As children learn, develop and acquire more skills, their legal position also changes. Professor of Children’s Rights Ton Liefaard works closely together with Leiden social sciences researchers to shed light on these growing capacities and their implications for our legal system. ‘Our ideas about children’s…

Taking Mozambique as a case study, the aim of this research is to develop a methodology for improving flood risk assessments by extending hydrological records using paleo hydrologic evidence of past floods, combined with a socio-legal assessment of the land rights of those impacted by climate change…

Industrialised countries extract natural resources in the territories of indigenous peoples, and appropriate the knowledge and culture of these peoples. Leiden anthropologists work to protect the rights of indigenous peoples. Their knowledge and advice enable governments to source sustainable produc…

On 16 January 2024, Professor Obiora Okafor from Johns Hopkins University opened the third cycle of the Owada Chair with the lecture Global Diversity and the Living International Human Rights Law.

On 26 juni 2018, Claire Achmad defended her doctoral thesis 'Children’s Rights in International Commercial Surrogacy: Exploring the Challenges from a Child Rights, Public International Law Perspective'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. Dr. Mariëlle Bruning.

Are you thinking about studying this Advanced LL.M. International Children's Rights? Learn more and watch the videos.

The heritage of Indigenous Peoples has long been researched and commented upon from the outside. This book adopts an innovative approach by engaging with the heritage of Indigenous Peoples from the ‘inside’.

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This socio-legal research focuses on the impacts of environmental displacement on land rights and land-related conflict in Mozambique in the aftermath of cyclone Idai, and on the role of the legal framework in addressing these problems.

Choosing a study programme is fun and exciting, but it’s not always easy. Your choice of study is a major decision; after all, it is about your future. At the same time, it’s good to remember that this choice will not determine the rest of your life.

Valentina Carraro explores the relationship between overlapping UN human rights institutions, specifically the treaty bodies and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR)

On 18 March 2020, Hoko Horii defended her thesis ‘Child Marriage as a Choice. Rethinking agency in international human rights’. The doctoral research was supervised by prof. A.W. Bedner and prof. G.A. van Klinken.

On 7 September, Francesc Claret Traid defended the thesis 'On the nature of the right to resist: a rights-based theory of the ius resistendi in liberal democracies'. The doctoral research was supervised by Afshin Ellian and Gelijn Molier.

The ECtHR needs to provide effective rights protection, but it also needs to set clear standards while showing deference to decisions made at the national level. Especially when socio-economic issues are concerned, meeting these different demands is a challenging task.

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.

How can child participation be defined, what is the importance of child participation and how can it be promoted?

Our Master Law in European and International Human Rights Law (LL.M.) looks at the various human rights protection mechanisms from a comparative perspective

On 10 november 2021, Carmel van Niekerk-Jacobs defended the thesis 'Realising the right to reproduce with assistance in South Africa'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.J. Sloth-Nielsen and Prof. T. Liefaard.

Recently Cambridge University Press published dr. Jan Osters monograph “Media Freedom as a Fundamental Right”.

On 9 January 2019, Willem van der Muur defended his thesis 'Land rights and the forces of adat in democratizing Indonesia'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. A.W. Bedner and Prof. dr. J.M. Otto.

On 7 February 2019, Helena Ursic-Vrabec defended her thesis 'Uncontrollable: Data subject rights and the data- driven economy'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. S. van der Hof.

This book rigorously investigates the contemporary state of children's rights and the multifaceted challenges facing children, uncovering the complexities at their core.

The Research Handbook on Labour, Business and Human Rights Law edited by prof. Janice Bellace of the University of Pennsylvania and ass. prof. Beryl ter Haar of Leiden University. The book is publisehd in Edward Elgars series on Human Rights.

On 18 June 2019, Peter Kempees defended his thesis 'Hard power and the European Convention on Human Rights'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. R.A. Lawson and Prof. H. Duffy.

This research project from Leiden University looks at the opportunities and threats that flow from the existence of institutional and normative diversity in the area of fundamental rights for the effective protection of those rights in a pluralist world.

Are you thinking about studying European and International Human Rights Law? Learn more and watch the videos.

On Thursday 16 November 2017, Lalin Kovudhikulrungsri defended her doctoral thesis entitled ‘The Right to Travel by Air of Persons with Disabilities’. The supervisors are Professor P.M.J. Mendes de Leon and Professor A.C. Hendriks.

Holtz defended her dissertation ‘Collective human rights as an (onto)logical solution to climate change: reconceptualizing, applying and proceduralizing an overlooked category of human rights’ on 16 October 2025. The doctoral research was supervised by Carsten Stahn and Daniëlla Dam-de Jong.

On Tuesday 23 May 2017, Jasmina Mackic defended her doctoral thesis ‘Proving discriminatory violence at the European Court of Human Rights’. The supervisor of the research is Vice Dean and Professor of Public International Law Larissa van den Herik. A brief summary of her thesis is provided below.

Kim Stroet is examining how the interaction between teachers and pupils influences pupils’ motivation. ‘Children need to have the feeling that they are in control of their own learning process.’

The research project addresses the question how complaints in the voluntary youth care system are dealt with on the municipal level and what role (municipal) Children’s Ombudspersons play in this context, through qualitative research methods.

PhD defence

To what extent are the rights to street children violated en how can their rights be protected?

On 30 May, Gert Jan Boeve defended the thesis 'The general right of suspension'. The doctoral research was supervised by Bart Krans and Alex Geert Castermans.

In this paper, Sibgatullina and Abbas aim to illuminate the complex connections between the European right-wing movements and Islam and discusses how the adoption of Muslim identity may function as a politically strategic opportunity for European conservative forces.

In Women and Property Rights in Indonesian Islamic Contexts, eight scholars of Indonesian Islam examine women’s access to property in law courts and in village settings.

In this thesis new methodologies are developed for the detection and systematic study of radio sources in the early universe. This allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies, the activity of supermassive black holes, and the final phase transition of our universe:…

The Sun and all the stars in the night sky reside in the Milky Way galaxy. In the at-rest reference frame of the Galaxy, typical stars travel with velocities of about 100-200 kilometres per second.

In December 2024, the book Redressing Fundamental Rights Violations by the EU: The Promise of the ‘Complete System of Remedies', edited by Melanie Fink, was published fully open access with Cambridge University Press. The EU prides itself on having created a legal system that puts the individual at…

This is the 2017 paperback release of William Michael Schmidli's The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere, which won the 2013 Foreign Affairs Magazine Best Book of the Year.

The 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities differs markedly from other forms of international human rights law: it not only protects the rights of individuals but also addresses interpersonal relations and social structures. How did the convention attain this broad…

A new Special Issue with Transnational Legal Theory edited by Jelena Belic, Matthew Canfield, Henning Lahmann, Rachel Griffin, and Barrie Sander, brings together a collective of perspectives to unpack the promise and perils of human rights as a vocabulary for governing digital platforms.

Almost three years after receiving her honorary doctorate, Dr Graça Machel returned to Leiden University. Over the course of two days she spoke with students, researchers, and other interested persons, about human rights – particularly those of women and children – in a world in which these are continually…