Kim Jong Il, leader of North Korea, is dead. His youngest son Kim Jong Eun is expected to be his successor. Remco Breuker, Leiden Professor of Korea Studies, gives a profile of the new leader.

Assistant Professor Briitta van Staalduinen has received the Best Dissertation Award from the American Political Science Association, Section on Class and Inequality. Her dissertation, Ethnic Inequality in the Welfare State, aims to reconcile the persistence of ethnic inequalities in expansive welfare…

The death of George Floyd at the hands of the police may have sparked the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States and here in the Netherlands, but they are about more than that alone. We asked Karwan Fatah-Black, a historian who specialises in the Dutch colonial history, for his analysis. ‘We…

Hans-Martien ten Napel recently published a volume with Routledge, Culture, Secularization, and Democracy; Lessons from Alexis de Tocqueville, co-edited with Prof. Sophie van Bijsterveld (Radboud University Nijmegen).

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

Lecture

The artefacts that still remain from the traditional culture of the indigenous Yukon, Canada, are spread over dozens of museums throughout the world. Yukon Indian Ukjese van Kampen carried out research to bring this culture to light. This is the subject of his dissertation entitled ‘The history of Yukon…

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) and the Amsterdam Centre for Migration and Refugee Law (ACMRL) of the VU University Amsterdam organise a public seminar about global migration and refugee law in Egypt and Morocco, focusing on the International Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers…

Prof. Willem Adelaar has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant to do research on Central and Southern American Indian languages.

On 8 May, the memoirs of Jang Jin-sung are appearing worldwide under the title Dear Leader. Jan Jin-sung was a member of the personal circle of the former North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il. Dear Leader provides a radically different perspective on the workings of the regime, as it reveals the moving…

The VVI seeks to advance knowledge of the formation and functioning of legal systems in their social contexts, the impact of these systems on society and vice versa, their effectiveness in governance, and their contribution to development.

Biology student Floris Bonnet is one of the winners of the Van Bergen Award for organising an International Ball. The award aims to promote contact between Dutch and international students at Leiden University in order to foster a better understanding of each other's cultures.

What will be the outcome of the US raid on Venezuela and capture of President Maduro? ‘History shows that people usually react to being bombed by a foreign power by rallying around the flag, not turning against their leaders’, says historian Andrew Gawthorpe in The Conversation.

Reviewed by Simon Polinder.

Athens is universally known as a symbol of democracy, philosophy, and ancient Greek aesthetics. Some of the most famous classical monuments, including the Parthenon and the temple of Hephaestus, can be found here.

Knowledge and culture subproject 1:

The idea that modern humans displaced Neanderthals because they were better protected against toxic smoke components is now under fire. An earlier study that put forward this suggestion has now been refuted by genetic research by scientists from Leiden and Wageningen. This new research was published…

How can the academic world best handle the new political reality in the United States? This is the question that managers, lecturers, researchers and students at Leiden University discussed on Friday afternoon at a gathering in the Kamerlingh Onnes building. ‘Don’t just give in; defend academic free…

Since the Middle Passage is in the North Atlantic, and the North Atlantic has a relationship with the arctic, what relationship does the Arctic have with the Middle Passage? How can this relationship be used to provide a space of healing by uncovering Afro/diasporic counter narratives?

After the advent of Islam in the 7th century C.E., the strategic geographical position of Tarsus (its proximity to the sea and to the mountain pass leading to inland Anatolia) made this town the de facto capital of the thughur, a historical and geographical term created by Muslim geographers qualifying…

It all started with demonstrations protesting about the death of George Floyd from police brutality in Minneapolis, but the Black Lives Matter protest is spreading like wildfire across the whole of the US. Every day, thousands of people are taking to the streets. We asked American Studies expert Sara…

How is it possible that people kill each other? And above all: how is it possible that people who are able to peacefully live with each other at one moment, can kill each other at another one?

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

The 2012 crisis in Mali, where the state collapsed and terrorist groups took over the north, came as a surprise to many. Mali had been considered a poster-child for democracy and was judged as considerably more stable than its neighbors by leading quantitative indices of state fragility. This article…

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

In the midterm elections in the United States on 6 November, the Democrats won the majority in the House of Representatives, thus regaining control of the House over the Republicans. But the Republicans expanded their majority in the Senate. Three of our researchers, experts on US politics, share their…

How have human-environmental entanglements changed in the Gulf of San Miguel, Darien, Panama, from the first traces human practices through to the present?

Financial Law is a specialisation of the master’s programme Rechtsgeleerdheid (Law) at the renowned Leiden Law School of Leiden University.

LUCIS funded several research programmes to boost interfaculty and interdisciplinary cooperation and to widen the involvement of LUCIS members.

This one-year master's programme explores the political and cultural evolution of the world from a long-term, and broad comparative perspective. This creates a better understanding of the entangled nature of today's society.

At our regular panel discussions we bring together scholars and other experts to discuss a current topic that captures the interest of the general public as well as academics.

Geometrical patterns serving as decorations do more than just that; they always have a meaning, according to art historian Arthur Crucq. Doctoral defence 17 May.

Professor Ann Laura Stoler from The New School for Social Research in New York will be the Spring 2016 Global Asia Scholar. She will visit Leiden University from May 17-19, 2016.

The center studies the many ways in which issues of law and justice are dealt with in art and literature with a focus on liminal issues and cases. These are issues and cases where law comes to the limits of what it is capable of dealing with and art and literature explore the implications of what is…

Charisma K. Lepcha (PI, Sikkim University), Pradyut Guha (co-PI, Sikkim University), Rajib Sutradhar (co-PI, Christ University Bangalore) and Erik de Maaker (Leiden University) have been awarded a two-year grant of USD 18.000 to conduct research on the impact of ‘green farming’ on the sensitive mountain…