On 12 September the students of the European Law Master gathered in the Lorentzzaal for the festive opening of their programme.

The European Union increasingly needs to respond to unforeseen events and developments. This is putting it to the test. What are the effects? Professor of Foundations and Practice of the European Union Luuk van Middelaar addressed this in his inaugural lecture on 23 September.

PhD defence

Tom Louwerse, lecturer and researcher at Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science, has been awarded a NWO Vidi grant. This will enable him to conduct research on how government and opposition parties cooperate in parliament and how this affects voters’ party choices and satisfaction with d…

What should a confederal constitution for the EAC look like? What are the legal challenges for making the African Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) work? And what insights can be drawn in this context from the successes and failures in the EU?

Dutch speedskaters have been winning the most medals in speed skating at the Winter Olympics for years. How? Based on their intuition. Scientist Jeroen van der Eb of the Data Mining & Sports group of the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) wants speedskaters to adjust their irons based…

Exhibition

What does it mean to innovate education? And what motivates professors to innovate? How does innovation work at the University?

Professor Geert de Snoo, Dean of the Faculty of Science at Leiden University, has been appointed Director of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) with effect from 1 November 2019. He will stand down from his role as Dean of the Faculty of Science with effect from 1 September. De Snoo will…

The Hague Global Futures Hub was officially launched at the Wijnhaven building on Campus The Hague on 10 June. This collaboration between Leiden University and the University of Edinburgh represents a significant step forward in addressing global challenges.

How can we best deal with the current problems caused by the human impact on the nitrogen cycle? How do we make the transition to a sustainable society? As of 1 September, nitrogen expert Jan Willem Erisman will be working on these questions at Leiden University: he will exchange the Louis Bolk Institute…

PhD defence

Fossil Free against KLM on greenwashing, municipalities against Chemours on PFAS discharge, climate cases against Shell and ING Bank… There are many examples of recent civil lawsuits on sustainability. But does climate litigation in the civil courts actually have an effect?

PhD defence

On Tuesday 12 January 2021, the Leiden Law School thesis prizes were awarded at the New Year’s event.

More allowance should be made for differences between municipalities, argues Geerten Boogaard, Thorbecke Professor of Local Government. The Municipalities Act could, for instance, offer a ‘menu of options’ for the decision on whether to have an elected mayor. Professor Boogaard will deliver his inaugural…

LegalTech: the use of technology and software to provide legal services and support the legal sector. On 1 November, the GovTech Summit 2022 took place in the World Forum in The Hague. During the summit, technological innovations in the public sector were addressed from a number of different perspectives.…

Op dinsdag 11 februari 2020 verdedigde Clara van Dam haar proefschrift ‘Guidance documents of the European Commission in the Dutch legal order’.

As of February 1st, 2018, Sarah de Rijcke has been appointed as Professor of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, especially Science and Evaluation Studies, at Leiden University. The chair is located at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS).

On 25-26 October 2022, a select group of high-level participants gathered in Leiden to discuss research on Libya’s national reconciliation and access to justice, and to explore implications for policy and law.

Over the past decades within the European Union (EU), economic proliferation and globalisation have resulted in an increase in transboundary waste transportation. Although waste trading can often have positive economic and environmental impacts by repurposing natural resources within industrial sectors,…

The Executive Board of Leiden University has appointed Professor Ken Meier to the Chair of Bureaucracy and Democracy at the Institute of Public Administration. The appointment starts on 1 September for a period of five years.

In a lecture for the University of the Netherlands, Reijer Passchier, assistant professor in constitutional and administrative law, speaks about the state of our democracy. ‘Is it not time to upgrade our democracy?’

Bastiaan Rijpkema has been appointed Professor by special appointment of the new chair Tolerance at the Faculty of Humanities with effect from 1 July 2021. The chair was established by Stichting Leerstoel Uytenbogaert.

Het voorstel van D66 om een wetsartikel zo te veranderen dat een politieke partij kan worden verboden, is onverstandig, zegt rechtsfilosoof Bastiaan Rijpkema. Hij spreekt er uitgebreid over tijdens een interview met de Volkskrant. ‘Het is overduidelijk bedoeld om één specifieke partij aan te pakken:…

The Honours Academy has recently started working with the new visual technology Virtual Reality (VR). 'It is important to look beyond your own borders and to keep on experimenting. It may not work out, but at least you tried.'

