This is the 2017 paperback release of William Michael Schmidli's The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere, which won the 2013 Foreign Affairs Magazine Best Book of the Year.

This article explores how ISIS and the Taliban have fostered support through their parallel legal systems.

If Dutch cinema is examined in academic studies, the focus is usually on pre-war films or on documentaries, but the post-war fiction film has been sporadically addressed.

Saeedeh Shahnahpur defended her thesis on 13 September 2016.

This book offers novel perspectives on the national and international dimensions of the post-war welfare state in Western Europe and North America.

Are you thinking about studying Crisis and Security Management: War and Peace Studies? Learn more and watch the videos.

The Revolt in The Netherlands erupted in 1566 and tore apart the Low Countries. In Memory Wars in the Low Countries, 1566-1700 Jasper van der Steen explains how public memories of the Revolt in the Habsburg Netherlands in the South and the Dutch Republic in the North diverged and became the objects…

In this article, Ben de Jong, research fellow at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, examines the relationship between double agents and their handlers.

Tom Buitelaar is an Assistant Professor in the War, Peace & Justice programme of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs. This paper discusses four important challenges to the involvement of UN peace operations in international criminal justice: its effects on host state relations, peace and justice…

The Afro-Asianism of the early Cold War has long remained buried under the narrative of Bandung, homogenising and subverting the different visions of post-colonial worldmaking that co-existed alongside the Bandung project.

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of…

This project aims to explore, in general, what explains civil servants’ attitudes and behavior, and, in particular, why some civil servants are more committed to professional norms and public service values – such as impartiality, equity, efficiency, and innovation – than others.

Miriam Cohen defended her PhD dissertation entitled “Reparations for International Crimes and the development of a Civil Dimension of International Criminal Justice” on 28 June 2017. She wrote her thesis under the supervision of Professor L.J. van den Herik and Professor C. Stahn.

This master’s programme focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of armed conflict between states and within states. In addition, we explore whether and how local, national and international actors and institutions can forge cooperation, prevent political and armed conflict from emerging,…

The historiography of the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944 is dominated by the personal clash between the principal negotiators, Harry Dexter White of the United States and John Maynard Keynes of Britain.

In the last two decades, there have been heated public and scholarly debates in France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands on the violent end of empire. Nevertheless, the broader comparative investigations into colonial counterinsurgency tend to leave atrocities such as torture, execution, and…

Colonial Soldiers in Europe, 1914-1945:

In this article, Thomas Maguire, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, examines why states use intelligence to influence external audiences.

The land question had a crucial formative influence on Mayo politics in the decades before the First World War and this book shows the part played by many prominent nationalist figures such as Davitt, O’Brien, Dillon and MacBride in shaping the political landscape in Mayo.

Who are open-source intelligence activists and how reliable are their contributions to public understanding of Russia’s war in Ukraine?

Cigdem Oguz defended her thesis on 13 June 2018

This edited volume by Jeff Fynn-Paul pushes forward the debate on the role of entrepreneurs in making war and building states in Europe and the Ottoman Empire.

This book argues that Armenians around the world – in the face of the Genocide, and despite the absence of an independent nation-state after World War I – developed dynamic socio-political, cultural, ideological and ecclesiastical centres. And it focuses on one such centre, Beirut, in the postcolonial…

On 17 August 1945, two days after the Japanese surrender that also brought an end to the Second World War in Asia, Indonesia declared its independence. The declaration was not recognized by the Netherlands, which resorted to force in its attempt to take control of the inevitable process of decolonization.…

By the end of the sixteenth century, stories about the Revolt in the Low Countries (c. 1567-1648) had begun to spread throughout Europe. These stories had very different authors with very different intentions.

How do first-hand narratives of war of commanders in the front line relate to the official narrative of the Eighty Years’ War?

The chaotic years after the Civil War are often seen as a time of uniquely American idealism—a revolutionary attempt to rebuild the nation that paved the way for the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. But Adam Fairclough rejects this prevailing view, challenging prominent historians such…

Engin Kiliç defended his thesis on 11 june 2015

Robert Pee, William Michael Schmidli (Eds.) This book posits that democracy promotion played a key role in the Reagan administration’s Cold War foreign policy.

A new vision on the Revolt of the Low Countries through the eyes of Spanish commanders

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of…

This week 'Dutch Post-war Fiction Film through a Lens of Psychoanalysis' by Peter Verstraten was published by Amsterdam University Press, the sequel to Humor and Irony in Dutch Post-war Fiction Film from 2016. Each chapter in his 482-page new study begins with a title of Fons Rademakers who made films…

In Reframing the Diplomat Albertine Bloemendal offers a unique window onto the unofficial dimension of Cold War transatlantic relations by analyzing the diplomatic role of the Dutch Atlanticist Ernst van der Beugel as a government official and as a private diplomat.

Emily Wolff, PhD candidate at Leiden University, wrote a paper about the inclusion of imperial citizens in the Dutch post-war welfare state.

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

Archives were a common target during the Second World War, and hundreds suffered damages. Among these archival losses, the losses to medieval manuscript collections stand out.

This paper written by Alexandre Afonso, Assistant Professor and Researcher at Leiden University, argues that gender norms and the political strength of the left were important structuring factors regarding why European countries choose migrant labour to expand their labour force in the decades that…

Does foreign aid promote human rights?

Bandura Witharana defended his thesis on 27 September 2018

This project explores the community of engineers in Sri Lanka and their role with regard to three domains of inquiry.

In this article, Vanessa Newby, assistant professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, discusses credibility in peace operations. This article argues that credibility in peace operations must be built for both deterrence and cooperation purposes.

Dutch archaeologists are making three-dimensional virtual reconstructions of archaeological objects lost in the Syrian civil war.

Subproject of

Leiden’s Institute for History has an exceptionally strong expertise in premodern European history in its global context, with specialists whose interests cover virtually the whole continent.

Elizabeth Stuart is one the most misrepresented – and underestimated – figures of the seventeenth century. Daughter of James VI & I, she was married to Frederick V, Elector Palatine in 1613 – they were crowned King and Queen of Bohemia in 1619, only to be deposed and exiled to the Dutch Republic in…