On Monday November 7th the research outcome ‘Involuntary (after) care for vulnerable young adults? A study to the legal possibilities for the provision of (involuntary) care to vulnerable young adults after child protection’ was presented to the members of the Parliament.

What do climate change and traditional Japanese music have to do with each other? A great deal, university lecturer Andrea Giolai suspects. He has been awarded an NWO grant to study the relationship in more depth.

Career orientation

The winner of the Africa Thesis Award 2022 is Robert Okello for his thesis on rural women’s legal empowerment through digital technology in Northern Uganda. Robert did his Master in Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

From 1 August 2018, Alanna O'Malley was appointed as Chair of United Nations Studies in Peace and Justice, focusing on the ‘lesser-known actors’ of the UN: women, the youth, the agents of informal diplomatic networks within the UN and actors from the Global South. This Special Chair has been created…

On a wintry Wednesday evening, big issues were the topic of conversation at Grand Café de Burcht. Young Academy Leiden (YAL) was holding a round table: Next444. Now the 444th anniversary of Leiden University is over, it’s time to look once again to the future. What issues will we be facing over the…

Online, hybrid, on campus... It was an unpredictable year, also for the Faculty of Humanities. Luckily, there were also non-corona related stories. Let's review 2021 with this list of the most-read news articles per month.

Alumni event, Career

Alumni event

As part of her doctoral studies at the University of Copenhagen, Dr Rebekka Byberg explored the history of the Common Market Law Review from 1963 to 1993 in an engaging article which illustrates the evolution of European law as an academic discipline.

Arts and culture

China is prohibited from using export duties to address any environmental problems. This is unfortunate, according to PhD candidate Fengan Jiang (Richard), as export duties could be useful in tackling global carbon leakage. PhD defence on 19 February 2020.

Seminar series

Michael Ignatieff, Canadian author, university professor and former politician, has been appointed Cleveringa Professor for the 2013-2014 academic year at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Professor Ignatieff will deliver the Cleveringa lecture on 26 November 2013.

A growing number of AI tools are being developed for the legal sector, to help professionals search lengthy texts or check court rulings. Leiden SAILS researcher Masha Medvedeva, an expert on the technical development of these systems, warns: ‘Users should know what’s under the hood.’

What is it like to study law in the Netherlands as an international? Alumnus Heidi Burrows came to the Netherlands from the UK to study International Children’s Rights, an Advanced Master’s Programme. We asked her about her experiences with this unique programme.

One of the objections to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and Europe (Ceta) is that countries would be surrendering national sovereignty to multinationals which will obstruct effective climate policy. But compared to other trade agreements, CETA is an improvement.

This week the regional court in The Hague gave a ruling that has attracted international attention. The State of the Netherlands (Ministry of Social Affairs) was taken to court by two famous writers, Wieringa and Februari, several NGOs and a trade union.

Students from the ‘Public confidence in the criminal justice system’ Bachelor’s Honours Class completed this course with their presentations at the final session on Tuesday 25 May. What is unique about this honours class is the collaboration with The Hague University of Applied Sciences and the Court…

During the farewell reception on 29 August, the Faculty of Science will say goodbye to Dean Geert de Snoo. On 1 November 2019, he will continue his career as Director of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW). Colleagues talk about his significance for ecology, about his contribution as a…

The Hortus Botanicus is celebrating its 425-year anniversary this year. It’s the oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands, but how did it come into existence and what kind of research takes place there?

Towards the end of February, three Leiden University buildings will be assessed for their accessibility to people with a disability. The assessment will be carried out by Ongehinderd, a social enterprise committed to making the Netherlands more accessible. Its founder and director, Gerard de Nooij,…

On 3 and 4 November 2022, Melanie Fink convened a Workshop to bring together the authors of an Edited Volume on ‘Access to Justice and the EU’s Remedies System’, to be published in early 2024 by Cambridge University Press.

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima attended a meeting at Leiden University on 1 October to prepare for their state visit to China. China experts informed them about such topics as the image that Chinese people have of the Netherlands.

Alumnus Ben Smulders has worked for the European Commission for the past 33 years. ‘The discipline and depth that I experienced during my student days has helped me through various stages of my professional career.’

