In this research note, Van der Does & Kantorowicz aruge that citizens that tend to experience political exclusion are often more supportive of direct and participatory forms of decision-making.

Political scientist Wouter Veenendaal received an NWO Veni grant for his research on the political stability of small states. 'I find small states fascinating, they are almost always excluded from comparative research, while in fact they often challenge existing theories in political science.'

This programme starts from the idea that cultural discourse is one of the main engines of intellectual history and the history of ideas.

On 24 September 2020, Bernardo Ribeiro de Almeida defended his thesis 'Building land tenure systems: the political, legal, and institutional struggles of Timor-Leste'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. A.W. Bedner. Co-supervisor was Dr. C.I.M. Jacobs.

In my research I am concerned with the possibility of a politics of sexuality without reverting to identitarian conceptions of sexuality. In a reading of the work of the American author James Purdy, I propose to move towards a politicizing of the concept of narrative identity as developed by the French…

The new book by Dimiter Toshkov - associate professor of Public Administration at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs - has been recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.

This research deals with the royal houses of the Vijayanagara Empire and four of its successor states: Ikkeri, Tanjavur (under both the Nayaka and Bhonsle rulers), Madurai, and Ramnad. This study is thus concerned with dynastic politics and imperial legacies in south India between the 14th and 18th…

A fair distribution of goods and services is the most important factor in justifying political power. This is the conclusion of Honorata Mazepus in her PhD dissertation 'What makes authorities legitimate in the eyes of citizens?' PhD defence September.

Lecture, Research Seminar

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.

Irna Hofman defended her thesis on 10 January 2019.

What makes a pension scheme sustainable? Most answers to this question have revolved around expert assessments of pension schemes’ affordability or adequacy. This study shifts focus from the financial or social sustainability of pension scheme designs to their political sustainability. The key question…

This special issue of Contemporary Levant critically explores, at a micro and macro level, the structural role and religious, cultural and political interactions of the Greek-Orthodox, Melkite and Syriac communities in late Ottoman and Mandate Syria and Palestine.

This month's news and events by the profile area Political Legitimacy features the announcement of two PhD defences and several interesting seminars and conferences at Leiden University.

Ramesh Ganohariti, PhD student and Ernst Dijxhoorn, Assistant Professor at Leiden University, researched the relation between international relations and sports, with sport and sports events increasingly being used for various diplomatic and political goals.

As Bolivia reels from the collapse of the government in November 2019, a wave of social protests, and now the impact of Covid-19, this book asks: where next for Bolivia?

Kohei Suzuki is Assistant Professor at Institute of Public Administration. This study carries several important implications for understanding the policy impacts of a graying population and for studies of the welfare state, in general.

Subjects Barbarian, Monstrous, and Wild responds to a contemporary political climate in which historically invested figures of otherness—barbarians, savages, monsters—have become common discursive currency.

This comparative study investigates court politics in four kingdoms that succeeded the south Indian Vijayanagara empire during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: Ikkeri, Tanjavur, Madurai, and Ramnad. Building on a unique combination of unexplored Indian texts and Dutch archival records, this research…

No evidence found that increasing migration leads to an increase in politically and ideologically motivated criminality. Migration flows have, however resulted in increased polarisation in the Netherlands.

How does economic downturn affect pre-existing democratic values and intergroup attitudes? Does economic downturn lead people to lose support for democracy and does it raise perceptions of intergroup threat? Is the potential effect of economic downturn on these political attitudes conditional upon earlier…

The complexities of modernization in Brazil and Graciliano Ramos significance for our understanding of Brazil today.

Let’s get this out of the way: Hillary Clinton won the 26 September 2016 presidential candidates television debate. Handily.

This study discusses the position of the monasteries in pre-1950s Tibetan societies and how that position was informed by Buddhist monastic ideology.

How do religious narratives persuade their readers to believe their message? And how can it be that some readers even come to treat fantasy and science fiction as authoritative religious texts? These are the core questions treated in Markus Davidsen’s new book Narrative and Belief: The Religious Affordance…

The nominees for the IRO thesis prize 2021 and for the Prof. Dr. J.Th.J. van den Berg prize 2021. Who wrote the best Political Science bachelor’s theses?

This article explores the concept of issue prioritisation within the context of public administration research, focusing on decision-making processes.

Political scientist Tom Louwerse (Leiden University) and a team of international researchers have been awarded a NWO ORA grant. They are going to investigate political representation in an era in which voter alignment with political parties is steadily decreasing.

What forms does religiosity take among Muslims in Europe today? How are answers to the question of what it means to be a Muslim in Europe reached in institutions of Islamic higher education, Muslim student organizations, and women’s organizations? What is the relation between the individual and religious…

The BA Religious Studies programme has been awarded the label 'Topopleiding' (Top Education) in the Keuzegids 2021.

Opera, more so perhaps than most other forms of art, is deeply intertwined with philosophy and politics. For some composers this was explicitly so. Think of Wagner’s relation with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer or Verdi’s role in Italian unification. But almost any opera raises, and tries to grapple with,…

ARC is a new platform for the artistic-academic discourse in the Netherlands and is an initiative of the Leiden University Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA).

Master International Relations specialisation Culture and Politics.

A project aimed at understanding the complicated process of religious transformation in one of the centres of the early Muslim world.

In this dissertation, the life account is constructed of of the founder of Bon Religion, Shenrab Miwo.

Religious Studies at the University of Amsterdam organises a postgraduate seminar on current issues in religious studies and western esotericism. You can find the programme for the year 2023-2024 below.

History and Religious Studies in Leiden rank # 17 and #32 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. With this, History in Leiden ranks as the best in The Netherlands and Religious Studies ranks as second best.

Cody Bahir defended his thesis on 1 June 2017.

Liu Puning defended his thesis on 25 April 2018.

This open access book brings together an eclectic cast of scholars in related disciplines to examine ageing in the Soviet Union, covering the practice of geriatrics, the science of gerontology, and the experience of growing old. Chapters in the book focus on concepts and themes that analyse Soviet ageing…

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…