Nobody is better qualified to tell you what it is like to work at Leiden University than the employees themselves. Watch the videos and meet your future colleagues. They will be happy to share their experiences with you.

The profile area Political Legitimacy brings together researchers from multiple research institutes within Leiden University.

There are a number of problems in philosophy that seem to share a similar possible solution: 'Why do promises and contracts bind?', 'Why ought citizens and judges obey the law?' and 'Can we realize the gains to be made from cooperation?'. All three problems (as well as some others) share a possible…

The transformation of the myriad of medieval kingdoms, principalities, local lordships, city-‘states’ and peasant ‘republics’ into ‘modern’ states, claiming some measure of sovereignty, remains one of the core themes of European history, because it gets down to the very root of the (idea on the) Europe…

Perfect for use at advanced undergraduate and graduate level, this is the first text to offer students a unified narrative regarding the place of the body in Western thinking. The book investigates the ways in which the fact of human embodiment makes the notion of ambiguity central to all major areas…

This book discusses theories of crisis management and the radical right, to shed light on how responses to crisis influence radical right parties in their presence, discourse, and evolution. The book offers a comparative perspective by examining case studies with various traditions of radical right…

Criminal justice raises intricate moral questions concerning the justification of the penal institution, the mode and extent of criminal sanctions enforcement, the content of criminal sanctions (imprisonment, fines, alternative punishments), the nature of the agent holding penal authority, the normative…

The philosopher and psychologist G.F. Stout was the teacher of Moore and Russell around 1894. This book shows that Stout's ideas have played a role in Moore and Russell's development from their early idealism towards analytic realism, where Stout's ideas often find their origin in early phenomenolog…

Who had a say in making decisions about the natural world, when, how and to what end? How were rights to natural resources established? How did communities handle environmental crises? And how did dealing with the environment have an impact on the power relations in communities?

Porosity between Politics and the Economy addresses the relationships between politics and the economy in deeply original ways. It is a book motivated by a sense of urgency aroused by both the failure of modern capitalism and the environmental crisis.

Kazimierz Twardowski (1866-1938) is the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School with its strong tradition in logic and its scientific approach to philosophy. Twardowski’s unique way of doing philosophy, his method, is of central importance for understanding his impact as a teacher.

The Life in Custody (LIC) Study comprises a large-scale research project into prison climate and the quality of prison life in Dutch prisons.

The people behind The Hague Journal of Diplomacy and its online platform.

For a long time, the painful history of colonial slavery received too little attention. People whose ancestors lived in slavery are now asking critical questions about how we should address that past. Leiden University researchers study the history of colonialism and slavery and their long-term impact…

There is a growing demand throughout the world for ways to understand and preserve cultural heritage. Heritage has a crucial role to play because it strengthens societies and promotes understanding among cultures. Leiden expertise in the area of heritage spans the whole world.

History is being taught at Leiden University since the days of Justus Lipsius [1547-1606]. In 1860, following the appointment of Robert Fruin as Leiden professor of Dutch History, modern historical investigation started in the Netherlands.

In 'That's Why Teacher', our educators share their experiences. Asking challenging questions to seek a deeper understanding is how Stella Trompet perceives the growth of her students. She serves as a lecturer in the half-minor and master's programme Health, Ageing, and Society at LUMC/Leiden Univers…

Labour is back as a significant social and political force in Indonesia, as was shown in the recent 1 May trade union demonstrations in Jakarta. Over the past years major changes have taken place in Indonesian labour law, leading to new forms of judicial and political resolution of labour disputes.

The STRINGS project is mapping development pathways for science, technology and innovation that best address the UN Sustainable Development Goals. A consortium of seven universities led by Tommaso Ciarli at SPRU at the University of Sussex and the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) have worked…

Although official law generally conceives of personal injury victims as individual rights holders, the actual experience of physical injury and its consequences is relational. Indeed, many researchers in the global North as well as the global South have contended that the very concept of the Self should…

These were the main speakers and session leaders at The Knowledge Orchard 2025:

LION offers a PhD program in which candidates carry out independent research on a specific topic, culminating in a PhD thesis.

