WORLDING AMERICA researches how ‘play’ has been a key force in the past and present process of creating America as a coherent and hegemonic ‘world,’ from 1503 to the present.

Team History of Africa and the Americas

Cooperation with Latin America aims to build on the long-standing relation that Leiden University has with multiple partners in the region.

At LUCL, researchers aim to understand, describe, and preserve the linguistic diversity of the indigenous Americas.

In the master’s programme in Archaeology, you can follow courses on the archaeology of the Americas, deepening your understanding of this large region.

North, Middle and South America together constitute the single largest area in World Archaeology that is taught as a single focus. It is also the only major world area that saw societies develop from hunter-gatherers to early empires entirely independent from developments in Eurasia & Africa. It is,…

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the three priority areas of Leiden University, which was established by its Executive Board in 2014. The objective is to set up a comprehensive strategy.

This study employs a comparative perspective to identify generic and specific qualities of petitions and petitioning. It charts the chronological development of petitioning practices over centuries. The interdisciplinary approaches provide range of conceptual and methodological expertise for reade…

The Latin America and Caribbean Security and Intelligence Network (LACSIN) brings together scholars, practitioners, government agencies and the diplomatic community to develop novel and interdisciplinary approaches to addressing key areas of security and intelligence in Latin America and the Caribbe…

The Centre for Indigenous America Studies (CIAS) at Leiden University is designed to coordinate and promote the teaching and research of Indigenous languages, literatures, cultures and cultural heritage.

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

The Centre for Indigenous America Studies (CIAS) at Leiden University is designed to coordinate and promote the teaching and research of Indigenous languages, literatures, cultures and cultural heritage.

Comparative and Dutch Politics is one of the three organisational clusters of the Institute of Political Science.

History of Africa and the Americas

This article investigates how parenthood serves as a critical turning point for young people in Latin America, influencing their criminal trajectories.

Leiden students can go to LAC institutions with which Leiden University has signed student exchange agreements.

This project applies a social-historical approach to examine and contrast various groups of African-American slave refugees who sought freedom within North America between 1800 and 1860. It innovatively distinguishes between different “spaces of freedom” for runaway slaves, namely sites of formal, semi-formal,…

A MSCA Global Fellowship that aims to explore the socioeconomic and environmental implications of a Latin America circularity transition, and its impact on the EU and global economy.

Both Europe and Latin America face challenges globally and at home. Conflicts over land and resources have been resurgent in recent years.

Reasserting America in the 1970s brings together two areas of burgeoning scholarly interest.

This open access book explores the role of continuity in political processes and practices during the Age of Revolutions.

Nick Cohen interviews Andrew Gawthorpe about the current geopolitical situation, particularly focusing on America's disastrous war with Iran and its broader implications.

On Monday 4 September, Professor Christopher Martinez, from the Universidad de Concepción (University of Concepción), Chile, was invited by the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law to introduce his forthcoming book at our university.

The eleven innovative essays in this volume explore the notion that all forms of modern mass politics, including liberal democracies, need such a form of sacralization of politics to function.

Political scientist Luzia Helfer (Leiden University) empirically tested claims about media-politics relatiopns using unique data from experimental studies with elected politicians and political journalists in Switzerland and the Netherlands.

It’s impossible to avoid, even in the Netherlands: the US will soon be going to the polls. Where does it come from, this fascination with US elections? PhD candidate Bram Eenink explains.

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…

The Oxford Handbook of Dutch Politics provides a comprehensive longitudinal overview of the state of the art of academic research on the Dutch political system: its origins and historical development, its key institutions, main fault lines, pivotal processes, and key public policy dynamics. In each…

How can archaeological datasets reveal the interplay between past indigenous understandings of the surrounding world and resilient and sustainable ways of life in the Isthmo-Colombian Area?

Analysing the EU’s interregional relations with three Latin American (sub) regions: Central America, Andean Community and Mercosur in order to create a set of conditions to explain the success/failure of EU-led interregionalism

The article Sing with Me, Sing, Brother, of América by Sing with Me, Sing, Brother, of América Benjamin Fogarty-Valenzuela is published in Current Anthropology Volume 62.

How did local lifeways and crafting practices persist and develop in the diverse environments of the increasingly interconnected Gulf of Fonseca (AD 400-1521)?

The Leiden Political Economy Group (L-PEG) is a multi-disciplinary network of scholars with a research interest in (comparative / global) political economy based at Leiden University. Our members belong to various institutes and faculties across Leiden University, and from other universities across…

Political scientist Matthew Longo (Leiden University) takes a detailed look at the evolution of border security in the United States after 9/11. Far from the walls and fences that dominate the news, he reveals borders to be thick, multi-faceted and binational institutions that have evolved greatly in…

International Relations and European Politics is one of the three organisational clusters of the Institute of Political Science.

Imagining the Americas in Print contains eleven essays, seven of which have been published before and four of which are new.

The Leiden Lectures in Media | Art | Politics (MAP) is a series of talks organized by Pepita Hesselberth and Yasco Horsman. Speakers from various academic backgrounds and in different stages of their careers reflect on diverging ways in which technological and social changes challenge and transform…

The archaeological heritage of South America is facing increasing threats due to the expansion of agricultural activities, infrastructure expansion, illegal wood harvesting, and the current fire emergency plaguing the Amazon and other biomes of the continent.

Researchers using remote sensing technologies have characterized pre-Columbian regularly-shaped earthworks in forests in Central America and the Amazon. In tropical forested mountains in South America, two challenges arise when identifying archaeological sites through remote sensing. Firstly, sites…

The aim of the project is to unravel the genetic and contact relations between the indigenous languages of Mesoamerica (Mexico and western Central America) and the Middle Andes region (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia), as part of a larger endeavor to understand the historical process of the peopling of the Americas…

Never has good policy been so important. From unemployment and a lack of affordable housing to regulating cryptocurrencies and protecting against cybersecurity threats, the challenges we face are complex and global. The text explains how policymaking works: from the emergence of policy ideas to deciding…

Political scientist Maurits de Jongh (Leiden University/Sciences Po) argues that political liberalism is self-defeating as a framework of justification for liberal conceptions of justice. He explores how the framework's self-imposed criterion of acceptability in the eyes of all reasonable citizens leads…

Chinese organisations increasingly operate across the borders of China, and growing numbers of people from outside China are coming to live there. Professor Frank Pieke believes these movements have a significant effect on central and local government policy in China.

Why obey the state? Dorota Mokrosińska presents a fresh analysis of the most influential theories of political obligation and develops a novel approach to this foundational problem of political philosophy, an intriguing combination of the elements of natural duty and associative theories.

How did parties as political organizations emerge?