Everyone most obey the law. If you don’t, you will face the police and the courts. The application of national, European and international criminal law would seem to be a matter of following the letter of the law. But the reality is more nuanced. Criminal law scholars and criminologists from very different…

Research in Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science focuses on the dynamics and the interaction of political institutions, individual decision-making, and collective behaviour.

This special issue of the Journal of European Policy presents results from the research on the European Union Enlargement and its Integration Capacity. The Journal of European Public Policy is one of the leading journals in this field.

Read about our recent research projects below.

Can chemical safety assessment be improved with zebrafish embryo-based reporter assays?

This socio-legal research focuses on the impacts of environmental displacement on land rights and land-related conflict in Mozambique in the aftermath of cyclone Idai, and on the role of the legal framework in addressing these problems.

The Law of the European Union is a complete reference work on all aspects of the law of the European Union, including the institutional framework, the Internal Market, Economic and Monetary Union and external policy and action.

This specialisation prepares you to combine the insights and rigour of social science with the practical skills needed to make a difference in the world of foreign policy formation, implementation, and evaluation.

This specialisation prepares you to combine the insights and rigour of social science with the practical skills needed to make a difference in the world of foreign policy formation, implementation, and evaluation.

This specialisation prepares you to combine the insights and rigour of social science with the practical skills needed to make a difference in the world of foreign policy formation, implementation, and evaluation.

This specialisation prepares you to combine the insights and rigour of social science with the practical skills needed to make a difference in the world of foreign policy formation, implementation, and evaluation.

This specialisation prepares you to combine the insights and rigour of social science with the practical skills needed to make a difference in the world of foreign policy formation, implementation, and evaluation.

BE-OPEN is a structural project funded under the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education action. The project is coordinated by the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. The main objective of the project is to develop conditions for the implementation of the core principles of Open Science at universities…

On 19 May 2016, Rosmarijn van Kleef is expected to defend her PhD thesis entitled ‘Liability of football clubs for supporters’ misconduct. A study into the interaction between disciplinary regulations of sports organisations and civil law’ in Leiden. Supervisors are Professor Alex Geert Castermans…

Where did the new generation of antislavery activists get their inspiration to organize in large-scale pressure groups?

eLaw, the Center for Law and Digital Technologies of the Faculty of Law of Leiden University, is a multidisplinary research institute that brings together a unique combination of knowledge and experience in the area of legal, ethical, societal and technological aspects of regulating the internet and…

The master's programme Comparative Criminal Justice at Leiden University focuses on criminology, criminal law and their mutual relationship. The programme offers an international comparative perspective, analysing criminal justice systems, legislation and policies in common law and civil law countri…

RESOCIAL ('User vulnerabilities and Resilience on SOCIAL media platforms and the metaverse: a sociolegal and design perspective', an NWO-NWA Synergy Grant Project) seeks to identify, measure, and thereby mitigate human vulnerabilities on social media platforms (including the metaverse and immersive…

The specialization Peace, Justice and Development at Leiden University examines the legislation that governs international relations in a global society.

The programme works to shed light on transnational, international and comparative aspects of law. We will focus on theory and the practical application.

This research cluster is a part of the Institute of Political Science’s research programme ‘Institutions, Decisions and Collective Behaviour’. Its members study the design and functioning of Dutch political institutions as well as attitudes and behaviour of political elites and citizens.

The Schoof cabinet has several plans that are just not legally feasible. Yet they are often still forced through, knowing, or even hoping, that the courts will intervene. This is dangerous policy that in the long run even undermines trust in politics, the judiciary, and the law itself, argues Armin…

On 11 October, the roundtable entitled ‘Academic Freedom – Theoretical Perspectives’ took place at Leiden University's Academy Building. This event was organised as part of the Vidi research project entitled 'The EU fundamental right to 'freedom of the art and sciences': exploring the limits on the…

The third project, worked on by dr. Rina Knoeff, is a synthesising project directed at studying the Leiden anatomical collections as important parts of ‘public history’. It will use the results of the other projects in order to analyse anatomical collections (their focus, significant silences, audiences,…

The Secular Outlook describes what moral and political secularism means. It paints the image of a world view in which state and religion are kept well separated.

