In this article Vanessa Newby discusses how the ANZUS states of United States, Australia, and New Zealand that sit on the fringes of the Asia-Pacific, are increasingly using their armed forces to deliver Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Response (HADR) as a way of engaging with the region.

How do government officials and humanitarian organisations in Malawi anticipate and speculate on future disasters?

How do Humanitarian Response Organizations (HROs) and Virtual & Technical Communities (V&TCs) collaboratively govern disaster sensemaking processes, and what challenges shape the effectiveness of these collaborations between 2010 and 2016?

How do humanitarian organisations adapt cyber incidents to their specific priorities and needs, and how can they adapt strategies of other organisations?

The 2011 disasters precipitated widespread concern among heritage scholars about the fate of Tohoku’s cultural properties, tangible and intangible. Damage to not only buildings and landscapes but also ‘formless’ heritage, some worried, could weaken social infrastructure and thus slow or undermine re…

What does it mean to protect against disaster in the context of climate change and other cascading environmental crises?

In this book, Lydie Cabane examines the history of disaster management in South Africa.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pressing question is how this global health emergency impacted the research agendas of the field of crisis and disaster science. This article reviewed contributions in ten important crisis and disaster journals in the two and a half years following the COVID-19…

Training and Exercising in Crisis management and Emergency Control

This study examines recovery planning committees across Japan's Tohoku region.

In this course, you will gain a deep insight into the rules that govern armed conflict, and aim to mitigate human suffering on the battlefield. You will explore the why and how of International Humanitarian Law, followed by the different types of conflict.

Andrew Littlejohn published the article 'Ruins for the future: Critical allegory and disaster governance in post-tsunami Japan' in American Ethnologist about the ruins left by Japan's 2011 tsunami.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has announced that Tanja Hendriks, along with 17 Leiden University researchers, will receive a Veni grant, embedded at the ASCL. With this grant, Hendriks will be able to develop the research project 'Taking a Risk on Disasters: speculative humanitarianism amidst a changing…

How do descendants of survivors of violent conflict anticipate and respond to potential, future disaster – both potential new conflict and natural hazards?

The Summer School on International Humanitarian Law is designed by the Grotius Centre Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum on International Humanitarian Law. Registration is now open!

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami caused immense destruction and over 170,000 deaths in the Indonesian province of Aceh. The disaster spurred large-scale social and political changes in Aceh, including the intensified implementation of shari‘a law and an end to the long separatist conflict. After the Tsunami…

Intelligence of the crowd, or in other words, intelligence of a large, random collective, exists mostly in social media platforms such as twitter. The collective does not comprise (at least not necessarily) experts on crises, just regular people mostly. Nevertheless, there is valuable intelligence to…

Famine, bombing of civilians and the almost complete destruction of Gaza. The world looks on at an unfolding humanitarian disaster. Why have our international organisations failed to prevent this tragedy? An interview with Professor Jan Aart Scholte, an expert on globalisation and global democracy.

The central question is whether the current regime of international humanitarian law governing the conduct of hostilities in armed conflict is still adequate to deal with modern conflict scenarios, or whether it needs revision or amendment.

State fragility and conflict continue to be among the most enduring development challenges of the 21st century. The consequences of fragility and conflict on individuals, States and the international community are profound. At the individual level, an estimated 2 billion people or a quarter of the world's…

This article by Honorata Mazepus and Florian van Leeuwen in the journal Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration and Institutions looks at how evaluations of authorities were influenced by four aspects of a governmental response to a hypothetical disaster.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published Annemarie Samuels' article on the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. It's a detailed ethnographic account of the experiences of three Indonesian survivors.

Attitudes towards cultural heritage have long been characterised by an ‘endangerment sensibility’ concerned with preventing losses. Recently, however, critical heritage scholars have argued that loss can be generative, facilitating the formation of new values and attachments. Their arguments have focused…

Taking Mozambique as a case study, the aim of this research is to develop a methodology for improving flood risk assessments by extending hydrological records using paleo hydrologic evidence of past floods, combined with a socio-legal assessment of the land rights of those impacted by climate change…

This anthology contributes to a historically grounded understanding of the complex relationship between Christian missions and the roots of humanitarianism and its contemporary uses in a Middle Eastern context.

This research explores how international organisations responded to the humanitarian and human rights challenges brought about by COVID-19.