Are there general principles or values that should govern our actions as moral agents and/or as political subjects?

This timely and engaging book examines the rise of populism across the globe. Combining insights from linguistics, argumentation theory, rhetoric, legal theory and political theory it offers a fully integrated characterization of the form and content of populist discourse.

The representation of death children in Dutch literature through time

To goal of this project is to get a deeper, more comprehensive and up to date understanding of the state of University-Business Cooperations (UBC) in Europe, from the perspective of both the Higher Education Institutions and the business sector.

Nietzsche says

‘The Survival of Pliny in Padua. The Botanical Renaissance and the Transformation of Classical Scholarship’ in: Transformations of the Classics via Early Modern Commentaries, ed. by K.A.E. Enenkel. Intersections 29 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, forthcoming autumn 2013), pp. 327-62.

The HJD Article Award is a biannual award given to the published research article which best advances the theoretical and/or empirical study of diplomacy.

Intelligence scholars have been struggling to find the conditions under which international intelligence cooperation occurs. Most focus on transactional motives and guaranteed returns, the so called ‘Quid pro Quo’. At the same time, trust is often mentioned as one of the foremost conditions, yet it…

Excerpta archaeologica leidensia: Corrie Bakels & Hans Kamermans (eds) (2015)

Aan de hand van bekende en minder bekende voorbeelden uit de wereld van politiek en media laat dit boek zien hoe je strategisch gebruik én misbruik kunt maken van taal.

The process of unification and the character of the union are the central topics of Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States. Robert Stein mirrors continuity and modernisation in Burgundian times with the bankruptcy of the former dynasties and the decline of feudal government. The powerful towns played an…

'The World Upside Down. The Geographical Revolution in Humanist Commentaries on Pliny's Natural History and Mela's De situ orbis (140-1700)', in: Enenkel, K.A.E. & Nellen, H. (Eds.), Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (1400-1700).Humanistica…

In a century replete with radical politics, final liberations, historical codas, and dreams of eternity, the shadowy figure of Louis-Auguste Blanqui, the constant revolutionary, wrote Eternity by the Stars in the last months of 1871 while incarcerated in Fort du Taureau, a marine cell of the English…

On 17 April, Evert-Jan Govaers defended the thesis 'Ministers of State. Unknown and desired; from stage to the wings?'.The doctoral research was supervised by Wim Voermans.

On the 5th of November, Timothy Gaved successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Timothy on this achievement!

The land question had a crucial formative influence on Mayo politics in the decades before the First World War and this book shows the part played by many prominent nationalist figures such as Davitt, O’Brien, Dillon and MacBride in shaping the political landscape in Mayo.

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?

This month, the volume Reading Russian Literature, 1980-2024, edited by Otto Boele and Dorine Schellens, was published at Palgrave Macmillan.

This study presents the findings of a laboratory-based experiment testing hypothesised processes implicated in the prevention of violent radicalisation through counter-narratives. The central aims of the study were to contribute to counter-narrative theory, whilst highlighting the value of experimental…

Building a lively Humanities Campus with renewed and sustainable buildings surrounded by a green outdoor space.

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.

This book explores the intellectual history of the Dutch empire from the sixteenth century to the postcolonial era, going beyond systemic thinkers to understand how empire was perceived in day-to-day life. It takes a transnational and transimperial approach to the Dutch empire, connecting European,…

Alternative perspectives and sources of colonial literature haven’t received much attention before now. School books have long ignored the violence that accompanies colonialsm. How can we paint an honest picture?

Spatial analysis on the basis of material culture has always been one of the major topics in archaeological research. Designating Place analyses the urban space of Roman Ostia and Pompeii in different ways, namely via geophysical analysis, spatial analysis, iconographic analysis and epigraphic analy…

From as early as classical antiquity there has been an interplay between literature and medicine.

Our courses embrace developments in technology. Our teachers adapt technological innovations to their discipline, and we keep our teaching up to date on rapid developments in the digital world.