Access to information is a human right (United Nations, 1948). Information technology, such as search engines and recommender systems, has become the key mediator and facilitator to connect people to information (White, 2016). Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) technology is increasingly being…

This project will construct an inventory of possible conceptions of the resistance of the world to scientists’ claims and theories.

This research line is part of the living lab of the University’s Population Health interdisciplinary program, located at the LUMC Campus The Hague, where the Leiden University Medical Center collaborates with the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs and the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences…

This project explores the decline of shifting cultivation in Northeast India. What is the impact on society of people’s deepening engagement with markets and the state?

This research paper was requested by the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. It was published by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) in The Hague. Leiden University is one of the participating institutes in this publication and our researcher…

We carry a profound responsibility for our research animals and strive to provide them with the best possible quality of life. In our studies, we make every effort to avoid and minimise discomfort for the animals. Below, you can learn more about how this is put into practice.

Within the Graduate School you can conduct your PhD research in a wide range of subjects across the Social and Behavioural Sciences, with five distinct research areas offered by its Institutes.

The research group Politics, Culture and National Identities 1789-present investigates a wide range of national political cultures in Europe and the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries. Instead of only analyzing high politics (the acts of governments and political parties), the research group focuses…

From 19 to 21 September 2018 the third annual conference of the Law and Development Research Network (LDRN) will take place at Leiden University. The theme of the conference will be 'Interfaces'.

As part of the euCONSENT consortium, the Center for Law and Digital Technologies (eLaw) has been awarded European Commission funding to create a child rights’ centred cross-border system for online age verification and parental consent.

Cyber-attacks, privacy-related problems or failures in functioning: many technologies that are used every day have security issues that are solved when the software is already in use. An interdisciplinary project, in which Olga Gadyatskaya, Harry Wijshoff, Alex Uta and Kristian Rietveld from the Leiden…

How do documentary moving images and fictional narratives involve and evolve each other?

How do different communities of residents in The Hague perceive and manage food waste in relation to citizenship (rights and responsibilities)?

What are the various forms of inter-organizational collaboration in the public safety sector? How are different forms of inter-organizational collaborative arrangements related? What is the relationship between inter-organizational collaboration and innovation in the public safety sector?

This project compares and contrasts how and why several Turkish and Iranian women were compelled to participate in leftist guerilla movements in the 1960s and 1970s.

We live in a data-drenched society awash with numbers. An inhabitant of the democratic polis of Athens (5th and 4th centuries B.C.E.) increasingly found himself surrounded by numerical data. This project aims to analyze the communicative functions and the political meaning(s) ascribed to these public…

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.

A mosaic is the only image which can do justice to museums in the Caribbean. They are as diverse and plentiful as the many communities which form the cores of their organizations and the hearts of their missions. These profoundly social museums adopt participatory practices and embark on community engagement…

Plant Sciences' contribution to the Evolution & Biodiversity research theme is to understand what are the key drivers of plant biodiversity during evolution with a focus on plant life history and resilience traits and develop tools to restore and maintain plant biodiversity.

Since the emergence of humankind people have maintained social contacts and traveled widely, establishing interaction networks in which goods are traded and ideas are transmitted, increasingly on a global scale.

Nicolaes Tulp (1593-1674) studied medicine in Leiden. He attended lectures in the Academy Building and was taught anatomy in the former Faliede Begijn church, now the ‘Old Library’ (Oude UB) building, for a long time the location of the anatomical theatre. Shortly after his move from Leiden to Amsterdam,…

This study aims to provide a long time perspective of human landscape manipulation. Studying the roles of prehistoric foragers in past ecosystems is of great importance to establish the character of past 'natural' landscapes and to enhance the management of current ones.

Kohei Suzuki, Assistant Professor at Institute of Public Administration, and two other authors researched the topic of innovation by governments in response to expected population decline.

This dissertation provides a thorough review of the words belonging to the oldest layer of Germanic loanwords in Proto-Slavic and answers the question of how these words were adapted to the Proto-Slavic accentual system.