Where does Europe begin and end? How have the European Union and its precursors decided which countries are eligible to join the community and which are not? Few issues are more hotly debated, more important for the course of European integration, or more consequential for individuals in and around…

What to do when more than forty boxes, filled to the brink with archival materials from the study of religion ranging all the way from the 1960’s up until contemporary times, ‘surfaces’? This may not be a typical question that you ask yourself on an average weekday. However, it is a question that must…

Dr. Alanna O’Malley, from the Institute for History, has been awarded a research grant of €12,000 from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, based in Dusseldorf, Germany. The Foundation supports scientific projects in the field of humanities that have a specialist scope and are limited in time. Dr. O’Malley’s…

How can we promote more durable solutions to protracted refugee situations and which roles can connectivity and mobility of displaced people play to improve protection and resilience?

Is it possible to formulate a new conceptual foundation for attributing an evaluative role to historiography of science, without relinquishing the historiographic sensitivity of recent work in the discipline?

Lecture, Seminar

Carolien Stolte lectures at the Institute for History within the Faculty of Humanities in Leiden. She intends to use her Veni grant to research the international networks of Indian activists during the period of decolonisation. We spoke to Carolien about her reaction.

Ruling Overseas: Connected Practices of Governance of Law

Regulating Relations: Controlling Sex and Marriage

Wouter Veenendaal, a political scientist at Leiden University, is an analyst for the Freedom House report. Freedom House is an American non-profit organisation dedicated to democracy, political freedom and human rights. In short, the report describes the degree of freedom and the state of democracy…

The Institute for History is pleased to announce the launch of a new research program: Cosmopolis Advanced, an initiative of the Institute for History at Leiden University (LU) in partnership with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta.

In this article, Tom Buitelaar proposes a systematic framework for analyzing the impact of individual characteristics of peacekeeping leaders on the behaviour of field-level personnel in UN peacekeeping operations.

It is often said that the true character of a person is only revealed in a crisis. In these days, the coronavirus causes concern about the true state of the multilateral system. Political scientist Gisela Hirschmann (Leiden University) is worried about the future of multilateralism.

The coronacrisis makes painfully clear that a transboundary crisis requires a transboundary response. The European Union could play a key role, but that has not happened so far. Political scientist Amy Verdun (Leiden University) explains why.

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…

On 18 October 2017, Leiden Law School was honored to welcome a group of experts upon invitation of Prof. M.R. Bruning, professor of Child Law and head of the Child Law Department of Leiden University, to discuss current and future research projects in the field of international child abduction law and…

Alexandre Genest will defend his PhD dissertation ‘Performance Requirement Prohibitions in International Investment Law’ as part of a double PhD programme at the Universities of Leiden and Ottawa.

This week, Leiden University celebrates the fifteenth year of its world-class International Criminal Law Summer School. The International Criminal Law Summer School has convened every year since the creation of the International Criminal Court, guiding scholars and practitioners in this rapidly developing…

This dissertation examines how Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Fécamp designed, produced, and read books over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

In this book, the authors provide an overview of the history of civil service education and training by analysing cases in Europe, the US and Australia.

On Tuesday 30 April 2024 Jonny Russell successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

For many teachers, they are a lifesaver: the people at the Science Teacher Support Desk. When a teacher has technical problems, they come to the rescue immediately. Veerle Warnders is one of them and she tells us what is so great about her job.

In Harper’s Magazine, reviewer Dan Piepenbring discusses the latest book by professor Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman. ‘Spycraft’ showcases how and why messages were ciphered in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.

The Etymology Calendar for 2020, which was compiled by five linguistics students from Leiden University, has now hit the shops. After the resounding success of the first Etymology Calendar last year, this year’s version is being published by big-name publishing house Brill.

The online summer programme Space in Your Living Room by Leiden Observatory has won the first prize ‘Most Innovative Event’ of the Astronomy@Home Awards from the International Astronomical Union. In July and August 2020, participants could for example talk to real astronauts and imagine life forms in…

The International symposium on artistic research methods organized by ACPA and the Platform for Arts Research in Collaboration (PARC), in coordination with Fontys Tilburg and SAR– took place on 9th April, 2024 at the Textile Museum in Tilburg. The recordings are now online at whatmethodsdo.com.

More than 100 teachers, educators and policymakers from 25 countries gathered in Leiden from 18 October for the Space Education International Workshop. Their goal is to inspire children using astronomy and space sciences.

A delegation from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, is on a two-day visit to Leiden University. The aim is to explore opportunities for further collaboration and to exchange knowledge with this leading Chinese university.

The Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies is pleased to invite you to the round-table discussion 'International Law in Motion: Some New Insights - A Tribute to Late Professor François Rigaux'. The round-table will feature presentations from Professors Pierre d’Argent and Mohsen Mohebi, and…

Terrorism, crisis, violence, intelligence, diplomacy, war and peace are topics that are broadly covered in ISGA's research activities. Regularly, ISGA researchers appear in international media to discuss their research expertise. This item offers an overview of non-Dutch and non-English articles and…

On 1 July – Keti Koti, in the year ahead, our university community will be able to reflect extensively on the history of slavery by engaging in research, education and many other activities.

The physical features of twelfth-century manuscripts from the Flemish abbey of Ter Duinen – such as script, page layout, and reading aids – show how their readers organized, interpreted, and transmitted knowledge.

In recent years, the public discourse on immigration in Europe and in the United States has often focused on efforts to increase security and restrict traffic on external borders. How old is this phenomenon of states attempting to control migrations on external borders? What were the motives and the…

Four master's students from Leiden University participated in this year’s edition of the International Migration and Refugee Law Moot Court, hosted by Antwerp University. Following the verbal rounds held between 21 and 22 March, the team went through to the finals, achieving second place overall.

Book historian Erik Kwakkel found an intriguing snippet of text earlier this week, that bears unexpected evidence of some of the problems encoutered by early printers: censorship and the affiliated fuss of seeking and printing Church approval.

Organisations like the UN and the EU should be given more powers to combat transboundary problems. This is the message of a report published by the Swedish SNS Democracy Council, whose authors include Prof. Jan Aart Scholte of Leiden University. The researchers also wrote the following article.

Religion, Class, and the Postwar Development of the Dutch Welfare State. Dennie Oude Nijhuis.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of China's global resurgence and its effects on U.S. dominance.

This book rigorously investigates the contemporary state of children's rights and the multifaceted challenges facing children, uncovering the complexities at their core.

This book asks what it means to think globally about world politics. In an attempt to contextualise the recent ‘globalising turn’ in International Relations (IR), it takes stock of more than 30 years of efforts at addressing IR’s Eurocentric limitations, and explores what ‘thinking globally’ means in…

In 2019, Aliaksandr Lukashenka marks a quarter of a century as the first, and so far only president of the Republic of Belarus. This new book by Dr. Matthew Frear, Assistant Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies, offers the most up-to-date analysis of government and politics in a country usually…

This book offers a detailed analysis of social policy in Ecuador, covering its evolution over the past four decades. It examines how social relations and institutional frameworks have influenced concepts of well-being, the implemented policies, and the outcomes achieved.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri was a celebrated Indian politician and diplomat in the early twentieth century. Despite being hailed as the ‘very voice of international conscience’, he is now a largely forgotten figure.

The project explores the role of modernization theory in the development of two foreign and domestic service programs: the Peace Corps and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA).

The project focusses on how US views of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia influenced its strategic interpretations of the region.

This book uses a biographical approach to explore the Labour Party's relationship with European integration, moving beyond simple 'pro' or 'anti' labels to showcase the complexity of views that have existed.