In the episode 'Intersecting vulnerabilities of humanitarian disasters' of the 'Talking Humanitarianism' podcast, Andrew Littlejohn talks with host Ekatherina Zhukova (Lund University, Sweden) about our understanding of vulnerability in the context of humanitarianism to locate responsibility not in…

It is a tragic fact that mass atrocities have been, and are being, committed across the world. The international community, while condemning these acts, often stands idly by. This conundrum raises a host of empirical, legal, and normative questions regarding the role of public opinion in responding…

Lydie Cabane, Assistant Professor in Governance of Crises at the Institute for Security and Global Affairs, recently published the book The Government of Disasters. In this book Lydie explores how the South African state bureaucracy reacts to disasters.

On Thursday 30 June Janet van de Bunt will defend her doctoral thesis entitled ‘Disaster Relief Funds’. The defence will commence at 16.15 hrs in the Academy Building of Leiden University, Rapenburg 73. The supervisor is Professor A.G. Castermans.

In this article Jeroen Wolbers and Sanneke Kuipers take a closer look at disaster preparedness to reinvigorate the academic debate.

The world is full of wars, and no war is without its dead. What happens to the bodies of fatal casualties of armed conflict? The winner of the faculty Jongbloed Thesis Prize 2015 is Welmoet Wels (Public International Law). Her thesis Dead body management in armed conflict: paradoxes in trying to do…

This edited volume draws from papers presented at the conference Closing the Gap | Responsibility in Cyberspace: Narratives and Practice, organized in June 2022 at the Egmont Palace in Brussels, Belgium, by Leiden University, as part of the EU Cyber Direct project.

In response to the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide adopted a variety of strategies that include not just preventive or mitigation strategies adopted to 'flatten the curve', but also interventions aiming to mitigate economic and social impacts of the pandemic.

The author researched the motivations of bureaucrats to integrate refugees into welfare services even when they do not have any legal obligation to do so.

How can ‘Big Data’ be used in development and humanitarian aid, and what are the risks? Leiden University and the United Nation’s Global Pulse are organising an international expert meeting in The Hague on 23 October.

The IHL Clinic offers outstanding LLM candidates the chance to work pro bono on KGF projects and gain practical experience in humanitarian law in cooperation with practitioners working in the humanitarian field.

Here we provide information on the ways through which the Institute of Psychology aims to foster responsible scholarship practices: conducting research with integrity, and meeting the needs for better quality and efficiency in psychological science.

This editorial to RHCPP discusses how COVID-19 can be seen as a 'creeping crisis' according to the authors of its lead article (Boin et al, 2020) and how resilience may depend on the real heroes behind the scenes of response to disaster and adversity.

In Humanity’s End As A New Beginning, Emeritus Professor Mineke Schipper reflects on myths about ‘the end’.

The government, the people and the country were in desperate straits. This about sums up the state of affairs in the Disaster Year of 1672. It was 350 years ago, and to mark the occasion PhD candidate Roosje Peeters collaborated on a series of letters to and from a key political figure Johan de Witt,…

The Frits Kalshoven International Humanitarian Law Competition, organised by the Netherlands Red Cross and Belgian Red Cross-Flanders, lets students explore the legal framework governing armed conflict. Eight teams from Belgium and the Netherlands competed in the 19th edition (23–27 February 2026) in…

The Hague Diplomacy Podcast aims at bringing the themes of the journal's research off the page, and onto the discussion table. Each episode will feature a guest who will share their insights and personal experience within their practice of or research on diplomacy. Available via SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts…

Alicia Schrikker, Director of Research at the Leiden University Institute for History shed light on the importance of preserving archives of natural disasters. Her lecture titled History, Memory, and Archives of Disaster looked at the 1883 Krakatoa eruption through archival records of the colonial government…

‘There is no such thing as a timeless Japanese soul,’ says newly appointed Professor in Modern Japan Studies Katarzyna Cwiertka. The first month of her professorship turned out to be a crucial test: Japan was hit by a destructive earthquake and tsunami, and Cwiertka had to keep her head in the midst…

On the 14th December 2016, Steven L. Schwarcz, Stanley A. Star Professor of Law and Business at Duke University School of Law gave the thirteenth Hazelhoff Guest Lecture. Professor Schwarcz questioned the often-heard assumption that systemically important financial institutions engage in excessive…