There is a lot of unrest in the Western Sahel at the moment as a result of growing Jihadism and terrorist attacks. Stability and security in the region are falling apart making room for growing radicalisation. But what do you need to look out for in order to be able to recognise radicalisation and what…

Over the past 40 days people in Bulgaria been demonstrating against the deep-rooted corruption in the country. The anger of the protesters is directed predominantly at the government of Prime Minister Borisov. But not all arrows are aimed at their own leaders, some are also pointing towards Brussels.…

Arco Timmermans, Professor by special appointment Public Affairs at the Institute Public Administration discussed the proposed fine that is likely to prevent Unilever from leaving the Netherlands.

The past decade, against the backdrop of a fragmented political landscape, has witnessed the greatest changes to the Netherlands since the aftermath of the Second World War. The labour market, the housing market, the energy market, the bank system, the pension system, the healthcare system, to name…

Research by cyber security company Symantec shows that two-thirds of the hotels worldwide are unwittingly leaking client information to third parties. These data leaks providing booking information could cause several security risks.

The battle for a strong power position in the run up to the provincial council elections in the Netherlands is currently being fought fiercely. Prime Minister Mark Rutte has become accustomed to a minority in the Senate in recent years. The four Rutte cabinets were always able to do business with various…

Jelle van Buuren, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, discusses the death of Al-Baghdadi and whether this could also mean the end of IS.

For a certain period the municipality of The Hague collaborated with the Salafist Quba mosque. The reason for the collaboration was to keep an eye on for radicalised youngsters. But as the collaboration progressed, the mosque became a breeding ground for Jihadists.

What can criminal courts do when the course of justice is obstructed? Countries such as England and Wales apply the instrument contempt of court, which enables the court to act according to criminal law in such a case. Could that work in the Netherlands too? PhD defence on 18 December.

Due to the fact that the Frisian lands lacked major political centers in the Middle Ages and also because most of its monasteries suffered complete destruction in the second half of the 16th century, relatively few written documents concerning medieval Frisian history have survived. To analyze them…

Historical geo data are gaining in importance. Provided that they are exactly geo referenced, they can be stored into a GIS and thus be combined with all kinds of maps (topographical, pedological, etc.) and datasets. This makes it possible to analyze historical developments in space and time on a detailed…

The RED team, a group of independent experts, has advised the Dutch government to close down all (secondary) schools. It is a difficult balance the government has to find between limiting the number of contagions and the social consequences of closing down the schools. As a result of the first lockdown…

Providers of telephone, internet or data centers can be seen as companies of vital importance because of their national importance. This comes as no surprise. In the Netherlands, additional legislation was deemed necessary to protect national security and a legislative proposal was presented in April…

A Dutch collaboration, including the SURF Open Innovation Lab and Leiden Observatory, has won Hyperion Research's HPC Innovation Excellence Award. This is the first time that a Dutch team has won the award. The team received the award for improving large-scale numerical simulations with deep learnin…

The European Football Championship for Women, in the Netherlands this summer, is the background for a large and innovative data research project. The Dutch football union is working together with Leiden University and Sportinnovator. The research is expected to uncover links that have thus far remained…

In Dutch newspaper NRC, Pieter Omtzigt says he finds it 'unconstitutional' that he has no right to vote in committee meetings. Omtzigt believes he is as much a Member of Parliament as other MPs. However, since 2017, a breakaway group is no longer entitled to a proportional share of staff support and…

The end of October will be all about the United Nations (UN). The festivities for the 75th anniversary have been scaled down due to the corona virus. 'A shame', says Prof.dr. Alanna O'Malley, but at the same time she sees that corona crisis also offers opportunities for the UN.

Vedran Dunjko (LIACS and applied Quantum algorithms (aQa) Leiden) and Tomoyuki Morimae (Kyoto University) are to collaborate with Qu&Co. Qu&Co is a leading European developer of quantum software.

On 15 September Armin Cuyvers lectured on the legal challenges surrounding Brexit for the The Academy for Legislation, the most important educational institute for legislative lawyers in the Netherlands.

Women behind the front play an important role in a large proportion of Iranian novels, written on the Iran and Iraq-war (1980-1988). But their martyrdom is an uncommon theme. Saeedeh Shahnahpur will give a lecture on this subject on 16 February.

Jelle van Buuren, Assistant Professor at Leiden University, appeared in Dutch newspapers the Algemeen Dagblad and Het Parool to discuss conspiracy thinking and the pandemic.

‘The system is failing’, ‘the goals are only being achieved to a limited extent’, ‘we’re letting children down’. These are some of the newspaper headlines that followed the publication of a report by researchers from Leiden University in September. Commissioned by the Dutch Research and Documentation…

How much energy and greenhouse gas emissions can Dutch homes save? Xining Yang uses Leiden as an example and shows with his research how enormous the impact can be. At least, if we work harder on becoming more sustainable. Based on the models he developed, Yang will receive his doctorate on 28 June.

