Under Dutch law, like German or English law, the violation of a statutory provision does not establish civil liability for damage caused to another person. Such liability requires that the statutory provision concerned aims to protect against the damage or, put differently, that the harmed interest…

What makes peace missions succeed or fail? Which new technologies will determine the outcome of wars? In recent decades, insufficient use has been made of knowledge of modern warfare, when this is crucial to European security. This is what Frans Osinga, Professor by Special Appointment of War Studies,…

How was the future United Nations Organization promoted to global publics during WW II?

Van Vark defended her dissertation 'Separation and immersion: the changing role of the armed forces in Northwestern liberal democracies’ on 17 October 2025. The doctoral research was supervised by Maartje van der Woude and Erwin Muller.

Before founding their American colony, the Pilgrim Fathers first lived in Leiden in the early 17th century. This group has no fewer than nine American presidents among its descendants. The University played an important role in the Pilgrims’ life in Leiden.

The Leiden University Institute for History has a wide-ranging academic scope unique for the Netherlands. This is directly reflected in the participation of her staff in various Master's and Bachelor's programmes at Leiden University.

A civil servant in the Zuidplas municipality stole a saddle from an old bicycle from the municipal waste depot. Although the theft concerned an item of little value, the subdistrict court agreed with the municipality's decision to dismiss the employee with immediate effect. Lecturer in employment law…

This week an article was published in the American popular science magazine Scientific American on the uncertainty surrounding the extent to which territory can be claimed on the moon.

After a year of war against Ukraine, professors André Gerrits, Antoaneta Dimitrova and Frans Osinga look back at Russian aggression and Western unity and ahead to the new offensive.

Team History of Africa and the Americas

A discussion is currently being held about whether a demonstrating policy official employed by the Municipality of The Hague, who is also a local councillor in Rijswijk, can remain in office after she participated in Extinction Rebellion’s recent climate protest. The VVD party in The Hague claims this…

On 4 May, Leiden University remembered the victims of the Second World War from our university community. Alumni, students and present and former staff of the University came together for this Hour of Remembrance.

Volume II of The Cambridge History of Strategy focuses on the practice of strategy from 1800 to the present day.

Archives were a common target during the Second World War, and hundreds suffered damages. Among these archival losses, the losses to medieval manuscript collections stand out.

This article reviews how external expertise supports intelligence production and crisis decision-making with Germany's response to the Russio-Ukrainian war.

This week 'Dutch Post-war Fiction Film through a Lens of Psychoanalysis' by Peter Verstraten was published by Amsterdam University Press, the sequel to Humor and Irony in Dutch Post-war Fiction Film from 2016. Each chapter in his 482-page new study begins with a title of Fons Rademakers who made films…

This paper written by Alexandre Afonso, Assistant Professor and Researcher at Leiden University, argues that gender norms and the political strength of the left were important structuring factors regarding why European countries choose migrant labour to expand their labour force in the decades that…

This interdisciplinary study focuses on (trans)national ethnic and popular networks, combining historical-ethnographic and computational methods to understand the ‘workings’ of networked conflict interfering in the increasingly violent conflict in the Sahel (Africa) and beyond. The project focuses on…

This book presents an introductory survey of the major themes, thinkers and texts, philosophical genres and profound insights of the Chinese philosophical tradition. Its coverage ranges from the foundational history of Chinese thought in the 6th–5th centuries BCE up to the present day.

Since the credit crisis erupted, drastic cutbacks have been made in all kinds of public sector organisations, creating some very difficult choices for the top civil servants who had to implement them in their own organisation. This is the conclusion of Public Administration scholar Eduard Schmidt, whose…

In her capacity as a lawyer and expert in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Professor Helen Duffy is filing a lawsuit against the Dutch State. Leiden University’s weekly newspaper Mare reports that through her role, Duffy is assisting a Palestinian Dutchman whose family was killed in…

Every year diplomatic representatives of Latin American countries, researchers and students come together during a conference of the GRULAC region group. This year different researchers talked about their work during a visit to the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs in The Hague.

This new handbook by Frits Naerebout and Henk Singor places the history of the Greeks and Romans within the larger context of the contemporary Eurasian world.

Identifying and explaining change in the structure of central state bureaucracies and the determinants of survival of individual public organizations are two closely related areas of research in public administration. We aim to bridge the gap between these two main strands of studies of organizational…

On Wednesday 9 March, a Faculty meeting about the war in Ukraine was held for staff and students in the Lorentz Lecture Hall. By the time the meeting started at 17.00 hrs, the 220 available seats in the lecture hall had been filled mainly by large numbers of students.

Linde Desmaele explores how the United States is recalibrating its stance on European unity amid growing strategic competition with China.

On 5 October, Katherine Filesia defended the thesis 'Speaking the same language: the introduction of the Anglo-American trust into the Dutch legal system'. The doctoral research was supervised by Pim Huijgen and Frans Sonneveldt.

Where did the new generation of antislavery activists get their inspiration to organize in large-scale pressure groups?

On Friday, November 17, 2017, Assistant Professor Jens Iverson provided the Keynote for the annual symposium by the Minnesota Journal of International Law: Jus Post Bellum: Justice After the War.

President John Quincy Adams studied in Leiden. His father, John, who was also president, also stayed here and received a lot of support from professor and publisher Johan Luzac. And how are presidents Bush and Obama linked to Leiden?

In October, the Provincial Executive in Friesland reprimanded four civil servants who had signed an incendiary letter asking the government to adopt a more active climate policy. Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, feels that the Executive made a mistake.

Adopting a largely chronological approach, Gerrits links the historiography of post-war Europe and the major theoretical approaches to nationalism with analysis of key historical developments and events.

In an essay published in three prominent European newspapers, Professor Luuk van Middelaar takes a close look at Europe’s role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ‘Europe shows plenty of political energy, but what is still lacking is strategic cool-headedness, in facing a nuclear power.’

LUCAS members are experts in the fields of literary history and theory, film and media studies, and art, architectural, and book history. Members of LUCAS teach in a wide variety of Bachelor's, Master’s, and Research Master’s Programmes.

Research by Dutch television programme ‘Nieuwsuur’ shows that local councils in the Netherlands often lack civil servants and experts to support the implementation of the energy transition. As a result, they have become more dependent on commercial consultancy firms.

This article by Kohei Suzuki and his co-authors examine the relationship between job security, at-will employment, and employee outcomes in the public sector amid growing reforms and politicisation.

Western civil servants openly struggle with their government’s policies on the war in Gaza. During a meeting at Campus The Hague, three former civil servants told their stories.

A new government, conflicts around the world and obviously a lot of science: these are the five stories about Leiden University that you enjoyed reading in 2024.