Cigdem Oguz defended her thesis on 13 June 2018

Despite the wealth of historical literature on the Second World War, the subject of religion and churches in occupied Europe has been undervalued.

In 1940 the Germany occupiers ordered the dismissal of all Jewish staff of the university. This resulted in protest speeches by fellow academics.

Studies on the Ottoman Jihad on the Centenary of Snouck Hurgronje's

The historiography of the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944 is dominated by the personal clash between the principal negotiators, Harry Dexter White of the United States and John Maynard Keynes of Britain.

The research group War, Peace and Justice brings together scholars, researchers as well as current and former practitioners to explore issues related to the drivers, nature and (new) dynamics of war and conflict, comprehensive approaches to the promotion of sustainable peace, and the role of justice…

Why do some civil wars experience quagmire, a situation in which belligerents are trapped in fighting? To explain this puzzle, Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) analyses the overlapping strategic interactions between foreign powers and the warring parties. Studying…

Archives were a common target during the Second World War, and hundreds suffered damages. Among these archival losses, the losses to medieval manuscript collections stand out.

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.

Teaching excellence is one of the core functions of the War, Peace and Justice (WPJ) research group. WPJ members engage in diverse forms of public engagement, but all share a commitment to education.

Information about the situation in Ukraine

Leiden University commemorates its victims of the war and pays tribute to all members of the university community who resisted injustice. Rudolph Cleveringa, for instance, the dean of the law faculty who gave a protest speech in 1940 after his Jewish colleagues were fired. We honour their memory through…

Writing under Wartime Conditions is a study into North and South Korean literature written during the Korean War.

On 10 May 1940, the Netherlands was taken completely by surprise by the attack of the German army. Wasn’t it? In his dissertation, Wouter Linmans debunks the idea that the Second World War took the Netherlands by surprise. ‘From 1935 onwards, all major political parties wanted to invest in the military.’…

How was anti-communism organized in the West? New volume edited by Giles Scott-Smith, Luc van Dongen and Stephanie Roulin on the aims, arguments and associations of a range of transnational anti-communist activists during the Cold War.

A new special issue on translation and the cultural Cold War sheds light on the understudied and yet important role of translation in cultural transfer.

The War, Peace and Justice group unites scholars and practitioners to explore war dynamics, peace promotion, and justice’s role in conflict and global affairs.

This thesis seeks to examine the emergence of Persian novels and short stories during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).

This project investigates the effects of the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953) on the production, distribution, preparation and consumption of food in transwar Japan and Korea.

In the last two decades, there have been heated public and scholarly debates in France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands on the violent end of empire. Nevertheless, the broader comparative investigations into colonial counterinsurgency tend to leave atrocities such as torture, execution, and…

This volume provides an authoritative, cutting-edge resource on the characteristics of both technological and social change in warfare in the twenty-first century, and the challenges such change presents to international law.

Saeedeh Shahnahpur defended her thesis on 13 September 2016.

This book offers novel perspectives on the national and international dimensions of the post-war welfare state in Western Europe and North America.

Political scientist Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden University) about the organisation of rebel and government auxiliaries in the civil war in Mozambique (1976–1992).

The Revolt in The Netherlands erupted in 1566 and tore apart the Low Countries. In Memory Wars in the Low Countries, 1566-1700 Jasper van der Steen explains how public memories of the Revolt in the Habsburg Netherlands in the South and the Dutch Republic in the North diverged and became the objects…

Tom Buitelaar is an Assistant Professor in the War, Peace & Justice programme of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs. This paper discusses four important challenges to the involvement of UN peace operations in international criminal justice: its effects on host state relations, peace and justice…

How do first-hand narratives of war of commanders in the front line relate to the official narrative of the Eighty Years’ War?

Wouter Linmans is working on a PhD thesis on visions and fears of future warfare in Dutch society (1918-1939).

A new government, conflicts around the world and obviously a lot of science: these are the five stories about Leiden University that you enjoyed reading in 2024.

In this article, Thomas Maguire, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, examines why states use intelligence to influence external audiences.

On 4 May, Leiden University remembered the victims of the Second World War from our university community. Alumni, students and present and former staff of the University came together for this Hour of Remembrance.

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.

This edited volume by Jeff Fynn-Paul pushes forward the debate on the role of entrepreneurs in making war and building states in Europe and the Ottoman Empire.

Who are open-source intelligence activists and how reliable are their contributions to public understanding of Russia’s war in Ukraine?

On 17 August 1945, two days after the Japanese surrender that also brought an end to the Second World War in Asia, Indonesia declared its independence. The declaration was not recognized by the Netherlands, which resorted to force in its attempt to take control of the inevitable process of decolonization.…

By the end of the sixteenth century, stories about the Revolt in the Low Countries (c. 1567-1648) had begun to spread throughout Europe. These stories had very different authors with very different intentions.

Engin Kiliç defended his thesis on 11 june 2015

This week 'Dutch Post-war Fiction Film through a Lens of Psychoanalysis' by Peter Verstraten was published by Amsterdam University Press, the sequel to Humor and Irony in Dutch Post-war Fiction Film from 2016. Each chapter in his 482-page new study begins with a title of Fons Rademakers who made films…

In Reframing the Diplomat Albertine Bloemendal offers a unique window onto the unofficial dimension of Cold War transatlantic relations by analyzing the diplomatic role of the Dutch Atlanticist Ernst van der Beugel as a government official and as a private diplomat.

A new vision on the Revolt of the Low Countries through the eyes of Spanish commanders

Robert Pee, William Michael Schmidli (Eds.) This book posits that democracy promotion played a key role in the Reagan administration’s Cold War foreign policy.

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.

Emily Wolff, PhD candidate at Leiden University, wrote a paper about the inclusion of imperial citizens in the Dutch post-war welfare state.

Does foreign aid promote human rights?