Colonialism Inside Out: Everyday Experience and Plural Practice in Dutch Institutions in Sri Lanka (c. 1700-1800)

Research in Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science focuses on the dynamics and the interaction of political institutions, individual decision-making, and collective behaviour.

In the track Intelligence and National Security you will be introduced to intelligence and security services in their political, societal, and bureaucratic contexts. The track will give you a thorough understanding of the modus operandi of these agencies, their interaction with the surrounding world,…

Bureaucrats appointed based on merit are not necessarily more professional or autonomous than those who have been, for instance, ‘politically installed’. Furthermore, patronage does not only have negative effects. These are two conclusions reached by Abdul-Nasir Abubakar, PhD candidate at Leiden University’s…

The Public Management and Leadership specialisation emphasises how the behaviour of critical actors – politicians, top-level bureaucrats, street-level professionals and citizens - is critical to understand and improve public governance. The specialisation blends public administration with psychology,…

Kohei Suzuki, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration contributed to the research project ‘Reforming Public Administration in Libya’. The brainstorming meeting was organized by the Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRIC) in T…

Middle East Studies Lecture

Each year a distinguished jury will award the Haldane prize to the author(s) of the best article published in Public Administration. The Haldane prize commemorates one of the founders of Public Administration (and first President of the Royal Institute of Public Administration), Richard Haldane.

From malaria parasites as a vaccine to how top-level bureaucrats reach their decisions: seven researchers from Leiden University have received a Vidi grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This 800,000-euro grant will enable them to develop their own innovative line of research over the next five…

Kohei Suzuki receives Kenneth J. Meier Award from the Midwest Political Science Association

Research on this theme concerns the legitimacy and effectiveness of Europe’s institutional order in the face of public alienation and normative contestation.

How is law shaped by and shaping social, political and economic change in Indonesia?

Many Asian countries are in a process of democratisation. The expectation was that citizens would gradually gain more control over the functioning of their elites. Experts from Leiden have concluded that this process often fails to improve the quality of the administration. They researched the nature…

The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences is committed to being a safe, comfortable, and equitable space for both staff and students: a place where a diversity of people feel valued and welcome, where there is room for a diversity of perspectives.

Bordering Up: Regulating Mobility Through Passes, Walls and Guards

In the research project ‘Furthering public leadership’ the Leiden Leadership Centre collaborates with several public organisations in order to obtain academic insights on public leadership and to develop leadership in practice. This allows for evidence-based development of public leadership and direct…

Having encountered a series of shocks that pose an existential threat to our livelihoods, our societies have become increasingly polarized.

At the heart of this study is a thorough inquiry of categorisations of social identity used in the VOC’s record-keeping bureaucracy. How were service, occupational and caste groups classified and shaped by the VOC?

From passports to policy: take a moment to look up in City Hall

Evidence-informed policy-making is crucial for good governance. Yet, despite the abundance of evidence from research and evaluation available to decision-makers, we know little about the actual influence of evidence on government policies. The ‘Power of Evidence’ (PoE) research programme, directed by…

In the research department Politics and Governance, we address three key themes that provide a comprehensive political exploration of the dynamics at play in governance systems spanning local, regional, national, and supranational levels.

Kohei Suzuki, Assistant Professor at Institute of Public Administration, was interviewed by Infobae about loneliness in Japan and the role of government and society.

Kohei Suzuki, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration recently received a large research project grant from the Swedish Research Council.

Thursday, the 26th of November, Professor Kenneth J. Meier (Texas A&M) is visiting Campus the Hague.

The core curriculum equips students with the conceptual approaches and qualitative empirical research methods necessary to analyze law in context. Specialized electives enable students to dive deeper and focus on particular areas of legal practice—from legal mobilization to regulation and compliance…

Tim van de Meerendonk explores how farmers, insurance advisors and local politicians in India try to make sense of insurance figures through their moral convictions.

On Tuesday 20 March, Constant Hijzen, Assistant Professor of Intelligence Studies at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), gave a lecture in the Diplomacy and Global Affairs Research Seminar series of Diplomacy and Global Affairs Research, titled ‘Of ticking bombs: Western services against…

The organisational network in and around a primary school influences the school’s achievement, according to Petra van den Bekerom. Effective networking allows problems to be countered more easily. PhD ceremony on 8 November.