Human trafficking is much more than kidnapping and selling people. Those who commit labour exploitation can, for example, also be sentenced for human trafficking. Criminologist Masja van Meeteren hopes to simplify the complexity of the phenomenon by charting the different forms of labour exploitati…

In line with tradition, at the opening of the academic year the LUS Teaching Prize will be presented to the University’s best teacher. Get to know the nominees. This week: Thijs Porck.

2023 was another year full of highlights and special moments for the faculty of Governance and Global Affairs. Find out what the year was like in this year overview: we take you through the most important moments and news items month of each month.

‘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…

Security in the broadest sense of the word was the key focus in the Interfaculty Conference on 4 April in Leiden. With almost 200 attendees and such well-known speakers as Dick Schoof, Pieter van Vollenhoven and Ad Verbrugge, the first conference was a success.

Three weeks into intelligent lockdown and more to go. An extraordinary situation in which we are now working from home. How do our colleagues do that? Meet ups 'in the flesh' at the printer, having lunch and coffee in the FSW cafe or conferring live and lecturing in the Pieter de la Court Building are…

Asylum seekers wanting to get to Australia often end up in a detention centre on the tiny island state of Nauru. What effect does this ‘outsourcing’ of asylum seekers have on human rights? PhD candidate Patrick van Berlo went to Australia to investigate.

The Hortus Botanicus is celebrating its 425-year anniversary this year. It’s the oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands, but how did it come into existence and what kind of research takes place there?

‘Visibility and secrecy are both valuable tactics and should not be antagonized in LGBT movements, ’ says Jingshu Zhu. Zhu will defend her dissertation on Wednesday 21 February. Time for a short interview with the PhD candidate.

Crime victims cannot always fully exercise their rights, said Maarten Kunst, Professor of Criminology, in his inaugural lecture on 26 October. His mission is to find out why exactly this is and to see whether change can be brought about.

This interdisciplinary conference, to be held on 26-27 June 2017, will bring together lawyers interested in EU law and criminal law, criminologists, political scientists, and philosophers to jointly reflect on the development of the EU's criminal policy.

Leiden Law Cast is a podcast made by Leiden Law School, Leiden University, for everyone who wants to learn more about current legal issues.

Elisabeth Heijmans originally comes from French-speaking Belgium – ‘close and far at the same time’. She came to Leiden University for her Ph.D. in 2013, and consequently managed to get a postdoc position. In this role, she is part of a team of Ph.D. students, postdocs and supervisors, looking at historical…

How were ideas about politics and society distributed in ancient China? Hilde De Weerdt, Professor of Chinese History, investigates this using new digital methods. We speak with her about networks, big data and digital humanities.

Data science offers great opportunities for legal research, according to Simone van der Hof and Bart Custers (eLaw). But at the same time, we have to keep an eye on the unwanted side effects of big data - such as ethnic profiling.

On Monday 21 November a lecture was given at Leiden Law School of Leiden University by Belgian Minister of Justice Koen Geens and Dutch Minister of Justice and Security Ard van der Steur in which they talked about international judicial cooperation. The lecture focussed on cooperation between the Netherlands…

Professor Ken Meier is one of the most prominent researchers of the world in the field of Public Administration. Meier holds appointments as a professor of Public Administration at Cardiff School of Business (Wales), a professor of bureaucracy and democracy at Leiden University (The Netherlands), research…

The legal distinction between victims of human trafficking and victims of migrant smuggling is unjust, argues De Massol Rebetz in her PhD thesis. In certain instances, smuggled migrants should be treated the same as victims of human trafficking.

After her law degree, Irina Ghazarian (28) started working at Zurich Insurance PLC, an international insurance company. ‘Why do we outsource cases that are going to court?’ she asked. She is now the first attorney to work there.

Lecture

Since its founding, LUC has been a college of educational development and experimentation. Its mission statement identifies the college as “a site of innovation in pedagogy, curriculum design, and student well-being,” and it applies a student-centred approach to learning throughout its BA and BSc degree…

This section provides an overview of online tools for the study of the medieval Low Countries. The websites linked down below are often times both available in Dutch and English.

Global Interactions sponsors a number of research projects of Leiden University researchers.