Research on lethal violence related to criminal activities.

How many men and women die per year at the hands of others? What are the motives behind these killings? Are there as many homicides today as years ago? How can we explain the rise and fall of homicides over time? And: What is the influence of (early) childhood and adolescence on the likelihood to commit…

This article describes the phenomenon of firearms violence and the importance of including non-lethal firearms violence in understanding this phenomenon.

Research into 25 years of lethal violence in the Netherlands and into language socialisation of deaf families in Africa will receive grants from the Leiden University Fund (LUF).

How do balanced lethal systems originate and persist in nature?

Project TARGET aims to improve our understanding of gun violence in Europe and the relationship between gun violence and firearms trafficking.

To assess the impact of illicit firearms trafficking on gun violence, this research looks at the scope, characteristics and contexts of firearm violence, and also the scope and nature of firearms trafficking in Europe since the new millennium. Nils Duquet, Dennis Vanden Auweele and Marieke Liem created…

The Research Group 'Violence and Violence Prevention' studies interpersonal violence. We seek to better understand the dynamics underlying interpersonal conflict.

Comparison across jurisdictions is one way of assessing the appropriateness of lethal force resulting from the actions of law enforcement agencies. This article sets out a vision for a global use of force monitor that can enable meaningful comparisons between law enforcement agencies. It examines some…

Firearms and violence in Europe–A systematic review by Katharina Krüsselmann, Pauline Aarten, Marieke Liem

Why do certain incidents of serious violence end lethally whereas others do not? What role do personal characteristics of offenders and victims play and how do immediate situational factors influence outcomes?

Under what circumstances do paramilitary groups limit their use of political violence? This article examines the use of political violence by the PIRA.

In this minor programme, students will become familiar with the nature and scope of violence; the ways in which it impacts public order, and the ways in which society can respond to and, ultimately, prevent violence.

Understanding the evolving landscape of extremism in the 21st century.

What is the nature and scope of violence? Who offends, and in what context? Who are the victims? And how can we design suitable intervention and prevention strategies? In this track, you will be familiarised with the many faces of violent offending, to provide the knowledge and tools to understand,…

In this project, we seek to assess, map and understand the risk factors associated with fatal domestic violence.

Can conspiracy constructions explain for hatred of the system? And if so, should conspiracy constructions be considered to be a risk in terms of national security?

Representations of violence are often said to generate cathartic effects, but what does “catharsis” mean? And what theory of the unconscious made this concept so popular that it reaches from classical antiquity to the digital age?

The judge as a problem-solver in domestic violence cases involving child victims.

The illegal use of hand grenades has generated a lot of public interest over the last few years but very little is known about the nature and extent of these incidents. This research project is trying to fill that gap.

The aim of this project is to study what makes an act or form of violence a specifically political reality.

This study focuses on violence involving juveniles in conflict with the law who are deprived of their liberty in different institutions within the framework of the (juvenile) criminal justice system (inter alia, police detention, pre-trial detention and deprivation of liberty after conviction or sen…

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).

On Tuesday 23 May 2017, Jasmina Mackic defended her doctoral thesis ‘Proving discriminatory violence at the European Court of Human Rights’. The supervisor of the research is Vice Dean and Professor of Public International Law Larissa van den Herik. A brief summary of her thesis is provided below.

Representations of violence have subliminal contagious effects, but what kind of unconscious captures this imperceptible affective dynamic in the digital age?

Urban riots, violent responses by police, drug-related assassinations, child abuse, bar fights: Violence is a core theme in today’s modern society.

French title: Communication et violences dans le Guéra et le Moyen-Chari (Tchad) de 1940 à 2010. This research investigates the relationship between the introduction of new means of communication and violence experienced by the local populations in the Moyen-Chari and the Guéra regions in Chad from…

Are you thinking about studying Crisis and Security Management: Governance of Violence? Learn more and watch the videos.

The position of child victims, globally and in Liberia and their right to physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration covered by art. 39 CRC.

This article written by Marieke Liem & Alexander Kamprad investigates the relationship between terrorism and interpersonal violence. They conducted cross-national analyses on the effects of terrorism mortality rates on homicide rates. Results showed that terrorism appears to be robustly and positively…

This study looks at population response to government containment strategies during initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in four high-trust Northern European countries–Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden–with special emphasis on expressions of governmental trust.

This research examines the social, political, and cultural forces that structure people’s responses towards accented speech, and further uses the accent as a focal point to theorize the interrelation between language and body.

The Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) focuses on multidisciplinary research and education within the international scientific field of security studies.

Jasmina Mačkić, Assistant Professor of Human Rights Law at the Europa Institute, has published her book, Proving Discriminatory Violence at the European Court of Human Rights. This work is based on her doctoral dissertation, which she defended in May 2017 and which was funded by the Netherlands Organisation…

This interdisciplinary study focuses on (trans)national ethnic and popular networks, combining historical-ethnographic and computational methods to understand the ‘workings’ of networked conflict interfering in the increasingly violent conflict in the Sahel (Africa) and beyond. The project focuses on…

Grace Leksana defended her thesis on 26 May 2020.

Violence during war often involves upswings and downturns that have, to date, been insufficiently explained. Why does violence at a particular point in time increase in intensity and why do actors in war decrease the level of violence at other points? Duyvesteyn discusses the potential explanatory variables…

How have British, Dutch, and German security services dealt with political violence and terrorism since the late 1960s; to what extent did they consider these new phenomena as a task and how have they developed activities in order to counter these security threats?

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.…

This initiative is intended to support generative research collaborations between and among scholars located in different geographical regions who wish to pursue focused, joint projects in any area of the study of religion.

This paper contributes on an increasing body of work on radicalisation. It specifically focuses on what distinguishes individuals whose behavioural radicalisation includes involvement in terrorist violence from those whose behavioural radicalisation does not.

The Dutch and English East India Companies were formidable organizations that were gifted with expansive powers that allowed them to conduct diplomacy, wage war and seize territorial possessions. But they did not move into an empty arena in which they were free to deploy these powers without resista…

A new paperback edition of Brian Heffernan's book Freedom and the Fifth Commandment. Catholic priests and political violence in Ireland, 1919-21 was published by Manchester University Press in September 2016.

Ben Wielstra studies balanced lethal systems, in which half of the offspring die before birth. In the journal Current Biology, he explains in an accessible way how such a disadvantage can originate in nature.

Below you will find an overview of how researchers from the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs and their research appear in the media, and you can read more about topics that concern the Faculty.

Policy Note Insecurity in Burkina Faso – beyond conflict minerals: The complex links between artisanal gold mining and violence

Macrophages – the front line of our immune system – protect us from infections. But in the case of the tuberculosis bacteria, this often goes wrong. The group of Annemarie Meijer from the Leiden Institute of Biology has now discovered that macrophages in zebrafish are better able to eliminate tuberculosis…