'The kind of knowledge you gain in International Studies can take you anywhere,' says Gaby van de Wal (26, The Hague, The Netherlands), who graduated from the programme in 2018. Her own career path is proof that indeed, an International Studies degree comes with many opportunities.

What would it be like if you could work with the best in your field every day? Alumnus in International Studies Niels Drost knows just what that’s like. He currently works as a junior researcher at the Clingendael Institute.

How you think about yourself is important for the choices you make. Adolescents are faced with choosing a study programme that will determine their future, while their self-image is still under development. Tough choice? Research by psychologist Laura van der Aar has shown that taking a training course…

Discovering effective new drugs is a long, expensive and uncertain process. Laura Heitman wants to improve this by finding out more about how drugs bind to proteins that play a role in disease. She calls it ‘drug discovery 3.0’. Inaugural lecture on 9 December.

Mark Rutgers has been reappointed as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. After a first term where the focus was mainly internal, it’s time to look outwards.

Last week, on 13 February 2019, the EU approved the ban on pulse trawling. This followed the vote for a ban by the European Parliament on 16 January 2018. Half of the 84 Dutch pulse trawling vessels must stop immediately; the other half will receive a transitional arrangement until July 2021. Outcomes…

The amici curiae brief was filed with the United States District Court for the Central District of California, on 28 January 2020.

So much has happened this year! 2023 was an eventful year in which several wars raged about which our experts could offer interpretation. It was also the year in which the government made apologies for the slavery past. Leiden humanities scholars were at the forefront of this with their research on…

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.

Lecture, Histories Connected: Work-in-Progress

On Tuesday 19 December 2017 at 16:15 hrs Anneloes Kuiper-Slendebroek will defend her doctoral thesis 'Rechter over Grenzen' which deals with the application and interpretation of international law in Dutch private law. Supervisor is Martijn Polak, co-supervisor is Jeroen van der Weide.

Every year, an NWO PhD in the Humanities grant is awarded to a prospective PhD candidate at the Faculty of Archaeology. This year, the grant went to Maia Casna, enabling her to study respiratory disease in the past. ‘My hypothesis is that the rapid formation of cities in the medieval Netherlands, must…

In this thesis it is posed that the central object of preference discovery is a co-creative process in which the Other can be represented by a machine. It explores efficient methods to enhance introverted intuition using extraverted intuition's communication lines.

Quincy Promes has been arrested in Dubai at the request of the Netherlands Public Prosecution Service. The Dutch judicial authorities now want Dubai to extradite Promes. But how does that work? Professor Jannemieke Ouwerkerk explains on ‘RTL Nieuws’.

During the next three years, 6 promising researchers from the Faculty of Humanities who have just been awarded their PhDs will be able to further develop their research ideas funded by a Veni grant from the NWO. A total of 147 Veni grants were awarded of which 14 went to researchers at Leiden Univer…

On Friday 15 March, more than 750 students from the Netherlands and abroad visited the Master’s Open Day at the Faculty of Humanities to explore their options.

Leiden University has a new professor. On 1 June Nadine Akkerman became Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture, a position she feels is designed to help her help others.

The history of the LGTBI+ collective, deeply marked by episodes of violence, repression, and discrimination, is also the history of the struggle for social change and the conquest of civil rights, advances without which contemporary Western democracies could not be explained. More recently, the implementation…

This project investigates the causes of the major archaeological change in the period of 40.000-20.000 BC in South Africa.

On 13 February 2018, the European Law Expertise Centre (ECER) and the newly established Centre for International Law (CIR) jointly organised a Brexit conference on the practical implications of international and European law of the Brexit for the interpretation and application of the law in practice…

No less than seven scholars of the Faculty of Humanities were awarded a Veni grant. Veni grants are aimed at excellent researcher who recently obtained their doctorate. With a maximum grant of 250.000 euros, the laureates can develop their research ideas in the coming three years.

After two years of corona restrictions, it was ‘back to normal’ in 2022. Migration, elections, the history of slavery, Russia, and Ukraine were much-discussed topics. We compiled an overview of the most-read news items and other events of the past year.

May the Netherlands deny access to products manufactured under poor working conditions? And can a manufacturer bring a case against a country that increases its minimum wage? PhD candidate Ruben Zandvliet examined the legal and ethical issues involved in international commercial law, investment law…

On 11 November 2016, The Hague Law Labs and the department of Constitutional and Administrative Law, in collaboration with the Italian Association for European and Comparative Law, will organise ‘The Dutch Constitution Beyond 200: tradition and innovation in a multilevel legal order'.

On 16 April 2024, ERA (Europäische Rechtsakademie / European Law Academy) organised an online conference on the subject of 'Legal Aspects of Gender Identity in Europe', including information on the experiences of gender diverse people, case law by the European Court of Human Rights and by the Court…

Students from Londen, Amsterdam and Leiden visited presentations and talked to students, tutors and alumni to find out more about the Master’s Programmes Leiden University has to offer.

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.’

When the corona epidemic broke out, Nuno Atalaia, a teacher of Portuguese, ‘democratised’ his lectures. He is one of the three nominees for the LUS Teaching Prize. What is it about this approach that appeals to students?

Over 300 people from 38 different countries took part in the online lecture

On 3 December 2019 Hanna Bosdriesz defended her dissertation on the fight against impunity for grave human rights violations in Latin America.

Leiden University Proudly Announces Dr. Mikiko Otani as the Rotating Honorary Chair Enforcement of Children's Rights 2023/2024

Dr Amy Strecker (Heritage Dept., Faculty of Archaeology) has recently been awarded a LGI BREED grant to develop her project on property and spatial justice in international law. Building on her previous research into landscape protection from cultural heritage, environmental and human rights perspectives…

How was the Scholarly Self cultivated in professorial families of the humanities, in German-speaking Europe between 1860 and 1930?

Will the association agreement between the EU and Ukraine lead to a new ‘Cold War’ between Russia and the West? That was one of the questions posed to the expert panel which discussed the referendum on the EU-Ukraine association agreement. While many people are still unsure what this referendum is really…

This study presents an agent-based simulation model exploring the patterns of presence and absence of Late Pleistocene Neanderthals in western Europe.

Starting 2 July 2022, a new exhibition will be opened to the public at the Old Observatory: More-than-Planet. This exhibit asks the question: how do we imagine our planet?

On 30 June, the Center for Law and Digital Technologies of Leiden University (eLaw) will hold the annual Hans Franken Lecture. This year, the lecture will be held by Jan Kleijssen, the recently retired human rights director at the Council of Europe. The title of the lecture is: 'AI and Human Rights'…

A global perspective on the nature and evolution of nationalism, from the early modern era to the present.

Identifying the gaps in the legal framework for EU activities in the maritime security domain, and specifically in the areas of combating piracy, human smuggling or trafficking and drug trafficking.

Presentations related to this chair.

Thanks to its early civilisation and continuous mix of influences, the Muslim world has a rich and varied culture. The study of material culture, books, stories, films and increasingly television series teaches us about the structure of modern-day Muslim societies.

Politics is about the authorised allocation of values: who gets what, when and how much? This question is relevant at many different levels, in many different places and in very different ways.

This project looks at the current practices of marriage law in Indonesia. It examines the often ambiguous views different groups hold of marriage, from local villagers in Bengkulu to women’s activists in Jakarta, and how these relate to the development of national law on the one hand and local practices…

The project 'Policing the high seas: maritime law-enforcement in a multi-actor environment' aims to identify the gaps in the legal framework for EU activities in the maritime security domain, and specifically in the areas of combating piracy, human smuggling or trafficking and drug trafficking.