Europe in lockdown: Member States acted on their own initiative to into lockdown, and all back to normal at the same time? It’s not that simple, and it doesn’t have to be.

Between the early thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries CE, the Sultanate of Cairo affected the balances of power elites across and beyond the regions of Egypt, Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean. Modern historiography has for a long time been determined by the idea of this sultanate as a highly…

Directors of museums in the Netherlands announced in March 2019 that they would be taking new steps in relation to the return of looted colonial artefacts. So what has happened since?

The ‘Kluitersprijs’ is awarded to students who achieve excellent results in the minor Intelligence Studies every year.

Twenty three students who obtained excellent results in the minor Intelligence Studies received the annual Kluitersprijs.

Nineteen students who obtained excellent results in the minor Intelligence Studies received the annual Kluitersprijs.

How do insurance products transform intimate and personal relations? What are the consequences of the classifications that insurance companies use and how do these affect solidarity, morality and inequality?

Central to Nuranisa’s PhD project is the cultural diplomacy practiced by the Javanese courts of central Java (Surakarta, Yogyakarta, Pakualaman and Mangkunegaran) in response to the increasing Dutch colonial power in the 19th and early 20th century.

Researchers at the Faculty of Science work at the frontiers of knowledge every day, tackling today’s major societal challenges. Their work is recognised through grants, prizes and other awards. We highlight some of these achievements below.

New edited volume by Mies Grijns (VVI), Hoko Horii (KITLV/VVI), Sulistyowati Irianto (Universitas Indonesia) and Pinky Saptandari (Airlangga University).

Every year, the ‘Kluitersprijs’ is awarded to students who achieve excellent results in the minor Intelligence Studies.

Het Hof van Justitie van de EU (HvJ) doet uitspraak in twee zaken, waarin het Poolse Constitutionele Hof de Poolse grondwet boven EU-recht plaatste. Hoogleraren Europees recht, Armin Cuyvers en Stefaan Van den Bogaert duiden de uitspraak in de media.

The Van Vollenhoven Institute is organising a year-long public lecture series entitled 'Reconsidering the Socio-Legal Gaze'. The lecture series aims to spark critical debates about the visions of justice and positions of power that inform Law and Society scholarship at Leiden and beyond.

The collaboration between ISGA and the NIPV (Netherlands Institute for Public Safety) has been made official. This took place under the guidance of initiators Jeroen Wolbers (ISGA) and Peter Bos (NIPV) during the conclusion of the three-part lecture series on the Dutch crisis management system. Sanneke…

Anthropologist Erik Bähre has received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for research on the morality of life insurance.

Last Thursday , Dr. Joanne Liu, the International President of the Médicins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), visited LUC The Hague as part of her visit to Universiteit Leiden. Dr. Liu spoke with four of our students, who shared their experiences as volunteers working with refugees all over…

On 25 April the Dutch Review Committee for the Deployment of Powers (in Dutch: TIB) presented its first annual report to the First and Second Chamber of the Dutch government. The TIB informs in the annual report on its findings and activities in the period from 1 May 2018 to 1 April 2019. The report…

Jan Erk, political scientist at Leiden University, has been selected as the 2016-2017 Smuts Memorial Fellow at the University of Cambridge. During his residency at the renowned British academy, he will work on his research project ‘The Enduring Impact of Africa’s extinct kingdoms and invisible chief…

Gedupeerden krijgen maar met mondjesmaat duidelijkheid over hun schadevergoeding in de toeslagenaffaire. Ymre Schuurmans, hoogleraar staats- en bestuursrecht, stelt dat het vooral misgaat door de complexiteit en onduidelijkheid over wie recht heeft op welke compensatie, zegt zij in de uitzending van…

The Dutch national research organisation NWO has awarded a Veni grant to 21 researchers from Leiden University, two of them are researchers from FGGA: Dovilė Rimkutė and Bart Schuurman.

The lecture series Humanity in the Automated State continued on 9 April 2026 at Leiden Law School with Professor of Public Law, Ida Koivisto from the University of Helsinki, an expert in the digitalisation of public administration, general administrative law, and the legitimation strategies of public…