This dissertation is a study of North Korean art as a site where politics, history, and culture meet.

As Lila Abu Lughod pointed out in 1989, North Africa has been one of the geographical ‘zones of prestige’ for the development of canonical approaches and crucial theoretical debates regarding the comparative study of Islam.

The master’s programme in North American Studies at Leiden University takes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the United States, with a particular emphasis on examining key aspects of American history, culture, and literature.

Are you thinking about studying North American Studies? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

, Maliebaan 30, 2311 CC, Leiden

Christopher Green defended his thesis on 26 February 2020

Promotores: C. J. ten Cate; M. A. Ainslie. Co-promotor: W. Slabbekoorn

SLAVES TO THE SYSTEM: Locating Responsibility for Forced Expatriate Labour Practices by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)

This project applies a social-historical approach to examine and contrast various groups of African-American slave refugees who sought freedom within North America between 1800 and 1860. It innovatively distinguishes between different “spaces of freedom” for runaway slaves, namely sites of formal, semi-formal,…

This project uses archaeological, literary and epigraphic evidence to investigate urban development in Roman-period North Africa, compiling this in a GIS-linked database in order to analyse the development of urban settlement spatially over time.

In recent years, and especially since the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011, a growing body of research, media reporting, and scholarly literature has focused on the role of ‘Arab youth’ as the drivers of social and political movements across the Middle East and North Africa.

Papers presented at a colloquium, held in honour of Professor Dr. P.J.R. Modderman, Leiden, 3-7 May 1982.

The first objective is to create a catalogue raisonée, i.e. a structured database that will store the main attributes of each town in a standardized format database, which will be freely accessible when completed; the second objective is to exploit theories and methods that can help us to understand…

This study employs a comparative perspective to identify generic and specific qualities of petitions and petitioning. It charts the chronological development of petitioning practices over centuries. The interdisciplinary approaches provide range of conceptual and methodological expertise for reade…

Writing under Wartime Conditions is a study into North and South Korean literature written during the Korean War.

A thorough description of the relationships among languages and their social environment in a given context, reflecting an ecological perspective, involves attention to the agency of local actors, and the policies, discourse, and ideologies that surround them.

Presenting case studies by both senior and emerging scholars, it makes mandatory reading for anyone interested in the challenges of governance, citizenship and development faced by the people of India’s North East.

Promotores: W.T. de Groot, M. Tchuenté, Co-promotor: J.P. Cheylan

Reworking Culture: Relatedness, Rites, and Resources in Garo Hills, North-East India provides intimate insights into the lives of hill farmers and the challenges they face in day-to-day life. Focusing on the ongoing reinterpretation of traditions, or customs, the book critiques the all too often taken-for-granted…

Promotores: Prof.dr. G.A. Persoon & Prof. dr. H.H. de Iongh

Although official law generally conceives of personal injury victims as individual rights holders, the actual experience of physical injury and its consequences is relational. Indeed, many researchers in the global North as well as the global South have contended that the very concept of the Self should…

In Europe, archaeological traces of fire become more frequent between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago; but could the earliest occupants have survived without fire for at least half a million years before this? How could the early occupants of Europe have kept warm and processed meat without fire?

The threats from North Korea have become so serious that the US and South Korea may feel compelled to respond. Remco Breuker, Leiden Professor of Korean Studies, would like to see a European mediator.

What is movements and corridors of the Bornean pygmy elephant in Sebuku forest? What is the nature of human-elephant conflict in Nunukan District in time and space? What are the diets of the Bornean elephants related to crop raiding?

North Korean labourers are still being forced to work in the European Union. According to researchers, including Professor of Korean Studies Remco Breuker at Leiden University, Dutch companies are buying ships from a dockyard that uses North Korean workers.

The aim of the project is to unravel the genetic and contact relations between the indigenous languages of Mesoamerica (Mexico and western Central America) and the Middle Andes region (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia), as part of a larger endeavor to understand the historical process of the peopling of the Americas…

North Korean detention camps are no different from Nazi prison camps. But as long as the country remains economically isolated, international criticism will be ineffective, writes North Korea expert Remco Breuker in the opinion section of Dutch newspaper NRC on 21 February. Breuker advocates using the…

It is difficult to get access to North Korea. That makes scientific fieldwork very difficult. Korea expert Valérie Gelézeau shared her experiences during a lunch lecture at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) on 16 February.

Leiden researchers discovered that North Korean labourers are being forced to work on a large scale in Poland. Professor of Korea Studies Remco Breuker will present a report on the abuses in Poland at the ‘Slaves To The System’ conference on 6 July.

Seven prominent North Korean exiles will shed new light on the dictatorial state in a conference hosted by Leiden University on 17 and 18 September. All of the speakers once held high-ranking positions in the regime and now reveal its inner workings.

The greatest threat to the North Korean regime is not the outside world but its own developing private market and the growing frictions at the top. This was the argument put forward by North Korean exile Jang Jin-sung in his lecture in Leiden on 18 September 2014.

How to deal with the Pyongyang regime? Is North Korea irrational? Prof. Remco Breuker proposes a new approach.

Archaeologist Virginia García-Díaz made replicas of centuries-old tools to be able to study North Holland settlements from the corded-ware culture. PhD defence 23 February.

In this article, Bart Schuurman and Sarah Louise Carthy conduct further research into the understanding of the causes of terrorism by assessing differences and similarities between left-, right- and jihadist extremists and terrorists. The article draws on the Analysen zum Terrorismus, one of the most…

Andrea Bartolucci is Assistant Professor at Institute of Security and Global Affairs. In this study, the scholars adopted a multidisciplinary approach to investigate wildfire risk in Van Chan district in northern Vietnam, a region where official data are sometimes difficult to collect or inconsisten…

This initiative is intended to support generative research collaborations between and among scholars located in different geographical regions who wish to pursue focused, joint projects in any area of the study of religion.

Korea specialist Koen De Ceuster has combined 1200 posters from North Korea in one database. He believes the posters are extremely valuable for researchers who want to make a more in-depth study of this closed country. The database will be launched on 15 June in Leiden.

Companies in Poland employ North Korean forced labourers on a large scale. Some of these companies are supported by the European Union. These are the findings of a research team headed by Leiden Professor of Korean Studies Remco Breuker and employment lawyer Imke van Gardingen. The study is still ongoing…

A fragment of a human skull discovered in sediments extracted from the bottom of the North Sea, 15 km off the coast off the Netherlands, has been identified as belonging to the extinct Neandertal group.

The NWO-funded Vidi project “American foreign policy and liberalism” challenges the idea that the United States has created and sustained a “liberal international order” since World War II. It instead explores the ways in which illiberal ideologies – such as those underpinning racial hierarchy at home…

North Korean workers designed and built numerous monuments, museums and other buildings in southern Africa. This is clear from research by history student Tycho van der Hoog for his master's thesis. These monuments can be an important source of income for a country that has become quite isolated on…

Promotores: G.R. de Snoo, B. Sinsin, Co-Promotor: H.H. de Iongh

'If a local dares to speak to you, do interact, but mind what you say.' This was the advice given to Stephanie van den Akker, second-year student of International Studies, during her visit to North Korea. And yes, one local did actually speak to her, leaving her completely speechless.

The Háskóli Íslands Student Conference on the Medieval North is an interdisciplinary forum for postgraduate students (masters and doctoral level) and early career researchers working in the broad field of medieval northern studies, held every April in Reykjavík, Iceland. Students who have not given…