The International Institute of Air and Space Law (IIASL) offers PhD candidates the possibility to enroll in the IIASL PhD Track.

An overview of the educational profile of the Leiden Institute for Philosophy, including its global teaching focus, curriculum themes, and supervision model.

Dr. Cátia Antunes and prof. Jos Gommans both edited and contributed to this interesting book, that consists of articles that offers a new insight into the macro and micro worlds of the global Dutchman in Asia.

The Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) is devoted to the study of places in the human world from antiquity to the present time in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective.

Artistic research has come of age, and with it the Orpheus Institute. Founded twenty years ago, the Institute’s purpose from the start has been to pursue research through the practice of musicians.

Valentina Carraro explores the relationship between overlapping UN human rights institutions, specifically the treaty bodies and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR)

In this article, Seda Gürkan, Özlem Atikcan and George Christou examine how EU institutions responded to Turkey’s democratic decline between 2014 and 2024, analysing how conditionality was framed and applied by the European Commission, European Parliament and European Council.

On 18 September 2019, Huw Llewellyn defended his thesis 'An Institutional Perspective on the United Nations Criminal Tribunals: Governance, Independence and Impartiality'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. N.M. Blokker and Prof. L.J. van den Herik.

From January to March 2020 Ymre Schuurmans, full professor in Constitutional and Administrative Law at Leiden University, will be a visiting professor at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

Ymre Schuurmans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, has been appointed Chair of the Dutch Legal Aid Board’s Advisory Council following permission from the Dutch Minister for Legal Protection.

On 24 September 2020, Bernardo Ribeiro de Almeida defended his thesis 'Building land tenure systems: the political, legal, and institutional struggles of Timor-Leste'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. A.W. Bedner. Co-supervisor was Dr. C.I.M. Jacobs.

This article discusses the degree of independence that is required for national human rights institutions to function successfully.

(1) What are the institutional factors that influence AI adoption and implementation? and (2) How does AI reshape the exercise of administrative discretion within public organisations, and how do adoption and implementation choices moderate these effects?

This publication examines the issues regarding the cross-border resolution of financial institutions, focusing on the power allocation between the home and host resolution authorities, i.e. the jurisdiction rule.

This volume contains the first edition of 66 papyri and ostraca in the collection of the Leiden Papyrological Institute.

This study attempts to understand how indigenous community institutions pose an important role in sustainable community-based development, including the integration between local culture and development.

In Slaving Zones: Cultural Identities, Ideologies, and Institutions in the Evolution of Global Slavery, fourteen authors—including both world-leading and emerging historians of slavery—engage with the ‘Slaving Zones’ theory.

In this article, Gerrit Dijkstra and Jos Raadschelders from the Institute of Public Administration, argue that Bosnia-Herzegovina survives so far on the basis of negative legitimacy.

On February 20th, Gulnaz Sibgatullina succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Gulnaz on this great result.

This article devises a framework to assess the degree to which human rights bodies provide duplicating or contradicting recommendations to States. Focusing on the case of torture, it creates an original database of recommendations delivered to 14 countries in the years 2012–2016. Results show that duplications…

The European Union has claimed, following its own investigation, that the Dutch government is falling short in how it deals with Dutch nationals convicted abroad, but who want to serve their sentences in the Netherlands. Jannemieke Ouwerkerk, Professor of European Criminal Law, has responded in Dutch…

Colonialism Inside Out: Everyday Experience and Plural Practice in Dutch Institutions in Sri Lanka (c. 1700-1800)

In times of hardships or crisis, local people know how to deal with it using their resourcefulness. Although efforts are sometimes made by the government to help them, they are fully aware that community support is at least equally important.

The Power and Pains of Polysemy: Maritime Trade, Averages, and Institutional Development in the Low Countries (15th–16th Centuries) investigates the development of General Average and other so-called Averages in the Low Countries on the eve of the early modern period, showing how the various varieties…

Those who seek justice do not always manage to find their way through the legal system. Yet the Dutch Legal Aid Act assumes that citizens are self-reliant and can stand up for their interests in cases that are not legally complex. However, in the childcare benefits affair in the Netherlands, this proved…

What did colonial officials and missionaries think they were doing?

‘Can he do it?’ Since the remarkable victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 Nigerian presidential elections, this has arguably been the most frequently posed question in Nigerian politics.

