On 11 May the House of Representatives voted in favour of a law that will enable some sectors to reopen sooner than planned with the aid of test certificates. Political philosopher Josette Daemen is critical of the new legislation. ‘Just because we get used to measures doesn’t make them desirable.’

During the spring of 2021, a group of eight biology students from Leiden set out into the dunes in search of amphibians. Using DNA, they determined the geographic origin of the animals. And guess what? In many cases they discovered exotic populations of animals that do not naturally belong in The Netherlands.…

At one time, the railway from Kimberley to Kambove in Southern Africa symbolised prosperity and progress. Today, the exhausted mining towns along its route are marked by decay and pollution. Professor Jan-Bart Gewald has been awarded an NWO L grant to investigate the long-term global consequences.

On 6 April the Netherlands will vote on far-reaching cooperation with Ukraine. Referenda are exceptional in Dutch political history, according to Professor of Electoral Research Joop van Holsteijn.

Many Western defence strategies concentrate on maintaining the status quo. Actively promoting universal values can also be a good strategy for resilience, according to Theo Brinkel, Professor by Special Appointment in Military-Social Studies. Inaugural lecture 15 January.

In the late 19th century, the Dutch government introduced a tax system in the Dutch East Indies, with the intention of transforming the colony into a modern state. PhD student Maarten Manse wrote his thesis on this development and discovered how grandiloquent colonial ideals became bogged down in daily…

Expert in public affairs and politics Arco Timmermans advised the informer Kim Putters.

Protests against textbooks on trans persons in America and against a reading hour by drag queens in Rotterdam: it has been raining protests recently against people with a gender expression that does not match their birth sex. Why does this evoke such resistance? We asked Professor by special appointment…

PhD defence

Lecture, CHiLL series

Festival

The recent consecration of India’s Ayodhya temple by Prime Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party figurehead Narendra Modi raises important questions. Is secularism giving way to religious rule in the world’s largest democracy? How does this resonate with India’s culturally diverse population? France 24…

On Thursday 19 and Friday 20 September the PROSEPS conference took place in The Hague under the auspices of the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs of Leiden University. During the two-day meet up, working group meetings and workshops took place in the New Babylon Conference Centre in the heart…

Lecture

In ancient times, the steppe in the hinterland of Petra (Jordan) was transformed into a green oasis. This project tries to shed insights in the agricultural, water management and societal processes resulting in this transformation. This will be accomplished by practicing an interdisciplinary research…

SAILS likes to occasionally organise workshops about topics that relate to our programme. On this page you can find more information about previous workshops.

This book explores the lasting legacy of the controversial project by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, funded by the CIA, to promote Western culture and liberal values in the battle of ideas with global Communism during the Cold War.

A Spanish translation of Herman Paul’s 'Key Issues in Historical Theory' has appeared under the title 'La llamada del pasado: claves de la teoría de la historia'.

Exchanges between different cultures and institutions of learning have taken place for centuries, but it was only in the twentieth century that such efforts evolved into formal programs that received focused attention from nation-states, empires and international organizations.

The fact that a significant number of seats in the Dutch provincial councils are now occupied by members of the Dutch Farmer-Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging, BBB) who have an agricultural background need not lead to conflicts of interest when voting on, for example, nitrogen emissions. This is…

From 26 August until 5 September 2019, a group of 20 Chinese government officials, industry representatives and academics attended an intensive course on space law and policy at the International Institute of Air and Space Law, organized in cooperation with Avans+ in Breda.

News articles have only a limited influence on the course of legislative processes. This is the finding of political science expert Lotte Melenhorst in her PhD dissertation. Defence 21 March.

The Rutte IV cabinet is more or less complete. It includes more women than ever. For the first time ever, the Netherlands will have two ethnic minority ministers, and ministers without political experience but with plenty of professional expertise will also be making their debut. However, political…

Political philosopher Nicholas Vrousalis (Leiden University) has been awarded a EURIAS Fellowship at Aarhus University’s Institute for Advanced Study (AIAS). From from 1 October 2018 to 31 July 2019 Vrousalis will work at the Danish research institute on his project ‘Inequality against Freedom: Economic…

Political scientist Tim Mickler (Leiden University) receives a grant from The Dutch Research Council (NWO) for his quantitative research into post-parliamentary positions of parliamentarians. The grant is a result of the SGW Open Competition XS, with the aim of stimulating innovative scientific rese…

