Investigation of 1.) The whereabouts of the epistemological dissonances in art criticisms on Post-war contemporary art from Japan between two different language realms, in this case in English and Japanese; and 2.) What the dissonances disclose, disturb, and contribute in the process of the establishment…

The master’s programme of Latin American Studies offered by Leiden University supports the teaching and research of the social, cultural, historical, and linguistic diversity of contemporary Latin America, a region of mind-blowing diversity and global impact.

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…

The interdisciplinary minor American Studies offers a survey of U.S. history, literature and culture from the establishment of the first colonies on the North American continent in the 15th century to the present.

The two-year interdisciplinary research master’s in Latin American Studies addresses cutting-edge debates on the social and cultural issues in present-day Latin America and the Caribbean region.

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections and interactions between a variety of artistic expressions and society. It focuses not only on objects (artistic, literary, cinematic, and medial), but also on practices (aesthetic, political, and cultural).

Subjects Barbarian, Monstrous, and Wild responds to a contemporary political climate in which historically invested figures of otherness—barbarians, savages, monsters—have become common discursive currency.

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 and the programme presentation.

Latin America is a region with an immense cultural diversity and a colorful, fascinating and sometimes complicated past and present. Get to know the culture, history and the Spanish or Portuguese language of Latin America and develop yourself into a valuable region specialist with a critical worldvi…

PhD defence

Human Rights at Risk brings together social scientists, legal scholars, and humanities scholars to analyze the policy challenges of human rights protection in the twenty-first century.

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Vietnam is a comprehensive resource exploring social, political, economic, and cultural aspects of Vietnam, one of contemporary Asia’s most dynamic but least understood countries.

Covering all seven countries on the isthmus, this volume presents the first collection of original linguistic studies on Central American Spanish varieties, which have long been neglected in Hispanic Linguistics.

The ACE-network consists of heritage and research organizations from 10 countries which aim to promote contemporary archaeology at a European wide level, by emphasizing its cultural, scientific, and economic dimensions, including its manifold interest for the wider public.

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

On 19 September 2023 Tabitha Speelman successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Both play and politics have the potential to create worlds in which new rules apply, meanings are created, and possibilities emerge for collaboration, strategy and creative solutions. In this sense, play and politics have always been very much alike. But what happens to this kinship in a post-digital…

Political scientist Rebekah Tromble (Leiden University) and computational sociolinguist Dirk Hovy (University of Copenhagen) analyse how much hostility and sexism Clinton faces on Twitter, as well as who seems to be behind such attacks.

This book explores how public health concerns and political agendas influenced each other in the US over the past century.

Why obey the state? Dorota Mokrosińska presents a fresh analysis of the most influential theories of political obligation and develops a novel approach to this foundational problem of political philosophy, an intriguing combination of the elements of natural duty and associative theories.

Assesses the importance of Merleau-Ponty to current and ongoing concerns in contemporary philosophy.

Drawing on the analogical lessons of the Great War, this article uses applied history to analyze how the four parallels discerned can help us make sense of contemporary Sino-American rivalry

The Leiden Political Economy Group (L-PEG) is a multi-disciplinary network of scholars with a research interest in (comparative / global) political economy based at Leiden University. Our members belong to various institutes and faculties across Leiden University, and from other universities across…

The eleven innovative essays in this volume explore the notion that all forms of modern mass politics, including liberal democracies, need such a form of sacralization of politics to function.

How to understand the simultaneously dis- and reappearance of letters in contemporary culture, and how does this Neo-Epistolarity relate to media-technological change?

The research group Politics, Culture and National Identities 1789-present investigates a wide range of national political cultures in Europe and the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries. Instead of only analyzing high politics (the acts of governments and political parties), the research group focuses…

To address the relevance of Christianity to the ideological negotiations with the officially established authority, this research will be conducted by asking how the history enthusiasts negotiate the Christianity-related ideology through reconstructing the Christian past and reproducing religious histories…

Linguistic Choices in the Contemporary City focuses on how individuals navigate conversation in highly diversified contexts and provides a broad overview of state of the art research in urban sociolinguistics across the globe.

Politics and Aesthetics is one of the six research themes of the LUCAS Modern and Contemporary cluster.

Political scientist Luzia Helfer (Leiden University) empirically tested claims about media-politics relatiopns using unique data from experimental studies with elected politicians and political journalists in Switzerland and the Netherlands.

This project proposes to connect two discourses highly present in contemporary literary criticism in China, as well as on the world literary scene and academic circles: the discussion on emigration literature and the concept of ‘essayness’ derived mainly from (post)modern Western theories of the ess…

The Issues beneath the Surface

This book describes the changing roles of traditional authorities in combatting contemporary security challenges.

The project examines the political conflict in the Red River Valley of Louisiana between the majority-black Republican Party and the overwhelmingly white Democratic Party by studying the composition and actions of each party.

Profile Area Political Legitimacy, Leiden University

Many of the big challenges of the 21st century (climate change, international migration, financial instability, socio-economic inequality) find their origins in the organisation of the global economy. Any solution to the world’s big challenges therefore requires forceful policy interventions at the…

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A comparative anthropology of commercial insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

The Center participates in East European Politics, one of the major political science journals focusing on the contemporary post-communist space.

The Leiden Lectures in Media | Art | Politics (MAP) is a series of talks organized by Pepita Hesselberth and Yasco Horsman. Speakers from various academic backgrounds and in different stages of their careers reflect on diverging ways in which technological and social changes challenge and transform…

How did parties as political organizations emerge?

This volume challenges the idea that the development of ‘democracy’ is a story of rise and progress at all. It is rather a story of continuous but never completely satisfying attempts of interpreting the rule of the people.

The Global Politics of Confucianism, a monograph contracted with Columbia University Press, analyzes the interaction between Confucianism and globalism in past and present, using history to critically engage Confucianism’s place in contemporary international relations and policy debates.

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections between a variety of artistic and cultural expressions and their role in society from 1800 onwards.

Hegemony and World Order explores a key question for our tumultuous times of multiple global crises.

25 years after the publication of Derrida’s Politics of Friendship (Politiques de l’amitié, 1994), this edited collection gathers 23 critical chapters that revisit this underappreciated text. Engaging closely with Derrida’s text, the contributors analyse, extend and critique the work. They reconsider…

'Politics of Withdrawal' considers the significance of practices and theories of withdrawal for radical thinking today.

How are contemporary art practices from Southeast Asia negotiating notions of art and tradition?

For several years, contemporary composed music has been critiqued among others by funds, sponsors, and festival organizers for having lost contact with their audiences. This music has increasingly become a pursuit of a privileged, well-situated, and higher educated public, and is most often confined…

Political scientist Matthew Longo (Leiden University) takes a detailed look at the evolution of border security in the United States after 9/11. Far from the walls and fences that dominate the news, he reveals borders to be thick, multi-faceted and binational institutions that have evolved greatly in…