U-Multirank is an alternative approach to international ranking of higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide. This analytical tool is user-driven and multi-dimensional by design. The current version (2016/2017) includes 1 600 HEIs. The ranking system compares the relative performance of HEIs (mostly…

Combining cutting-edge quantitative approaches with more traditional book history approaches, this new book offers the first history of medieval manuscript destruction in England from the medieval period to the present.

In this journal article, Dr. Joris Larik and Dr. Richard Ponzio put forward a broad-based pandemic recovery agenda that goes hand in hand with institutional reforms at the global level.

The shift from response to recovery is now noticeable as the world moves past the paralyzing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This book explores responses to the pandemic by international, regional, and local institutions, multilateral action, and crisis prevention efforts at different levels of governance,…

Er is een nijpend cellen- en personeelstekort in Nederlandse gevangenissen. En dit is niet voor de eerste keer. Miranda Boone, hoogleraar criminologie en vergelijkende penologie, sprak met Trouw over de problematiek: ‘Het aantal gevangenen is het resultaat van beleid.’

The Netherlands Open Government Action Plan was recently presented to the Dutch House of Representatives. One of the action points in the plan relates to research to be conducted by Annemarie Drahmann, Louis Honée and Ymre Schuurmans, all staff at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative…

This research delves into the unique cultural approach of the Tenggerese people, an Indigenous community in East Java, Indonesia, regarding elderly care. It focuses on their traditional practices of bakti (‘filial piety’) and sayan (‘mutual aid’), deeply ingrained in the community's lifestyle and va…

Every day, Veilig Thuis employees receive hundreds of reports of domestic violence and child abuse. Despite their efforts, they are heavily criticised due to the long waiting times. Mariëlle Bruning, Professor of Children and the Law, appeared on talk show ‘Eva’ to discuss the Dutch care and welfare…

Currently, the bill ‘Wet versterking waarborgfunctie Awb’ (strengthening the guarantee function of the Dutch General Administrative Law Act) is in preparation. The bill is intended to strengthen the human dimension in the execution and administration of justice.

Matthias Haentjens and Jouke Tegelaar held a presentation on the European dimension of judicial review of financial supervision at the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (Autoriteit Financiële Markten, AFM).

On 1 September, the conference of the Kirchheiner Chair ‘Government and citizens: A matter of trust’ took place. In a packed hall in the beautiful Old Observatory of Leiden University, under the inspiring leadership of Willemien den Ouden, a debate was held on the role of the Dutch National Ombudsman,…

There are frequent calls from society for heavier prison sentences, but the question is whether longer sentences result in a safer society. Judges are seeing more and more offenders with social and psychological problems and they therefore often prescribe a programme of treatment and monitoring for…

ELS lab member Helen Pluut concluded this year’s lecture series on Empirical Methods in Legal Research. Helen discussed diary studies as an example of multilevel research designs.

Municipalities are increasingly attempting to solve problems without issuing decisions. A notification procedure (notification – investigation – application – decision) has recently been introduced that replaces part of the traditional application procedure. Ymre Schuurmans, Professor of Constitutional…

Dear friends of the institute,

On Thursday 7 and Friday 8 December 2017, Leiden University’s Hazelhoff Center for Financial Law and the European University Institute in Florence jointly organized a PhD workshop in Leiden.

17 November 2021. Jan Aart Scholte and co-researcher Hortense Jongen presented their work on 'Institutional Sources of Legitimacy in Multistakeholder Governance at ICANN' at the annual conference of the Netherlands Institute of Governance in Utrecht.

On the 6th of January, Kefan Bao successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Kefan on this achievement!

As part of Metamorfoze, the national digitalization project for the preservation of paper heritage, journals of The Van Vollenhoven Institute’s library have been digitized.

Valentina Carraro presented her paper at the workshop ‘Collective agency of international institutions’, University of Bamberg, 6-7 October 2022.

In Summer 2015, Bob Wessels accepted a post as (visiting) External Scientific Fellow of the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law.

Marta Fiocco, associate professor at the Mathematical Institute of Leiden University, has signed an agreement with the UWV (the administrative authority that implements employee insurances and provides labour market and data services) to work with their data in the research project

Political scientists John Gerring (University of Texas, Austin) and Wouter Veenendaal (Universiteit Leiden) evaluate the political implications stemming from the size of a political unit – on social cohesion, the number of representatives, overall representativeness, particularism ('pork'), citizen…