On 30 November, Florian Theissen defended the thesis 'Sincerely believing in freedom: a reconstruction and comparison of the interpretation of the freedom of religion and belief on the Canadian Supreme Court, the South African Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights'. The doctoral…

From Incident to Precedent

Do you have to be able to say everything on Twitter and Facebook? Is Instagram morally obliged to remove photos from attacks? Should we allow the terrorist group to recruit new members on the internet?

Recently Cambridge University Press published dr. Jan Osters monograph “Media Freedom as a Fundamental Right”.

Press freedom in Indonesia is still under pressure, despite the demise of Soeharto’s regime in 1998

On 11 October, the roundtable on ‘Academic Freedom – Theoretical Perspectives’ took place at the Academy Building, Leiden. It was organized in the framework of the Vidi research project The EU fundamental right to 'freedom of the art and sciences': exploring the limits on the commercialisation of academia…

How do borderland dwellers living along militarised frontiers negotiate regimes of state security and their geopolitical location in everyday life? What might 'freedom' mean to those who do not resist captivity engendered by borders? Focusing on the predicaments of a double-minority, Radhika Gupta examines…

In the light of the fragility of current liberal democracies, this dissertation aims to contribute to rethinking political order by reconstructing Hegel’s account in the Philosophy of Right.

On 22 November 2018, Els De Busser spoke at a panel during the conference

This thesis focuses on the concepts of freedo and fixity as two central topics of my artistic research. I present, analyze. and contextualize four of my works which have explicit links to fleedom and fixify and which demonstrate the dynamic interrelationship between the two.

The gripping story of a collective passion for freedom that shook the world.

This project applies a social-historical approach to examine and contrast various groups of African-American slave refugees who sought freedom within North America between 1800 and 1860. It innovatively distinguishes between different “spaces of freedom” for runaway slaves, namely sites of formal, semi-formal,…

On 10 June 2021, Merinda Stewart defended her thesis 'Freedom of Overflight: A Study of Coastal State Jurisdiction in International Airspace'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. P.M.J. Mendes de Leon en Prof. J.J. Rijpma.

In Freedom on the Offensive, William Michael Schmidli illuminates how the Reagan administration's embrace of democracy promotion was a defining development in US foreign relations in the late twentieth century.

In Freedom Stories we share the freedom stories of our students and staff, in honour of Liberation Day in The Netherlands. Today, we share Leen's story. We asked her, what does freedom mean to you?

This is the 2017 paperback release of William Michael Schmidli's The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere, which won the 2013 Foreign Affairs Magazine Best Book of the Year.

What does academic freedom mean? And how do we give shape to it in Leiden? The Academic Freedom Core Team considered these questions and presented its final report on 17 June.

DNA carries various forms of information. Out of these forms of information the most well-known is classical genetic information.

A new paperback edition of Brian Heffernan's book Freedom and the Fifth Commandment. Catholic priests and political violence in Ireland, 1919-21 was published by Manchester University Press in September 2016.

Kosta spoke at the conference “Academic Freedom in Action”, held in Strasbourg on 13-14 November 2024. The conference brought together experts, educators, and policymakers to underline the democratic mission of higher education and the critical importance of safeguarding academic freedom. The event…

Baroque flautist Jed Wentz followed two years of dancing classes in order to develop the right feeling for the gestures required for the Baroque French opera genre ‘tragédie en musique’. In his dissertation, the links between gesture affect and rhythmic freedom in the performance of the tragédie en…

On 5 May we celebrate freedom, a basic human right that should not be taken for granted. We asked international students and staff what it means to them.

Professor Jan Willem Erisman is happy with the freedom at our University. But frameworks are needed, he believes. That is why he makes a proposal for such a framework from the perspective of his own profession. In fact, he makes a proposal for a wonderful ambition for Leiden University.

The Press Freedom Monitor is set to be presented during this year’s World Press Freedom Day celebrations on 3 May. To mark this occasion, the interactive media museum Beeld & Geluid in The Hague will publish a three-part podcast series.

The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) has expressed its concern about reported infringements of academic freedom in Turkey. The ECPR, of which Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science is a member, urges the Turkish political authorities to ensure that all academics can do their…

Students and staff members at the Faculty Campus The Hague are cordially invited by the JASON Institute to join a group discussion with the Dutch EMP Mr. Hans van Baalen and Lithuanian MEP Mr. Petras Auštrevičius, together with Mr. Bart Hogeveen from institute Clingendael as the moderator, at the Lithuanian…

After a gestation period lasting twelve years, on 13 March the artwork by Adam Uriel adorning the spiral staircase in the Academy Building was finally unveiled. It is a contemporary variation on the drawings by Victor de Stuers, dating from 1865, that start at the lower end of the staircase.

