Ideology and Actions

Leiden University is aware of its role in society and wants to create a green, healthy and inclusive campus and have a positive impact on the field of climate and circularity.

In September 2021 the CWTS open science policy came into effect. This policy deals with open access publishing, open research data, and open source software. All research projects carried out at CWTS are subject to the CWTS open science policy.

Public policy is often the subject-matter of pervasive and deep moral disagreement. Moral disagreement, understood as the difference and opposition between principled moral arguments, can and does occur between policy professionals, different political parties and individuals or groups that compose…

European policy affects our lives: from air quality to the frequency of a bus service. Leiden researchers analyse how the European Union functions, how countries apply European policy and whether this policy actually provides solutions and delivers.

Leiden experts research ways in which European legislation is converted into national legislation. Knowing how this process works can inspire policy-makers trying to achieve their aims while abiding to Europan legislation.

From the smallest level of interaction among families and close friends, over the meso-level of schools, shops, churches, religious communities and companies, to the highest level of nation-states and international organisations: Language Policy and Planning (LPP) is everywhere!

Development of indicators to assess decoupling of economic development and environmental pressure in the EU-25 and AC-3 countries.

YAL raises its voice on policy matters.

Sarah Giest, Assistant Professor at Leiden University, and Ishani Mukherjee researched the topic of 'Behavioural Insights Teams (BITs) and Policy Change: An Exploration of Impact, Location, and Temporality of Policy Advice'.

Many of the big challenges of the 21st century (climate change, international migration, financial instability, socio-economic inequality) find their origins in the organisation of the global economy. Any solution to the world’s big challenges therefore requires forceful policy interventions at the…

Criminology and Security Policy is a challenging Dutch-taught master's programme at the renowned Leiden Law School of Leiden University. This programme – with its multidisciplinary perspective - focuses on the security issues in society and the development of effective and legitimate policy in order…

The NWO-funded Vidi project “American foreign policy and liberalism” challenges the idea that the United States has created and sustained a “liberal international order” since World War II. It instead explores the ways in which illiberal ideologies – such as those underpinning racial hierarchy at home…

Great apes and the right to health

Development of scenarios for 2050 detailed in an IO framework

European countries struggling how to deal with the issue of returning foreign fighters, women and children from the Caliphate.

This book offers a concise and accessible introduction to debates about expertise, policy-making and democracy. It uniquely combines an overview of recent research on the policy role of experts with discussions in political philosophy and the philosophy of expertise.

In this article Fisher, Klein & Codjo introduce the FOCUSdate Project and they show how the sentiment data provide unique abilities to analyze Russia's and Iran's reactions to US policies and events and NGO human rights campaigns.

After an initial suggestion of a move toward Israel, India’s Prime Minister Modi has signaled a significant recalibration of his government’s engagement with the Middle East region. Now, India seems to be prioritising strong ties with the Gulf states.

Humanities, Institute for History

Think tanks have proliferated in most Western democracies over the past three decades and are often considered to be increasingly important actors in public policy. Still, their precise contribution to public policy remains contested.

The Master’s specialisation in Sociology of Policy in Practice teaches you to think along with organisations to help them respond to the challenges they are facing in our global and quickly changing societies.

The debate in Europe about digital sovereignty, technological sovereignty, data sovereignty and strategic autonomy has been building over recent years at both the EU level and the level of individual Member States. The different concepts – and their diverse interpretations – cover the sovereignty concerns…

‘It became very clear that Brazilian legislative policy was frail, obsolete and unreliable,’ says Felipe de Paula. He defended his dissertation on the limits and possibilities of legislative policy in Brazil on Tuesday 27 March 2018.

Researchers from the Institute of Public Administration study the mechanism of lobbying and influencing political parties and the behaviour of these parties to see how solutions are found to problems. This enables them to reach conclusions as to how best to effect changes in political focus and poli…

What does it mean to do public policy ethics today? How should philosophers engage with ethical issues in policy-making when policy decisions are circumscribed by political and pragmatic concerns? How do ethical issues in public policy differ between areas such as foreign policy, criminal justice, or…

Diversity and inclusion are core values of Leiden University. Leiden University has committed itself to a policy that aims to become an inclusive community which enables all students and staff to feel valued and respected, and to develop their full potential. The Diversity & Inclusion Expertise Office…

Harm reduction in practice: a comparative analysis of the Dutch and Brazilian approach towards drug users.

In this paper, Kantorowicz aims to track the persistent effect of former partitioning borders on property tax rates in Poland.

The Institute CADS adheres to and teaches an approach to research ethics and integrity that emphasizes the processual nature of informed consent, situational ethics, and the indispensability of continually updating the ethical tradition in international anthropology in all the work of its researchers…

How do crises produce changes in specific European Union foreign policy areas, and how should we conceptualise these policy changes?

This project aims to situate the current policy concept of ‘valorization of scientific knowledge’ in historical and epistemological perspectives. Conceptual understanding of the utility of scientific practices is developed in dialogue with historical analyses of the politics of knowledge in European…

EUMOTION explores the role of emotions expressed by political elites (at EU- and member state-level) in framing the EU’s policy options during international crises.

This paper aims to understand the most common underlying problems causing strategic surprise in the context of the European Union.

Yuxi Nie defended her thesis on 15 October 2019.

On 6 June 2019, Edward Donelan defended his thesis 'Regulatory Management Policies and a Universal Model for Public Policy Making, Legislative Drafting and Managing Stocks of Legislation'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. W.J.M. Voermans.

The policies relating to language pursued by European monarchies and states have been widely studied, but far less attention has been given to their linguistic and cultural policies in territories outside their own borders.

In this top-rated course, you will learn how the European Union prepares and decides on policy, and how policy is transferred to member states and implemented by various authorities. It discusses the challenges of the European multi-level governance structure and the main causes of policy failure or…

PACES is an innovative, inter-disciplinary and multi-level research project that asks, How do changes in society, individual life experiences and migration policy shape decisions to stay or to migrate over time and across countries? And how can this knowledge inform future migration policies and gov…

Within the Sociology of Policy in Practice specialisation you will develop a research project on prevailing policy problems.

This research paper was requested by the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. It was published by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) in The Hague. Leiden University is one of the participating institutes in this publication and our researcher…

The Centre for Research Quality and Policy Impact Studies (R-QUEST), which is funded by the RCN FORINNPOL initiative, is an 8-year commitment of several partners to explore the nature and mechanisms of research quality.

This project maps the policy of ‘Paz Total’ (Total Peace) and ongoing peace negotiations between non-state armed groups and the government of Colombia under the presidency of Gustavo Petro (2022-2026).

The RIPEET project will support Responsible, Research and Innovation (RRI) policy experimentations for energy transition in three European territories - in Extremadura (ES), Highlands and Islands of Scotland (UK) and Ostrobothnia (FI). The framework conditions, processes, and outcomes of these experiments…

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris (November 2015) and Brussels (March 2016), Belgium’s counterterrorism policy has been heavily criticized – domestically and worldwide.