In Voices on Birchbark Jos Schaeken explores the major role that writing on birchbark – an ephemeral, even ‘throw-away’ form of correspondence and administration – played in the vibrant medieval merchant city of Novgorod and other cities in the Russian Northwest.

Inaugural lecture

On 27 September 2017 a new book by Prof. Luuk van Middelaar appeared, entitled The new politics of Europe. The book is at the same time a front line account of Europe’s recent crisis years – from monetary turmoil to tensions around Ukraine, from refugee crisis to Brexit – and an analysis of the Union’s…

The Institute of Political Science has a multi-dimensional research programme that promotes the unity of the institute as an intellectual community rooted in the social sciences and especially political science, while enabling overlapping groups of colleagues to develop particular research agendas within…

Teaching at the Institute of Public Administration focuses on studying public administration in its broadest sense, including semi-government, lobby organisations, civil society and relevant private organisations. Our courses have an interdisciplinary and theoretical-empirical approach, integrating…

What does life look like after International Studies? For Chris Colijn who graduated in 2018, it involves working on his master’s in Russian and Eurasian Studies, in combination with a bustling traineeship for “Raam of Rusland”, a think tank, focusing on Russian and Ukrainian politics, economy and culture.…

Interested in Area Studies? Then Leiden is the place to be! Join our Online Area Studies Week from 2-5 June to find out more. From Africa to Brasil and from Korea to Russia, Leiden covers all areas and fields, both in language, literature, history, politics and socio-economics. Join our live Q&As!

Prof. André Gerrits and dr. Max Bader have been awarded a grant by the WOTRO Science for Global Development of NWO for their project 'Human Security and Conflict in Ukraine: Local Approaches and Transnational Dimensions'.

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.

Below you can find lists of Leiden-based and international organizations working on Central Asia, and an overview of useful resources on Central Asia.

The CEES Centre regularly hosts (guest) lectures, roundtables, and film screenings.

Teaching during the corona crisis, the high workload and the challenges faced by the Faculty of humanities. In an online working visit to Leiden University on 12 October, Minister for Education, Culture and Science, Ingrid van Engelshoven, discussed the hot topics of the day with the Executive Board,…

Your time at Leiden is about more than just studying. Some of your best experiences will stem from being a part of our lively and diverse student community, as well as from life in the beautiful city of Leiden.

The current project aims to revive the idea that sound inventories are structured according to a small set of universal principles by applying insights from current phonological theory and by making use of modern database technologies and data assessing methodologies.

Documenting and describing languages of the world.

Languages of The Hague is a collection of columns on languages and language which were published between 2016 and 2018 in the weekly newspaper Den Haag Centraal.

In this article, Gerrit Dijkstra and Jos Raadschelders from the Institute of Public Administration, focus on Russia’s role in Bosnia and raise some important questions.

Pre-University Classes are intended for high school students who want to do more than is offered in the regular school curriculum. In the classes, students follow special lecture series and through that are introduced to the world of science.

When researching languages in historical context, our goal is to understand the nature of linguistic variation in the past, and explain the extent to which the socio-cultural context of bygone times contributed to shaping linguistic variation and change.

Reconstructing language history and prehistory in the context of the Indo-European language family.

On February 20th, Gulnaz Sibgatullina succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Gulnaz on this great result.

In 2019, Aliaksandr Lukashenka marks a quarter of a century as the first, and so far only president of the Republic of Belarus. This new book by Dr. Matthew Frear, Assistant Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies, offers the most up-to-date analysis of government and politics in a country usually…

On the 6th of July, Anthony Jakob successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Anthony on this achievement!

The topic of Historical Linguistics and Philology at LUCL is language change in its broadest sense.

The form and content of the course are determined by your answers on the intake form and, if necessary, an intake interview.

This collection of seventeen essays takes its inspiration from the scholarly achievements of the Dutch historian Jan Lucassen. They reflect a central theme in his research: the history of labor.

Proceedings of the European Science Foundation Workshop at Tautavel (France), 1993

Almost all languages of Europe and of a large part of western Asia belong to a single language family, which is called Indo-European, and which includes modern languages like English, Dutch, Russian, Farsi, but also ancient ones like Ancient Greek, Latin, Hittite and Sanskrit.

The research project ‘The History of National Security, 1945-present', is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the Campus The Hague/Leiden University and the Netherlands Institute for Military History (NIMH). The project will run until the summer of 2013, when we hope…

Want to explore a different specialist field? Or maybe study a topic from your programme in more depth? This summer Leiden University is again offering a broad selection of Summer Schools.

Professor Kees Waaldijk presented the report on the LawsAndFamilies Database to Pearl Dykstra, member of the High Level Group of Scientific Advisors of the European Commission on 25 April. This comparative study shows that in European countries same-sex partners are increasingly gaining equal rights.…

What would it be like if you could work with the best in your field every day? Alumnus in International Studies Niels Drost knows just what that’s like. He currently works as a junior researcher at the Clingendael Institute.

Strategic direction of the Europe Hub lies with a Steering Committee, composed of members from several Leiden University faculties.

Met de val van Balkenende IV laait de discussie over het functioneren van politieke partijen binnen ons democratisch bestel weer op. Opgeblazen ego’s, overambitieuze politici en partijpolitieke machtspelletjes zouden echte democratie in de weg staan. Maar die discussie is niet nieuw.

This article reviews how external expertise supports intelligence production and crisis decision-making with Germany's response to the Russio-Ukrainian war.

How did a circle of Soviet artists and writers virtually unknown until perestroika turn into Russia’s most influential contemporary art movement? This book reconstructs the cultural history and canonization of a group of painters and poets known as the Moscow conceptualists, who paradoxically did not…

This project proposes to connect two discourses highly present in contemporary literary criticism in China, as well as on the world literary scene and academic circles: the discussion on emigration literature and the concept of ‘essayness’ derived mainly from (post)modern Western theories of the ess…

The place of European states and institutions in world politics is the core focus of this pillar. Research on this theme concerns European actors’ ability to promote peace, security and justice in their neighbourhood and to shape the future of global governance by translating its economic size into…

James Shires has contributed a chapter to the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CyCon 2021), which gathers 20 articles from the law, technology and strategy domains.

Nowadays, most Europeans speak a language belonging to the Indo-European language family. However, very different languages were spoken on our continent before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. The EUROLITHIC project tries to find answers to the question which languages these were and where they came…

Ömer Koçyigit defended his thesis on 7 July 2020

You’ve been accepted! Leiden University looks forward to welcoming you as a new student. Your next step is to prepare for your studies. Below you can find some tips to help you get a head start as you embark on your studies at Leiden University.

Get to know us through our online and in-person events for prospective students!

On 15 February 2024, Alexandros Sarris defended the thesis 'International Law and Governance of the Arctic in an Era of Climate Change'. The doctoral research was supervised by Nico Schrijver and Freya Baetens.

On 22 June, Najib Amin defended the thesis 'State-building, lawmaking, and criminal justice in Afghanistan: a case study of the prison system’s legal mandate, and the rehabilitation programmes in Pul-e-charkhi prison'. The doctoral research was supervised by Jan Michiel Otto and Pauline Schuyt.

Dr. Bakhtiyar Babadjanov is the first Erasmus Fellow within the Erasmus Mobility Plus Project between Leiden University and the Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies, in particular the Al-Biruni Centre of Oriental Manuscripts. The two-year project (2016-2018) envisages exchange of teaching staff…