This September, Adina Akbik received the Political Science Teaching Award at Leiden University. Created by student members of the Bachelor's and Master's Programme Committees (OLC), the award recognises remarkable teaching at the Institute. Akbik was chosen from five finalists after receiving several…

What is public leadership? How does one promote research on public leadership? These and other questions will be addressed at the official presentation of the research and development agenda ‘Moving forward with public leadership’ on Wednesday 11 April. Mayor of The Hague Pauline Krikke and Rector Magnificus…

The aim of this research was to establish if Ebeling's semiotactic theory and method of semiotactic analysis, as described in his works Syntax and Semantics (1978), Een Inleiding tot de Syntaxis (1994) and Semiotaxis, over Theoretische en Nederlandse Syntaxis (2006), could be applied to Modern Japanese…

In this publication the results of the analyses of the Roman harbour of Voorburg-Arentsburg (NL) are presented. This fully inclusive and integrated study of more than 1000 pages is published in two volumes. The publication is written in Dutch, but has got an extensive synthesis/summary in English.

The skin has recently gained attention within body studies for its many specific cultural and social associations, in addition to its biology. This project aims to examine the different layers of meaning and the functions invested in the skin in ancient Greece: how did ancient Greek literary and medical…

Aesthetic formations and cultural repertoires give meaning to our reality in ways that are never neutral. Focusing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and its global interlocutors, this project brings together a team of scholars from Leiden University who bring in inter-disciplinary, inter-area…

The aim is to develop methods to assess environmental and occupational exposure to (individual) pesticides, to be applied in epidemiological studies investigating pesticide exposure and human health. Furthermore, we aim to investigate the potential association between exposure to pesticides and Parkinson’s…

A project aimed at understanding the complicated process of religious transformation in one of the centres of the early Muslim world.

These are the proposed research projects for LEAPS 2019. Please note that not all projects will go ahead and some may still be added in the near future. Final funding decisions lie with the Faculty sponsors. And please make a note that if you are interested in an ESA project, to check if your state…

The new cabinet threatens to cut nearly a billion euros from higher education. This not only endangers academic work, it is a disaster for the Netherlands itself. The proposed penalty on study extensions and other financial measures will heavily impact students and will reduce education accessibility.…

Conference

Security seems to most people a basic necessity of life, a prerequisite for a good life. But if you think about it a little longer and deeper, as political philosopher Josette Daemen has done, you realise that security sometimes comes at the expense of other important goods, such as freedom and equality.…

Here you will find information about Guus Boelens' graduation ceremony.

Boyd Leupen has won the Institute of Political Science MSc Thesis Prize 2015. With 'Refuting asymmetrical Kantianism: On the moral standing of animals', Leupen completed his Political Science master studies and contributed an excellent piece of scholarly work. According to the jury, his thesis stands…

Nationalism is commonly regarded as posing a challenge to international stability and regional and global order more generally. Arguably, nationalism encourages narrowly defined and zero-sum security policies; it works against compromises and consensus; it undermines international trust and cooperation.…

The widespread idea that politics is mediatised needs to be revised. Although media attention heavily influences some political processes, this is not the case when it comes to lawmaking. Lotte Melenhorst, a political scientist at Leiden University, analysed three heavily covered legislative processes…

This year’s EUSA biannual research conference, which took place in Miami in May 2017, saw a large delegation of the Europa Institute Leiden leaving its mark. In several panels, Prof. Luuk van Middelaar, Dr. Moritz Jesse (Associate Professor at the Europa Institute), Dr. Armin Cuyvers (Assistant Professor…

The Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA) is pleased to introduce a new research seminar series. The FGGA Research Seminar will be a forum for the presentation and discussion of current, high-quality research on topics covered by the faculty.

The English edition of Rijpkema’s Weerbare democratie is published in Routledge’s Extremism and Democracy series, one of the leading series in the field, edited by Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin.

This dissertation takes an important step in understanding the phenomenon of non-take-up of social support and what it means for contemporary social policies.

This article describes the creation of an app that can help raise climate awareness and the action globally.

This dissertation gives an ethnographic account of Kurdish dengbêj narrative from a theorethical perspective.

What are the arrangements for your pension? What are you entitled to? Until what age do you have to continue working? And can you decide for yourself how your pension contribution is invested?