On young Muslims seeking to understand their place and make their way in a transformed world.

This project aims to systematically investigate the influence of information structure on nominal licensing in a subset of Bantu languages.

An important award like the Spinoza Prize, the 'Dutch Nobel Prize', generates lots of media attention. An overview.

On the 17th of June Rea Matsangou successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Leiden University will deepen its cooperation with knowledge institutions in Africa. During a trip to Ghana, a delegation spoke with several African knowledge institutions about intensifying their collaboration.

This systematic review of 68 English-language articles explores the roles of customary authorities in environmental governance in sub-Saharan Africa

The Leiden African Studies Centre (ASCL) will become part of the University from 1 January 2016.

This COIn Grant 2025 awarded project allows Leiden University researchers and students to do research on the world’s largest corpus of digitized Ottoman language periodicals and books.

This book surveys a distinct human phenomenon in the history of the ancient Near East: individuals who were born males but, under various social and historical circumstances, their masculine identity was considered ambiguous. They bore specific titles and were engaged in cult or palace administration.…

Lions in West and Central Africa form a unique group, only distantly related to lions in East and Southern Africa. Biologists at Leiden University confirm this in an article published in Scientific Reports.

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…

North Korean workers designed and built numerous monuments, museums and other buildings in southern Africa. This is clear from research by history student Tycho van der Hoog for his master's thesis. These monuments can be an important source of income for a country that has become quite isolated on…

This dissertation is the first comprehensive description of Makalero, a language spoken by approximately 6,500 speakers in the Iliomar subdistrict, in the south-east of the Republic of East Timor. While previous sources considered it to be a dialect of the larger language Makasae, the present study,…

This handbook is aimed at a wide readership interested in developing an understanding of the political, economic, and social complexity of Eastern Europe. It covers Central Europe, the Baltic republics, South Eastern Europe, and the Western Balkans, as well as all the countries of the former Soviet…

The objective of the minor Law, Culture and Development is to teach students about the central concepts of law and the connections between law, culture and development.

To truly understand complex regions such as the Middle East and Asia, you have to know their culture, history and local societies inside out. Driven by curiosity for other cultures, the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) provides an understanding and analysis of current and historical…

‘Can he do it?’ Since the remarkable victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 Nigerian presidential elections, this has arguably been the most frequently posed question in Nigerian politics.

The philosophers at the Institute for Philosophy develop new perspectives and insights not only on topical themes such as immigration and climate change, but also on more fundamental philosophical questions.

On 22 August, the GO-FAIR IN Africa was launched: an implementation network under the GO FAIR efforts to train, build and change the next generation of the Internet of FAIR Data and Services (IFDS).

On 28 and 29 August, Dr. Ben Van Rompuy and Dr. Armin Cuyvers gave a two-day training to the Competition Commissioners of the newly established East-African Competition authority.

On 21 April 2021, Armin Cuyvers lectured students and staff of the University of Nairobi on EU law and comparative regional integration.

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume project, authored by an international team of researchers, and offering the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe.

Research groups in the Biological & Soft Matter Programme unravel mechanisms in biological processes and develop novel bio-inspired soft materials.

How did the Dutch Empire compare with other imperial enterprises? And how was it experienced by the indigenous peoples who became part of this colonial power?

Security and Legitimacy is one of the three organisational clusters of the Institute of Political Science.

Africa needs a narrative that is consistent with the developments that are taking place all around the continent. In these developments, talented youth, creative tech hubs, and leapfrogging play a big role. We need to invest accordingly.

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…

Chad-born youngsters in Paris come into contact with youngsters actually in Chad via Facebook: it would be difficult to find a better way to demonstrate the possibilities social media offer for people scattered across the world by war. Mirjam de Bruijn has been awarded a Vici grant for a study of the…

Drawing on the analogical lessons of the Great War, this article uses applied history to analyze how the four parallels discerned can help us make sense of contemporary Sino-American rivalry

On the 30th of September Christine Ketel successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

What are the conditions under which coercive diplomacy can compel a State to abandon its controversial nuclear (weapons) program? Based on the experience of the US coercive diplomacy against the nuclear programs of three countries, namely Iran, Libya and South Africa, Jean Yves Ndzana’s PhD research…

The project GRADIENTS investigates what it meant to be European in colonial Africa where identification as European often did not depend on skin colour and was understood on a spectrum with many gradients.

NCLUDE is an independent think-and-do-tank working to make knowledge count for inclusive development in Africa. Combining rigorous research with knowledge brokering to bridge the gap between evidence and action, INCLUDE's overall goal is to produce knowledge, share it widely, and help others use it…