As part of the Paris Agreement, countries across the world agreed to support developing countries to invest in climate mitigation and adaptation through a Green Climate Fund. However, developed countries have failed to meet funding commitments for the Green Climate Fund–the flagship program financing…

Our research at CWTS is organized in three focal areas. These focal areas represent our core areas of interest, as defined in our knowledge agenda for the period 2023-2028.

We present our plans on five work areas: Students, Inclusive Education, Staff, Research, and Accessible and Inclusive Learning and Working Environment. For each work area, we explain which topics are relevant and what policy measures we (plan to) take.

The GTGC programme advances interdisciplinary research on how we govern – and could govern – major world-scale changes in contemporary society. These global transformations and governance challenges cover the themes listed here. The distinctions are not rigid, of course, and affiliated researchers often…

Within the Graduate School you can conduct your PhD research in a wide range of subjects across the Social and Behavioural Sciences, with five distinct research areas offered by its Institutes.

This research deals with the royal houses of the Vijayanagara Empire and four of its successor states: Ikkeri, Tanjavur (under both the Nayaka and Bhonsle rulers), Madurai, and Ramnad. This study is thus concerned with dynastic politics and imperial legacies in south India between the 14th and 18th…

How can historical archive sources by non-elite groups help us understand modern-day politics in South Asia? This is one of the main themes of Prof. Nira Wickramasinghe’s inaugural lecture on 14 March.

The Laiseang archiving project ensures the preservation of unique records of languages in the region which have been gathered by more than two dozen linguists at, and in collaboration with Dutch universities over the last 40 years.

On Thursday 10 April 2025 Wahyu Widodo successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Researchers using remote sensing technologies have characterized pre-Columbian regularly-shaped earthworks in forests in Central America and the Amazon. In tropical forested mountains in South America, two challenges arise when identifying archaeological sites through remote sensing. Firstly, sites…

PLATO is active in various fields of work.

This project, South American population history revisited: multidisciplinary perspectives on the Upper Amazon (SAPPHIRE), investigates population dynamics in western South America on the basis of traces in the geographical, genetic, archaeological, ethnological, and linguistic record.

The Tappino Area Archaeological Project aims to map and analyze ancient settlement patterns and dynamics in a small valley in Central-Southern Italy, in modern Molise (province of Campobasso). The first sites in the area date to the Bronze Age. In the Iron Age to Classical period, it was reportedly…

The book reinterprets the role of the UN during the Congo crisis from 1960 to 1964, presenting a multidimensional view of the organisation.

To truly understand complex regions such as the Middle East and Asia, you have to know their culture, history and local societies inside out. Driven by curiosity for other cultures, the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) provides an understanding and analysis of current and historical…

Who is funding African science? How are different African and international funders interacting and contributing to develop scientific research in the continent? Are there potential inadvertent synergies among research funders that can be identified? These and similar questions are at the heart of this…

On the 10th of November, Sara Petrollino succesfully defended her PhD-thesis and graduated. LUCL congratulates Sara on this great result.

The Gulf is a major global destination for migrant workers, with a majority of these workers coming from South Asia. In this book, a team of international contributors examine the often-overlooked complex governance of this migration corridor. Going beyond state-centric analysis, the contributors present…

On Thursday 21 November 2024 Jake Benson successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

On Wednesday 23 October 2024 Yixiu Jiang successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

In this article, the authors explore how international criminal law is moving into a ‘post-critical’ phase and examine its potential for emancipatory reform.

The Centre is the proud home of several research programmes.

The Leiden Bio Science Park (LBSP) is the largest innovation district in the Netherlands in the field of Life Sciences & Health. The clustering of high-quality education, research, healthcare, and industry attracts students, scientists, and entrepreneurs from all over the world to the knowledge city…

How did African actors engage with the idea of Eurafrica?

The CADS Research Cluster People, Power and Diversity aims to further theoretical and methodological debates on the classifications of human difference, such as gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, age, ability, religion, level of development, time, etc., and the way these classifications organize…

On 20 September 2023 Mark van de Water successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Evidence and Care-work in a home visiting program to promote maternal sensitivity and parental reflective functioning in Alexandra township, Johannesburg, South Africa.

The Master’s in Korean Studies at Leiden University offers a unique opportunity to conduct graduate level research, on various aspects of pre-modern and contemporary Korea, and to spend a full academic year at a university in South Korea.

What are the conditions under which coercive diplomacy can compel a State to abandon its controversial nuclear (weapons) program? Based on the experience of the US coercive diplomacy against the nuclear programs of three countries, namely Iran, Libya and South Africa, Jean Yves Ndzana’s PhD research…

Indigenous Latin American artifacts have attracted the interest of Europeans since the earliest moment of contact between Europeans and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The ERC-funded BECACO project uses an innovative multidisciplinary framework to investigate the provenance of ethnographic and…

What is your preferred career path? Do you enjoy coordinating? Would you like to work in marketing? Or do you prefer writing and editing? You will find that your degree in South and Southeast Asian Studies is a perfect preparation for the career of your choice.

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?