Understanding the complexities of world affairs requires an ability to think critically and to draw insights from a variety of perspectives, sources, and analytic frames. Leiden University’s Master of Arts in International Relations addresses these needs through distinctive humanities-based training…

This summer school focuses on the emergence of sexual orientation, gender identity (SOGI) and intersex issues in different areas of international law, such as human rights law, refugee law, international economic law, and international criminal law. The announcement for the next edition is set for December…

The Classics and Ancient Civilizations programme offers many extracurricular opportunities to enrich your study experience.

What is the Electronics Department?

European Law is a one-year Master’s specialisation at the internationally renowned Leiden Law School at Leiden University. The programme distinguishes itself by its broad intra-disciplinary approach, covering institutional, constitutional as well as internal market and competition law of the EU in addition…

Leiden University provides ambitious students with the most recent and innovative areas of knowledge, and offers them the freedom to develop their own area of expertise.

Leiden University provides ambitious students with the most recent and innovative areas of knowledge, and offers them the freedom to develop their own area of expertise.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of the Faculty of Humanities with the University of Hyderabad.

On 22–24 October 2025, Leiden University welcomed scholars, policymakers and higher education leaders for the Una Europa Conference on Academic Freedom. Organised by the AFITE project team and supported by Una Europa Seed Funding 2024, the three-day programme examined current pressures on academic freedom…

Building on its extensive holdings in Asian studies, including much material that can support the study of “unofficial” histories and cultures, Leiden University Libraries has established the Leiden Chinese Queer Collection (LCQC).

Current status and future prospects

This dissertation describes the history of the Ottoman county of Foçateyn as a case study of the process of transition from the Ottoman Empire to nation states.

Diede Farhosh-van Loon defended her thesis on 18 October 2016

A fascinating description of a global language, A Grammar of Mandarin by Jeroen Wiedenhof combines broad perspectives with illuminating depth.

Nietzsche has often been considered a thinker independent of the philosophy of his time and radically opposed to the concerns and concepts of modern and contemporary philosophy. But there is an increasing awareness of his sophisticated engagements with his contemporaries and of his philosophy's rich…

Imami Shiʿism was a key part of the turbulent thesis and antithesis which formed Islam, and it remains greatly influential today. The aim of the ImBod project is to write the first comprehensive social history of the Imamate.

The Institute of Public Law comprises all areas of public law, with the exception of criminal law, and including labour law.

“JARAK: the commoditization of an alternative biofuel crop in Indonesia” was a research program from 2010-2014 in which researchers from Indonesia and the Netherlands collaborated.

This book is part of a series which sets out a restatement of labour law in Europe. Its second volume looks at atypical employment relationships in Europe.

We have studied shape with a particular focus on the zebrafish model system. The shape is an essential appearance of the phenotype of a biological specimen and it can be used to read out a current state or response or to study gene expression.

Islam at 250: Studies in Memory of G.H.A. Juynboll is a collection of original articles on the state of Islamic sciences and Arabic culture in the early phases of their crystallization.

Sanne Dokter-Mersch defended her thesis on Thursday 15 April 2021.

On 7 September 2023 Didem Durak Akser successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This article presents the findings of an explanatory study into the perceptions of Dutch Muslims in The Hague concerning pre-emptive counter-extremism and de-radicalisation policies.

Sasha Goldstein defended her thesis on 10 January 2019

Argumentation and rhetorics is the study of how we convince people verbally. In other words, what do people say and how do they say it?

How did a circle of Soviet artists and writers virtually unknown until perestroika turn into Russia’s most influential contemporary art movement? This book reconstructs the cultural history and canonization of a group of painters and poets known as the Moscow conceptualists, who paradoxically did not…

Peyman Jafari defended his thesis on 11 October 2018

This book explores how changes in the patterns of cooperation and conflict among states, regional actors and transnational non-state actors have affected the rise of emerging global powers and the suggested decline of US leadership. Scholars, students and policy practitioners who are interested in the…

Ruixuan Chen defended his theses on 16 October 2018.

This book expands on the existing literature on the international dimension of democratization by introducing the concept of democracy projection. Democracy projection is defined as the projection of (democratic) norms through the every-day practice of interactions-beyond any donor-recipient relationship-between…

We developed the bitterling as a unique, well-studied model organism in the area of the evolutionary ecology of brood parasitism. The bitterling-mussel relationship, interspecific mussel host preference, and mussel gill structure are studied in detail, to help understand the developmental adaptation…

This book examines the impact of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on national and international jurisprudence, since its adoption in 1989.

From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban Societies

This book focuses on the element of thresholds – makeshift gates, makeshift structures and house doors – as concepts of liminality in ancient Near Eastern magical rituals, and the idea of transformation they reflect.

The marine shipping industry is one of the strongest emitters of nitrogen oxides (NOx), a pollutant detrimental to ecology and human health. Over the last 20 years, the pollution produced by power plants, the industry sector, and cars has been decreasing.

Trigonostemon Blume is a plant genus in the family Euphorbiaceae comprising 59 species.

Plants and their pollinators form complex interaction networks. Within these networks, species differ widely in the number of species they interact with.

Mr. Ade Jaya Suryani defended his thesis on 28 January 2021

This beautifully illustrated volume investigates the social life of objects moving between the Middle East and the West, revealing the range of agencies and subjectivities involved in their trade and reuse.

One of the effects of climate change is the phenomenon of desertification, a process that occurs in semi-arid and arid areas and causes land degradation as well as vegetation loss. Due to the lack of resources, vegetation self-organizes to sustain itself by forming large-scale spatial patterns.

On the 2nd of September, Hang Cheng successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Hang on this achievement!

This study discusses the position of the monasteries in pre-1950s Tibetan societies and how that position was informed by Buddhist monastic ideology.

Kartika Setyawati defended her thesis on 12 November 2015

On April 4th, Zohreh Shiamizadeh succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Zohreh on this great result.