Reinforcement learning, agents and classification: these are just some of the topics researchers on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning discussed at the BNAIC/BeneLearn conference 2020. It was the first time Leiden University hosted the annually held Belgium Netherlands Artificial Intelligence…

Negatieve ambtelijke adviezen lieten eerder zien dat het uitroepen van een asielcrisis op grond van het vreemdelingennoodrecht vanuit democratisch en rechtsstatelijk oogpunt niet aanvaardbaar is. Wim Voermans, hoogleraar staatsrecht, licht in Nieuwsuur toe welke hordes bij zowel bij de inzet van het…

Last Thursday, the second ILS Lunch Seminar of this academic year took place. In this successful and well-visited edition, Hans-Martien ten Napel and Mark Leiser both gave very interesting presentations.

The Global Summit on Constitutionalism took place from 16 to 18 March. Wim Voermans, Gert Jan Geertjes and Rowie Stolk, from the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law, travelled to Austin where the conference was organised by the School of Law of the University of Texas at Austin.

The new inter-university centre set up by Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam is to apply ‘big data’ research for urban issues.

Big Data - Big Business? - wrap up

The Faculty Board has appointed Professor Ymre Schuurmans as Academic Director of the Institute of Public Law. Schuurmans is Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law and was Head of the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law for the past six years.

The monthly ILS Lunch seminars bring together colleagues and students from Leiden Law School, providing an informal setting to hear what researchers from other research programs and institutes are working on. On Thursday 8 November, a new edition of the ILS Lunch Seminars takes place. This month, Philippe…

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has recently awarded a significant grant of 863,000 euros to the project proposal 'RESOCIAL' led by Dr Gianclaudio Malgieri, Associate Professor at eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies. This grant is part of the 'NWA Synergy Theme: Vulnerability and Resilience…

This international conference, held in Leiden form 22 to 24 May 2017, focused on adat law in Indonesia a century after the Adat Law Foundation (Adatrechtstichting) was set up in Leiden by the famous professors Van Vollenhoven and Snouck Hurgronje. In the decades that followed the Adat Law Foundation…

The Global Summit, which took place from 12-16 January 2021, is an initiative by Richard Albert, the William Stamps Farish Professor in Law, Professor of Government, Director of Constitutional Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and Founder & Director of the International Forum on the Future…

This spring the Netherlands holds the presidency of the European Union. Leiden Europe researchers have taken the opportunity to examine the future of the European Union and where appropriate to give advice. They will present their book on Friday 29 April in Nieuwspoort.

On 1 January Irma Mosquera Valderrama succeeded Jean-Pierre van der Rest as PhD Dean, completing the changes to the team of PhD deans at Leiden Law School.

President Joko Widodo was received on 22 April in the Academy Building at the Rapenburg by Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker and Henri Lenferink, Mayor of Leiden. Jet Bussemaker, Minister of Education, Culture and Science, was also present.

Jaap van den Herik was appointed Officer in the Order of Orange Nassau on 8 October on his retirement as professor of Law and Information Technology.

On the occasion of Euroscience Open Forum 2022, Professor Attiya Waris (Director of Research and Enterprise and Professor of Fiscal Law and Policy in Eastern Africa, University of Nairobi, Kenya), Professor Irma Mosquera Valderrama (Professor of Global Tax Governance, Lead Researcher GLOBTAXGOV ERC…

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…

Scientists of the faculty of Governance and Global Affairs research completely different subject, among which terrorism, cybercrime and migration. We give the floor to several of our very best researchers. In this episode: Caroline Archambault researches the Masai in Kenia.

Recently, Jaap van den Herik, professor emeritus Law and IT, was interviewed by the BNVKI (Benelux Association for Artificial Intelligence).

On August 27 – 31 2019, PhD candidate Maria Vasile participated in the IUAES 2019 Inter- congress in Poznan, Poland entitled "World Solidarities" and shares some of the insights from presentations she attended and found particularly relevant to the Food Citizens project.

Liesbet van Zoonen is Director of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for BOLD Cities. The Centre was founded in 2016 and has made a name for itself with such innovations as data walks and the ‘Your Neighbourhood – Your Data’ game and conducts research together with the Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and…

After the kick-off on 28 November, the next ILS Lunch Seminar will take place on Monday 19 December. During this lunch seminar series all researchers from Leiden Law School can present their research. The idea is to hear in a simple and nice way what researchers from other research programs and institutes…

The Leiden Centre of Data Science and the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science are part of a consortium that will carry out research on making illustrated and handwritten archives digitally accessible. The project is funded by NWO.