more than a millennium. This exhibition showcases some of the findings of the Early Modern State Development in Yemen project, based at Leiden University,…

Chuan Zha from China studied International Relations at Leiden University. He comes from Chengdu, a city of more than 14 million inhabitants, but regards the relatively small town Leiden as ‘more cosmopolitan’.

Should we be deeply concerned about the America of Donald Trump? Or will he bring about positive change? This was the main topic of discussion between researchers and students at the Big Leiden Presidential Breakfast on 9 November.

This year’s EUSA biannual research conference, which took place in Miami in May 2017, saw a large delegation of the Europa Institute Leiden leaving its mark. In several panels, Prof. Luuk van Middelaar, Dr. Moritz Jesse (Associate Professor at the Europa Institute), Dr. Armin Cuyvers (Assistant Professor…

Wietse Stam is a PhD candidate at the Leiden University Institute for History. His PhD thesis is about UNTAC; a United Nations peacekeeping operation in Cambodia during the early 1990s.