The Dutch Center for Travel Writing Studies s a scientific center that develops and coordinates initiatives to promote research into travel writing. It actively seeks contact with external (scientific and social) partners to collaborate on issues surrounding cultural / national identity, cultural contact…

Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

The Council of Europe is currently implementing its Strategy for the Rights of the Child (2016-2021), one of the priority areas of which is “a life free from violence for all children”.

Last week, to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Prof. Dr. Ton Liefaard shone a fresh light on children’s rights, in Italy.

In Harper’s Magazine, reviewer Dan Piepenbring discusses the latest book by professor Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman. ‘Spycraft’ showcases how and why messages were ciphered in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.

Rebecca Tompkins defended her thesis on 21 March 2019

Fiction is more effective than autobiographical non-fiction when it comes to conveying the sensation of enforced solitary confinement. That is the conclusion of writer and lawyer Maarten Asscher in his study 'Het uur der waarheid. Over de gevangenschap als literaire ervaring' (The Moment of Truth: Imprisonment…

On 8 July 2021, The Francophone Association of Ombudspersons (L’Association des Ombudsmans et des Médiateurs de la Francophonie (AOMF)) launched their online course platform (CLOM) and training course 'Faire vivre les droits de l’enfant: des clés pour l’action'.

From 6 to 9 May the Law's pluralities conference was held at the Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen. Highly interdisciplinary in the areas of literature, art and law.

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections and interactions between a variety of artistic expressions and society. It focuses not only on objects (artistic, literary, cinematic, and medial), but also on practices (aesthetic, political, and cultural).

Prof. Julia Sloth-Nielsen has been awarded the Schim van der Loeff grant by the Leiden University Fund to conduct research on unaccompanied migrant children in Zambia.

On October 20th, the advanced International Children’s Rights master program and the Leiden Institute of Immigration Law co-organized a public lecture and Q&A session with Ms. Margaret Tuite, the European Commission Coordinator for the Rights of the Child.

On 20 November 2015, on the occasion of Universal Children’s Day, the Council of Europe and the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights launched the Handbook on European law relating to the rights of the child.

From 27-29 August, the Conference of the International Society for Child Indicators (ISCI) took place in Tartu (Estonia). Prof. Ton Liefaard was one of the key-note speakers during that conference.

Prof. Ton Liefaard has been appointed as member of the Council for the Administration of Criminal Justice and Protection of Juveniles.

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to French writer Annie Ernaux (1940). In an explanation, the Swedish Academy praises Ernaux 'for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory'.

Maria de Jong-de Kruijf was awarded a doctorate degree on 7 March for her research on children in secure residential youth care. The Dutch website for legal professionals, Mr. Online, interviewed her for their ‘lawyer of the week’ column.

It is 30 years ago this month that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified. UNICEF is celebrating this on 20 November in collaboration with Leiden University and the Municipality of Leiden at the (Y)our Rights Festival in Leiden. Children, youths and adults will discuss children’s…

Course

Nadine Akkerman's book Invisible Agents is the very first study to analyse the role of early modern women spies. The book foregrounds the agency of early-modern women, offering a corrective to the gender bias implicit in modern historiography.

This dissertation examines how Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Fécamp designed, produced, and read books over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Graduation ceremony

What is the relationship between outcomes of dynamic testing and cognitive flexibility in young children?

PhD defence

The central question in this book is whether there is a human right to family unification.

The Department of Child Law is a knowledge centre dedicated to academic research and education for both students and professionals in the field of child law and children's rights.

The programma structure of the advanced master International Children's Rights of Leiden University can be found on this page.

Children are little scientists by nature. The best way to introduce them to science is to put them to work and let them do actual scientific research.

The Department of Child Law offers organisations consultancy expertise in the field of national and international child law and children's rights.

Which educational and child welfare interventions offer optimal opportunities for positive development to children with severe behavioral and emotional disorders.

For decades, the trade in pocketbooks prescribing how to be a good Muslim flourished in East Africa, but in recent years the number of books in circulation has been declining. University lecturer Annachiara Raia is the recipient of an Impact Explorer grant to revive this tradition, in cooperation with…

This study offers a comprehensive but balanced grammatical analysis of Ik (Icetod), Northeast Uganda’s last thriving Kuliak language.

Social Information Processing in Children with and without Hearing Loss

The Swahili coast has a long-standing history of transoceanic Islamic connections dating back to the 25th century. Yet, print, has changed the world – not only ours. This project unravels unique forms and archives of intellectual history emerging from within South-South connections. In East Africa Indian…

As children learn, develop and acquire more skills, their legal position also changes. Professor of Children’s Rights Ton Liefaard works closely together with Leiden social sciences researchers to shed light on these growing capacities and their implications for our legal system. ‘Our ideas about children’s…

At the Leiden Curious Minds Centre, our research focuses on the relationship of exploratory behaviour and discovery learning to curiosity and the way children regulate their behaviour and emotions. We want to improve our understanding of how children can and do become more and more the captain of their…

In this project, we plan to combine two strands of research in speech processing: (a) the impact of prosody on speech processing and (b) the impact of musical training on speech processing. In our project we will test 8 year-old children with different degrees of musical training: (a) primary school…

On 8 October 2020, Kartica van der Zon defended her thesis 'Pleegrechten voor kinderen'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. M.R. Bruning and Prof. T. Liefaard.

Researchers of the department of Child Law have submitted an advice to the Committee on the Rights of the Child of the United Nations, which monitors the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, on 7 January 2019.

If gifted children are experts in using strategies, why do they experience problems with learning? Why do they underachieve?

Find out more about the programme International Children's Rights. We teach you to respond to (inter)national legal developments in relation to children.

It has been found that the better a prisoner is treated, the more effective the sentence. Leiden criminologists therefore research how detention can be improved in such areas as prison life and contact between prisoners and their children.

As a lawyer, how can you contribute to ensuring that the best interests of the child play a greater role in immigration law? That question was the topic of asylum lawyer Bart Toemen's guest lecture in the course ‘Kind en migratie’ (child and migration), given in the master’s programme ‘Jeugdrecht’ (Child…

An assessment approach that tailors to children’s instructional needs

What is the effect of a dynamic training in children’s inductive reasoning skills and how is it related to children’s school performances and language development.