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 21 January 2021, Fachrizal Afandi defended his thesis 'Maintaining Order: Public Prosecutors in Post-Authoritarian Countries, the case of Indonesia'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. A.W. Bedner and Prof. J.H. Crijns.

Conference

This book explains how mass killing is driven by elite politics within authoritarian regimes.

Rising geopolitical tensions are causing states and national elites to innovate their use of the past for present-day political ends. This is certainly true for the People’s Republic of China, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2024 amid mounting superpower rivalry, ideological tensions with the…

In this article, Gerrit Dijkstra and Jos Raadschelders from the Institute of Public Administration, argue that Bosnia-Herzegovina survives so far on the basis of negative legitimacy.

Antoaneta Dimitrova, Professor Comparative Governance at Leiden University, Honorata Mazepus, Assistant professor at Leiden University and Dimiter Toshkov, Associate Professor at Leiden University, together with three other authors researched which aspects of state capacity might contribute to opening…

Promotor: M.T.M. Koper, Co-promotor: L. Juurlink

The Role and Effectiveness of the G20. In this article, published in The Changing Global Order part of the United Nations University Series on Regionalism book series, author Jaroslaw Kantorowicz discusses the evolution of the G20.

What are the essential determinants of (dis)trust? And, what are the effects of being (dis)trusted?

Promotor: B. vd Water, T. Schmidt, Co-Promotor: E.H.J. Danen

How public service motivation and professionalism affect decision-making in dilemma situations. Individuals who work in the public sector see themselves confronted with conflicting values, contradictory demands, and the need to serve an at times difficult to define ‘public interest’.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper, Co-promotor: Saskia C.A. de Jager

Autopaghy is an intracellular degradation system which targets cytosolic components to lytic compartments for degradation and recycling of the building blocks of the cell.

In this paper for Defence Strategic Communications, Alastair Reed and Jennifer Dowling seek to show the importance of historical narratives to propaganda by identifying and exploring five ways in which such narratives are exploited to reinforce the extremists' 'competitive system of meaning'.

On 5 September 2017, Alessandro Tonutti defended his PhD dissertation

The Role of Law in Libya’s National Reconciliation (RoLLNaR) was a research project that ran from 2017 to 2020. It identified and assessed the role of law – both actual and potential, enabling and constraining – with regard to major challenges of reconciliation in Libya. The project was led by Dr. Suliman…

This dissertation focuses on the production and consumption of a mediation show in China that collaborates with the local Justice Bureau and broadcasts on an entertainment channel—exploring answers to questions raised from the mentioned entertainisation, social and political, and cultural issues.

It is widely known that conflict parties engage in ceasefires for a variety of reasons, but how do these reasons relate to the military and political aspirations of conflict party leaders?

The work in this thesis describes the fundamental role of Lkb1 as a conductor of metabolism-related processes in zebrafish larvae.

From 2 to 5 September 2015, Leiden served as the stage for one of the world’s largest linguistics conferences: the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE) 2015 Annual Meeting. Marianne Mithun, a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara and outgoing president of the SLE, is not surprised that…

What is the role of memory in contemporary music?

Arco Timmermans, professor by special appointment in Public Affairs at the Institute of Public Administration, is co-editor of this book focused on comparing engagements in policy advisory systems.

On 29 September 2020, Tom van Ham defended his thesis 'Collective violence offenders and offending. The role of individual characteristics'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. A.A.J. Blokland, Prof. O.M.J. Adang (RUG) and Prof. Th.A.H. Doreleijers (VUMC).

Leiden University political scientist Daniela Stockmann has been awarded the 2015 Goldsmith Book Prize for best academic book in the field of media, politics, and public policy. Stockmann's 'Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China' (Cambridge University Press, 2013) was acknowledged…

Van Vark defended her dissertation 'Separation and immersion: the changing role of the armed forces in Northwestern liberal democracies’ on 17 October 2025. The doctoral research was supervised by Maartje van der Woude and Erwin Muller.

In this thesis, we aim to shed light on the diverse and often opposing roles of integrin α3β1 in cancer.

Amanda gave a talk in Vienna on the role of plant foods in human evolution, including a small teaser of the FoodWays project!

Whether implicitly or explicitly, we all have ideas about how the law is supposed to function, whose interests it should represent, and what role it should play in society. This project explores the ways in which these questions are addressed in the works of the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus…

Does student and teacher gender affect students’ performance and what is the role of gender stereotypes in this relation?

We aim to understand ion homeostasis in the model eukaryote S. cerevisiae.

This project aims to provide evidence-based knowledge on the conditions for successful anti-corruption activism in Ukraine.

The skin protects the body from unwanted influences from the environment as well as excessive water loss. The barrier function of the skin is located in the stratum corneum (SC).

Here I propose to study the relationship between autonomic pupil-synchronisation and trust, at the behavioural and neural level, and examine a targeted set of possible contextual moderators.

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This thesis describes the functional analysis of the Arabidopsis AHL15 gene.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.A. Bouwstra, Co-promotor: Dr. A. El Ghalbzouri

What drives the behaviour of accountability forums?

Wijayanto defended his thesis on 17 January 2019

Whilst government’s ability to design ‘context-specific’ regional innovation policy is generally assumed to depend on the region’s decision-making power, the aim of this study is to investigate how regional government matters. In order to open up the black box of policy design, the study develops a…

The research described in this thesis combines the latest insights in lysosomal function with lysosome centred cell signalling.

Investigating the making of knowledge in anthropology and natural history in colonial and postcolonial Indonesia.

How do lecturer-researchers at Dutch Universities of Applied Sciences perceive their academic identity after expanding their teaching-only work portfolios to include researcher roles, and how do they navigate attached identity-based role transitions, while balancing personal goals, institutional expectations,…

Intelligence scholars have been struggling to find the conditions under which international intelligence cooperation occurs. Most focus on transactional motives and guaranteed returns, the so called ‘Quid pro Quo’. At the same time, trust is often mentioned as one of the foremost conditions, yet it…

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide. Metastasis, the process by which cancer cells spread to other parts of the body, makes treatments less effective. It is important to unravel the mechanism of metastasis.

Protein–protein complexes are formed via transient states called encounter complexes that greatly influence the formation of the stereospecific complex.