Professor of Catalysis and Surface Chemistry Marc Koper has been appointed as member of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (KNAW). 'Very honourable, I see this as a confirmation of my work,’ says Koper.

Types of supervision for prisoners on conditional release include the requirement to report regularly to a parole officer, electronic house arrest or community service. These are all serious measures for the person on whom they are imposed and for society. But it is a subject on which little research…

Professor Kees Waaldijk presented the report on the LawsAndFamilies Database to Pearl Dykstra, member of the High Level Group of Scientific Advisors of the European Commission on 25 April. This comparative study shows that in European countries same-sex partners are increasingly gaining equal rights.…

Academic freedom is essential for good scientific practice, but there are limits: scientists and scholars from all domains must always seek a proper balance between academic freedom and independence on the one hand, and social responsibility on the other hand.

On 12 November Ingrid Leijten was a guest on Dutch NOS NPO Radio 1 programme Met het Oog op Morgen. She was asked to speak about the right to freedom of expression.

Tolerance and democracy are not our European values

Antoaneta Dimitrova, Professor Comparative Governance, presented the Cleveringa Lecture at the Vaclav Havel Library in Prague last week. We spoke to her about her experience.

During the coronavirus years 2020 and 2021, Dutch citizens became poorer, more anxious, less free and more rebellious. The State gained more power and entered the lives of citizens in all manner of ways to protect their health. Only recently did the State give citizens their freedom back – in part.

In his inaugural lecture Professor of Environmental Sustainability Jan Willem Erisman calls for local solutions that give people more freedom in how they meet environmental, nature and climate goals. This would allow farmers to come up with their own solutions to the nitrogen problem. The idea ties…

It doesn't happen every day that the research project of a first-year bachelor’s student results in a scientific publication. And not only that, but as first author and on the cover of a leading physics journal. ‘We have given our lab education a thorough overhaul and it is paying off.’

On 15 September, Democracy Day, Michael Klos, researcher/teacher at the Department of Jurisprudence of Leiden Law School appeared as a guest on Radio Weetlust.

The Just Peace festival is coming up shortly. From 21 to 24 September we will be celebrating peace in The Hague with some inspiring HagueTalks, the Peace in the Park festival and the annual Peace Run.

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…

On 3 May, World Press Freedom Day was held and the Dutch 2022 'Persvrijheidsmonitor' was presented. The safety of journalists in 2022 was the most important theme in the area of press freedom in the Netherlands. Tarlach McGonagle, Professor of Medial Law & Information Society in Leiden, and Otto Volgenant,…

As of September 2023, Leiden University is a new host of the Research Network on Academic Freedom.

Four videos tell the story of the history of Leiden University. The films were premiered on 2 November during the Leiden Film Festival.

On 12 October 2023, Kosta delivered a keynote speech on academic freedom at the 30th anniversay conference of the (European) Education Law and Policy Association. The conference was entitled ‘Shaping Education Law for the Future’ and took place at Lisbon University, faculty of law (Universidade de Lisboa,…

On 26 June, Dr Vicky Kosta and Dr Olga Ceran visited the University of Bologna, Italy, to present the Vidi research project ‘The EU fundamental right to

On 9 June 2023, the workshop on ‘Academic Freedom and its Philosophical Underpinnings in EU law’ took place at the Academy Building, Leiden. It was organized in the framework of the Vidi research project The EU fundamental right to ‘freedom of the art and sciences': exploring the limits on the commercialisation…

The Europa Institute has invited Dorjana Bojanovska from Macedonia to visit Leiden Law School to conduct her master thesis research from 6 March - 31 March 2017. Dorjana is a student at the Comparative Constitutional Law program at the Legal Studies Department of the Central European University. The…

Prof. Mark Leiser and a team of thirteen law students from Leiden University’s Advanced LLM programmes in European and International Human Rights Law as well as in Law and Digital Technologies together drafted a report for the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom…

On 3 March the book “The European Union as an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice” edited by Maria Fletcher, Claudio Matera and Esther Herlin-Karnell was officially presented at a symposium at VU University Amsterdam.