In 2012, Swedish power company Vattenfall went to an investor-state tribunal in response to the decision of Germany to close three Vattenfall nuclear power plants on its territory. The tribunal now has to decide whether Germany’s decision is in accordance with the international Energy Charter Treaty.…

Dr Brian McGarry, Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, addressed the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in the world's first advisory proceedings concerning climate change. His advocacy for the Commission of Small Island States…

Kutsal Yesilkagit, Professor of International Governance at the Institute of Public Administration, has been appointed by Minister Bruins Slot of the Interior and Kingdom Relations as a member of the State Commission on the Rule of Law, which was established in November 2022.

The German state of Saxony-Anhalt is set to make recognition of the state of Israel a requirement for becoming a German citizen. However, Peter Rodrigues, Emeritus Professor of Immigration Law, has told Dutch daily newspaper Nederlands Dagblad that introducing a similar measure in the Netherlands would…

The Council of State in the Netherlands has drawn up a programme of reflection to evaluate the role of the highest administrative court in the child benefits scandal and to learn lessons for the future.

From 26-30 June 2017 the first edition of the summer course on the Europeanisation of administrative law in the EU Member States took place in The Hague.

There are approximately 60 million skateboarders worldwide. And yet in the academic world, this culture is not always looked upon seriously. Visual anthropologist Sander Hölsgens believes that this has to change. Last summer his book 'Skateboarding in Seoul' and the accompanying film 'Reverberations'…

From March 14 to 16, 2018 Prof. mr. dr. Maartje van der Woude organized an international seminar and PhD masterclass on the topic of “Transformative Borders and the Politics of Migration in Western Liberal Democracies”. Both events were organized as part of Prof. Van der Woude’s NWO VIDI Grant “Getting…

For a month long, the Senate Chamber of Leiden University was reserved for portraits of women. The work of art showing a hundred unique portraits of female professors has now been put into storage, but the board of the University is taking measures to promote the image of women in science.

Historian Marjan Schwegman is the new Cleveringa Professor. Her lecture on 27 November will focus on Eduard Meijers, the Jewish professor who was dismissed by the Nazis. Schwegman's previous posts include Director of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

The Netherlands returned 478 artefacts to Indonesia and Sri Lanka this week, on the advice of a Dutch committee. Rightly so, says Leiden professor Pieter ter Keurs from the Museums, Collections and Society interdisciplinary research programme. ‘But do make it clear why you are returning something.’

Technology, medical knowledge, social measures and the design of the living environment: all these needed to achieve a healthier society. In a series of interviews, 14 researchers from Zuid-Holland, including from Leiden University, argue for an integrated care approach.

As of 1 September , Karel Berkhoff has been appointed professor by special appointment in Ukrainian History. In this position, made possible in part by the KNAW, he will focus primarily on dark moments in recent Ukrainian history: the persecutions that have taken place in the first half of the twentieth…

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ said skating coach Jac Orie to Leiden data scientist Arno Knobbe. And he did. Knobbe and his colleagues now assist athletes in all kinds of ways with the help of data mining.

Linde Desmaele explores the role of US theatre nuclear weapons stationed in Europe. Moving beyond the deterrence vs. reassurance debate

How and to what extent does AI affect citizen representation in public service delivery and state-citizen interactions?

From receiving our salary to doing our shopping: we are completely dependent on commercial banks for all our payment transactions. But what happens if they collapse? In his inaugural lecture, Professor Bart Joosen calls for a rigorous change: ‘Put payment transactions for private clients under one…

Career and apply for jobs

How are law and governance in China responding to rapidly changing circumstances, and what does that mean for the relationship between the state and its citizens?

Large areas of space are filled by molecular clouds that consist of gas and dust grains that are the remnants of dead stars. When these clouds start collapsing, the decreasing temperature and increasing density cause gas particles to start accreting onto dust grain surfaces.

The inaugural Society for the Study of French History First Book Prize has been awarded to Lewis Wade’s monograph 'Privilege, Economy and State in Old Regime France: Marine Insurance, War and the Atlantic Empire under Louis XIV (Boydell Press, 2023)'.

Vice-rector Organisatieontwikkeling en oud-decaan FGGA Erwin Muller start op 1 april 2026 als staatsraad bij de Afdeling Advisering van de Raad van State.