The last names for the future European Commissioners were made public at the beginning of September 2019 and also which candidates have been put forward for the new European Commission by the different member states.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations (UN). The world looked a lot different then than it does now. It is therefore important that the UN moves with the times. Together with experts from the Stimson Center, Joris Larik , Assistant Professor at Leiden University…

Terrorist organisation Boko Haram is gaining influence in the region, politicians who do not care about the people, extremists, separatists. The situation in Northern Cameroon is deteriorating. Mora is the last secure city, the area surrounding it is a war zone.

This week the Turkish army invaded North East Syria. The Turkish invasion might well have had an unintended side effect: the escapement of thousands of Islamic State terrorists held in captivity. Experts on terrorism and politicians fear a resurrection of the terror group.

An interdisciplinary consortium consisting of Leiden University, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and Statistics Netherlands (CBS), receives €1 million to build an open digital infrastructure for network analysis of the entire Dutch population. This will allow scholars and policymakers to gain crucial…

A marathon session took place in Brussels from Sunday 30 June to Monday 1 July to decide who would become the new President of the European Commission. Arco Timmermans, Professor by special appointment Public Affairs at the Institute of Public Administration at Leiden University, appeared as a guest…

As a result of two attacks in Germany and one attack in France within only one week, fears of new terrorist attacks in Europe have reignited. In France a radicalised police agent stabbed and killed four people. In Germany a man from Syria drove his car into a line of cars wounding sixteen people and…

Ben de Jong, a guest lecturer at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, appeared as a guest on NPO Radio 1 to discuss number stations that are used to send secret messages to spies in enemy territories.

On Friday 24 May, Marieke Liem, Associate Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs of Leiden University, appeared on the NPO 3 television programme ‘Vreemdgaan met Filemon’ (Cheating with Filemon). Liem discussed the link between jealousy and murder referencing scientific research into…

Mariëlle Bruning, Professor of Children and the Law at Leiden University, responded in various media to the new draft agreement aimed at reducing work pressure of youth protectors.

'How do you write a slogan to win an election?' Steven Ooms answers this question in his PhD research into ideas about good prose in the time of Caesar and Emperor Augustus. This period is considered a high point for the development of literature. The Roman Cicero and the Greek Dionysius of Halicarnassus…

The contribution ‘Article 50 TEU and Brexit: the legal contours of a political drama’ is the most read article of the Dutch Journal for EU Law (NtER).

Lecture, Leiden Translation Talks

The practice of the application of pre-trial detention in the Netherlands raises questions in light of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and must be adjusted.

Economic Anthropologist Erik Bähre talks on the Dutch News Radio Channel BNR about the effects of the Russia-Ukraine grain agreement for African countries.

Physicist Sense Jan van der Molen researches materials that do not exist in nature. ‘It’s fascinating to see how the properties of a material change if we manage to make it super thin.’ He will give his inaugural lecture on 21 October.

The Dutch-Japanese made DESHIMA instrument has passed its first practical tests when measuring the distances and ages of distant galaxies. The core of the instrument is a chip the size of two euro coins that measures 49 shades of far infrared light. The developers of the spectrometer publish the results…

The Leiden University College (LUC) education team behind The Learning Mindset (TLM) has received 800,000 euro’s during the Dutch Higher Education Award Ceremony 2022. The LUC team was second behind Universteit Twente. The prize was awarded during the annual Comenius Festival of the Comenius Network.…

The Dutch National Research Agenda announced today that it will provide 17 research projects with a total of 61 million euros in funding. Researchers from Leiden University or the Leiden University Medical Center are involved in five of the projects. All of the projects are interdisciplinary partnerships…

After a process of more than two decades, the new Greek-Dutch dictionary was presented on Wednesday 5 June. University lecturer Lucien van Beek acted as manager of this project headed by Ineke Sluiter for the last nine years. He is also one of its editors-in-chief.

More people seeking asylum, overcrowded asylum accommodation and asylum procedures that take years because of a lack of capacity. The current government wants to declare an asylum crisis but what is that exactly and can they just do that?

How do you maintain diplomatic relations in a world of rising tensions? This was the theme of a guest lecture by Minister Sigrid Kaag at Campus The Hague. ‘Policy proposals won’t go through if they don’t foster women’s development.’

The numbers of asylum seekers and the direct family members hoping to join them were not the problem, says Mark Klaassen. The stumbling block was the housing market. He says the asylum crisis is being used for electoral gain.

The Netherlands must decrease its food imports dependency on foreign countries to be able to reduce the consequences of the corona crisis on its food supply. Dr. Brandon Zicha and Joes de Natris conclude that the solution to this is two-fold: major interventions in agricultural practices and a trustworthy…

The issues surrounding the crises at the Dutch Tax Authorities and the Dutch Ministries of Justice and Defence had been known internally for considerable time. The information had been duly passed but criticism was largely ignored. Contradiction expressed by civil servants was not appreciated and even…

On 25 October 2017, the current class of students of the advanced LL.M. programme International Children’s Rights visited juvenile detention center ‘De Hunnerberg’ in Nijmegen (the Netherlands).

When hobby divers revisited a nearly 400-year-old shipwreck off the coast of Texel, they discovered more than 1,000 objects in wooden boxes. Eight years later, postdoc Janet Dickinson used recovered books to compile a profile of the mysterious owner.