Markus Altena Davidsen’s PhD dissertation is the first major study of Tolkien Religion. In it, he analyses the religion that is based on the stories by acclaimed British fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien. He also discusses how fiction itself can become religious. Davidsen will defend his dissertation on…

Leiden University hosts a wide range of seminars and workshops on themes related to European approaches to societal challenges. Some of these are listed below.

Reasserting America in the 1970s brings together two areas of burgeoning scholarly interest.

Criminal justice raises intricate moral questions concerning the justification of the penal institution, the mode and extent of criminal sanctions enforcement, the content of criminal sanctions (imprisonment, fines, alternative punishments), the nature of the agent holding penal authority, the normative…

Research is meant to generate knowledge, in a rational and sensible way. Many research methods exist to do this, and creativity is an important factor. Our mission is to explore creative, playful, unexpected, and unconventional forms of academic research.

How do European Dutch think about Kingdom relations? There are all sorts of assumptions about this, but due to a lack of research, we do not really know. That is why, as part of his Chair in Kingdom Relations, Wouter Veenendaal commissioned a thorough opinion survey on Kingdom Relations among European…

This paper will address how digital affordances (Grasseni and Walter 2014) of the interactive documentary are an epistemological tool that shapes and fosters comparative reflections in collaborative ethnographic projects. To do so, I will analyse the process of planning and coding an i-doc (interactive…

The project ‘Founding an Inclusive Space’ investigates the histories of various LGBT+ archives in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.

This book explores the spiritual potential of faith, mysticism and transcendence in answer to the dangers of a mythologised state and the sacro-sanctification of (liberal) democracy and its rule of law.

This project studies social distance—the degree of sympathetic understanding that exists between people—in relation to state foreign policy making. Does, and if so how does, social distance shape political biases, aid narratives, and, ultimately, state foreign policy priorities and decisions?

Are you thinking about studying International Relations: Culture and Politics? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Dialogue is a multi-dimensional communication mechanism whose processes can only be examined by means of an interdisciplinary approach.

Unlike most city histories, this book focuses exclusively on the city’s connections with colonialism and slavery.

PhD defence

Are you thinking about studying European Union Studies? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Are you thinking about studying Global Political Economy? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

The Children’s Rights Monitor provides a thematic overview of the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Netherlands.

Promotor: M. Ubbink, Co-promotor: G. Siegal

How did common people write in the late eighteenth century? Little is yet known on this topic, since our knowledge is mainly based on printed texts written by a small part of the (male) elite population. This dissertation – written from a sociolinguistic point of view – gives us new insights into late-…

Assembling State, Space and Society on the Urban Margins in Morocco

The Children’s Rights Monitor provides a thematic overview of the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Netherlands.

The database research community has made tremendous strides in developing powerful database engines that allow for efficient analytical query processing.

What are the new challenges for collective organisations in the logistic sector? On 25 November 2021, Raquel Alquézar Crusellas has visited the ERC group to exchange insights about her new research about collective organisations among delivery riders in Europe.

Drug-related homicide (DRH) has the potential to act as a valuable indicator of wider drug-related crime. Yet DRH remains a knowledge gap within this broader field of study.

The Leiden University Centre for International Relations (LUCIR) is a multi-disciplinary platform promoting research and education on international relations at Leiden University.

Nichiran kankei-shi o yomitoku [Revisiting the History of Dutch-Japanese Relations] is a new, two-volume Japanese publication with a chapter written by Wulan Remmelink. Both volumes offer a new look on the historical relations between Japan and The Netherlands during the Edo period by examining various…

In Reframing the Diplomat Albertine Bloemendal offers a unique window onto the unofficial dimension of Cold War transatlantic relations by analyzing the diplomatic role of the Dutch Atlanticist Ernst van der Beugel as a government official and as a private diplomat.

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In recent years, the term alternative publishing has gained momentum within open science communities - a response to the slow, paywalled, and sometimes opaque world of traditional academic publishing. But what exactly does alternative publishing entail, and why is it needed?

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

Leiden University and the Municipality of Leiden will develop new plans for an alternative Humanities Campus in the city centre. This means they will not proceed with the compulsory purchase of the De Doelen housing complex to facilitate the construction of the new Humanities Campus. The plans to demolish…

Ancient Greek is well-known for displaying relatively free word order. This dissertation examines word order variation in the Koine Greek of the New Testament Greek in a variety of domains: declarative clauses, questions and relative clauses. In particular, I examine the way in which word order corresponds…

Violence during war often involves upswings and downturns that have, to date, been insufficiently explained. Why does violence at a particular point in time increase in intensity and why do actors in war decrease the level of violence at other points? Duyvesteyn discusses the potential explanatory variables…

Are you thinking about studying Global Order in Historical Perspective? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Our mission is to advance the understanding of mental health of individuals with a history of stress and/or trauma through rigorous interdisciplinary research, integrating insights from clinical psychology, neurobiology, and social sciences. We are committed to translating our findings into innovative…

The precise psychobiological mechanisms leading to chronic physiological stress responses have not been sufficiently explained, although stress is a major risk factor for disease and early death. A problem for conventional stress theory is that most of these responses seem to occur in situations without…