The importance of science communication and cross-boundary collaboration, and the ‘mantra’ of diminishing social cohesion in society: these all came up at Leiden University’s 448th Dies Natalis. A panel discussion including Leiden’s mayor Lenferink, music and two honorary doctorates completed the special…

Hungary belongs to the EU, but democracy is being seriously and systematically threatened there. Does the rest of the EU have the means and the political will to deal with member states that are out of step? Antoaneta Dimitrova, professor of 'Comparative Governance' at the Institute of Security and…

Daniel Peat will represent the ISDS Academic Forum, a group of over 150 academics whose research focusses on investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), at forthcoming discussions on the reform of the ISDS system taking place in New York.

USMCA (North American Free Trade Agreement) is the successor to NAFTA – a free trade zone covering Canada, the United States and Mexico. This Agreement includes a new procedure to ensure compliance with fundamental labour rights.

On Thursday 24 May 2018, Tanja Masson-Zwaan of Leiden University’s International Institute of Air and Space Law and Prof Mahulena Hofmann of the University of Luxembourg had the honour of addressing the King and Queen of the Netherlands and the Grand-Duc and Grand-Duchess of Luxembourg during the State…

The European Commission has started an investigation into possible illegal state aid from the Netherlands to Nike. It is high time that agreements between Tax Authorities and multinationals are made public, says Associate Professor in Tax Law Jan Vleggeert.

How can you ensure that more experimental drugs reach the finish line? At the moment, only one in twenty cancer drugs that are tested on humans makes it to the market. This is an enormous loss for patients and society. With a grant from the National Growth Fund, Oncode-PACT aims to efficiently select…

docARTES is a doctoral programme for performers and composers. It offers a unique environment for critical reflection on musical practice.

Joining forces for a healthier The Hague

This problem analysis raises the importance of a two interlinked questions: (1) what are important digital skills in the public sector? and (2) how well do different organizational and individual factors explain differences in skills levels?

Lydie Cabane, Assistant Professor in Governance of Crises at the Institute for Security and Global Affairs, recently published the book The Government of Disasters. In this book Lydie explores how the South African state bureaucracy reacts to disasters.

How do you ensure that research is performed, evaluated and managed in a responsible way? This question is also of the utmost important to the University itself. The Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) studies scientific research and its relationship with technology, innovation and soci…

Our research projects address cutting-edge and forward-looking societal challenges at the intersection of law and technology.

How can pre-Islamic poetry be used as a source to reconstruct the history of central Arabia at the dawn of Islam?

Leiden Early Drug Discovery & Development (LED3) is a multidisciplinary research network at Leiden University dedicated to advancing innovative approaches in early drug discovery and development. The initiative brings together 58 principal investigators from four institutes—the Institute of Biology…

This article studies the securitization of immigration in the United States of America (U.S.), through the analysis of the National Security Strategies (NSS) published between 2002 and 2017, using a two-layered analytical framework that combines securitization theory and agenda setting theory.

Carola Schoor, programme manager for Public Affairs at the Centre for Professional Learning (CPL), reflects on Politico on the State of the European Union speech by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen from a political strategy and messaging perspective.

In a new essay for Ethics & International Affairs, Dr Henning Lahmann, Assistant Professor of International Law & Technology at eLaw, addresses the question whether states should resort to social media to warn a civilian population ahead of military operations.

The Guardian interviewed professor Marlou Schrover about the increasing number of trans refugees from the United States.

During the corona pandemic, the Chinese government's digital communication with its citizens changed. Hard propaganda was increasingly replaced by ‘soft news’. PhD candidate Dechun Zhang mapped the developments in digital society.

The specialisation Global Order in Historical Perspective of the master’s in International Relations at Leiden University focuses on examining the historical processes and practices in the making of global order.

What is the impact of Indonesia’s democratization process on everyday state-citizen relations?

Promotor: S.M. Verduyn Lunel

We study the physics of a broad range of biological and soft materials

Promotor: Prof.dr. S.F. Portegies Zwart, Co-promotor: D.C. Heggie

In this work, I explore the creation of new methods that optimize simulations of the gravitational N-body problem. Specifically, I take advantage of the recent popularity of Machine Learning methods to find tools that can suit this problem.

Mining time series is a machine learning subfield that focuses on a particular data structure, where variables are measured over (short or long) periods of time.

The world we live in is changing in many aspects at an ever-increasing speed. And it will continue to do so. How do we anticipate these changes, such as the increase in atmospheric CO2, the extinction of species and industrialisation?