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

Conference

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.

Corinna Jentzsch and Wouter Veenendaal, two political scientists affiliated with Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science, have been awarded a NWO ‘Veni’-grant. This grant brings them official recognition as ‘young outstanding researchers’, as well as financial support for conducting independent…

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

Course

On 22 June 2018, Prime Minister Rutte announced that Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Professor of International Relations and Diplomatic Practices at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), together with former ministers Sybilla Dekker and Winnie Sorgdrager, will become Minister of State.

The Social and Cultural Plan Bureau (SCP) published the report “The social state of the Netherlands”. In this research is it stated that there is no such thing as a political shift to the right. In view of the fact that the right wing is better represented in the House of Commons, this is a remarkable…

On Wednesday 21 March 2018 Jeroen Dijsselbloem, former Minister of Finance, and former President of the Euro Group and the Board of Governors of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), gave a guest lecture at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs.

Festival

Caspar Reuvens, the world’s first Professor of Archaeology, was a prominent classical scholar and from his appointment in 1818 onwards Classical & Mediterranean Archaeology has been an important field of research in Leiden.

Emphasizing on the key role of polysemy in forming the lexicon is the main goal to be achieved in this dissertation paper. The paper suggests a qualitative evaluation of polysemy in comparing it with other relations that form the lexicon. The research confirms that the polysemic links must not be modeled…

The project seeks to explore the interplay of valuation and inequalities in science, using the interdisciplinary and planet-critical field of forest research as empirical case. It examines which/whose knowledge is recognised on what grounds, and how social dimensions like gender and geographical location…

This paper addresses the gap that explores how agencies might allocate their personnel so as to maximise performance with the personnel they have.

Natural resources often stretch across borders that separate modern nation states. This can create conflict and limit opportunities for regulated consumption of their goods and services, but also provide opportunities for joint multinational efforts that exceed single country capabilities.

The territories that would make up what is today the Republic of Zambia officially became British in 1891. However, this did not equate to an on-the-ground presence of colonial authority capable of affecting the destiny and daily lives of people.

On 3 December 2019, Meda Couzens defended her thesis 'The application of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by national courts'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. T. Liefaard and Prof. J.J. Sloth-Nielsen.

All research at Leiden University is organised into institutes. To do justice to the wide spectrum of research (and consequently teaching) that comes from these, you will find descriptions of all the Leiden institutes on these pages.

Aesthetic formations and cultural repertoires give meaning to our reality in ways that are never neutral. Focusing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and its global interlocutors, this project brings together a team of scholars from Leiden University who bring in inter-disciplinary, inter-area…

Leiden’s Faculty of Humanities is one of the broadest of its kind, offering courses in no fewer than 80 different languages and a very broad spectrum of academic disciplines.

This project investigates how early print media covered distant but urgent geopolitical conflicts, using newspapers from the Low Countries, north and south.

Designed for high-achieving students, Leiden University's master's in Middle Eastern Studies (Research) offers you unmatched resources and expertise.

Research into the evolutionary backgrounds of our diets can help us make the right choices in diet, health and lifestyle.

Exploring the Meanings of Lands and Forests as an Avenue for Mutual Development of People and Nature in Ghana

On 30 November, Florian Theissen defended the thesis 'Sincerely believing in freedom: a reconstruction and comparison of the interpretation of the freedom of religion and belief on the Canadian Supreme Court, the South African Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights'. The doctoral…

The history of sign languages of deaf people is severely understudied. The historical linguistics of sign languages offers a fundamentally new perspective on the history of human languages. This project addresses the dearth of knowledge about historical sign language linguistics through a large-scale…

The master’s in African Studies at Leiden University is an advanced area studies qualification that combines world-class scholarship with practice-based learning.

Lecture

Teaching is a vital part of CompaRe’s activities. Both in Leiden and abroad, our aim is to educate the minds that will redesign and drive forward the regional integration of tomorrow. We do so by offering multiple courses on comparative regional integration in Leiden, the creation of a MOOC on comparative…

If you would like to apply for this programme, you should first check the admission requirements.

To be eligible for Archaeological Science at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

If you would like to apply for this programme, you should first check the admission requirements.

To be eligible for Archaeology (research) at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

The announcement by US President Donald Trump on 9 March in response to the invitation for a summit meeting with the North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un came as a big surprise. Media analyses vary from being very positive to almost cynically negative. However, according to researcher on Korea Koen…

What is the impact of Indonesia’s democratization process on everyday state-citizen relations?

In tracing the deeper historical roots of what Xi Jinping contemporarily frames as a “Chinese dream” of “wealth and power,” the article discerns key actors, events, and organizing principles in a long process toward restoring China’s deemed rightful place in the regional system.

There was a lot of fuss last week about the ‘dragnet law’, in which intelligence services are now authorised to conduct large-scale tapping of cable communications. The public image here is that the privacy of innocent citizens will almost certainly be violated. Paul Abels, professor of governance of…

In the second and final round of the French elections this Sunday, the French will vote for who is going to become their next president. In an article for the Washington Post, Alexandre Afonso, assistant professor at Leiden University, has tried to project the votes in order to predict whether Marine…

This month Johan Christensen, assistant professor at the Institute of Public Administration, published his new book: ‘The Power of Economists within the State’. The book explores four countries, Denmark, Ireland, Norway and New Zealand and analyses why these similarly sized and wealthy countries have…