This project uses archaeological, literary and epigraphic evidence to investigate urban development in Roman-period North Africa, compiling this in a GIS-linked database in order to analyse the development of urban settlement spatially over time.

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.

COUNTERRR examines domestic responses to jihadist armed groups in Africa, analyzing variation in state repression, community resistance, and the evolution of security across Mali, Nigeria, and Mozambique.

Africa is seen as a potential leader in green hydrogen production for domestic consumption, export and greening industry. One key barrier to realising this potential is the mismatch of skills between those required by industry and the capability of local workforces.

Unlike the predominant and excessive focus on the problems of food production and food insecurity in Africa, this project views African culinary tradition as a vibrant and rich cultural heritage, intertwined with language use.

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…

The Oxford Handbook of Dutch Politics provides a comprehensive longitudinal overview of the state of the art of academic research on the Dutch political system: its origins and historical development, its key institutions, main fault lines, pivotal processes, and key public policy dynamics. In each…

Southern Africa has a rich tradition of social history, one inspired by the tumultuous changes that have regularly convulsed the region from the 1780s onwards. Scholars have always sought to understand what these changes meant for everyday life and emphasised a perspective of marginal groups, how these…

Why do communities form militias to defend themselves against violence during civil war? Using original interviews with former combatants and civilians and archival material from extensive fieldwork in Mozambique, Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) explains the timing,…

Mayke Kaag has been appointed Professor of the Anthropology of Politics and Governance in Africa at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (CADS) on behalf of the African Studies Centre Leiden (ASCL).

This book offers readers an alternative history of the origins of the discipline of International Relations.

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…

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…

Leiden University investigates biodiversity not only in the Netherlands, but also abroad, with the goal of improving global nature conservation. We do so in collaboration with local universities. Education is also high on our agenda.

International Relations and European Politics is one of the three organisational clusters of the Institute of Political Science.

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…

This study seeks to partially fill the knowledge gap about national culture in Africa, basing its research on data on ethnolinguistic groups (instead of administrative regions).

In the media, we hear a lot of worrying news from Africa: refugees, attacks, Ebola, starvation, corruption... But Africa is much more than that: it is a continent in transition, with developments occurring at breakneck speed. African Studies scholars from different academic disciplines in Leiden conduct…

Political scientist Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden University) about the organisation of rebel and government auxiliaries in the civil war in Mozambique (1976–1992).

This book is about the workings of networks of the mobile in Africa, a continent usually associated with the ‘global shadows’ of the world.

While African ground-based air quality measurements have struggled to gain national and continental footholds, satellite data, especially high-resolution measurements from the TROPOMI satellite, can provide not only continental coverage but lend new insights for regional to city-scale air quality issues…

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.

Never has good policy been so important. From unemployment and a lack of affordable housing to regulating cryptocurrencies and protecting against cybersecurity threats, the challenges we face are complex and global. The text explains how policymaking works: from the emergence of policy ideas to deciding…

Health workers have always sought ways to fight disease in vulnerable groups in the population. It is now clear that such research also benefits more prosperous countries. African worm infections and innovative thermometers have shown Leiden researchers how to fight diseases of affluence and keep health…

Political scientist Maurits de Jongh (Leiden University/Sciences Po) argues that political liberalism is self-defeating as a framework of justification for liberal conceptions of justice. He explores how the framework's self-imposed criterion of acceptability in the eyes of all reasonable citizens leads…

The first comprehensive and authoritative history of work and labour in Africa; a key text for all working on African Studies and Labour History worldwide.

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.

‘Can he do it?’ Since the remarkable victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 Nigerian presidential elections, this has arguably been the most frequently posed question in Nigerian politics.

How did parties as political organizations emerge?

Taught from primary school to the university level – where new courses on the globalization of the Arabic writing system have cropped up (Abdallah 2014) – the Arabic script, with all its orthographic peculiarities and multiple facets, continues to shape languages other than Arabic, their communities…

On Wednesday, 14 May 2025, Catherine O'Regan will deliver the annual Van Vollenhoven Lecture

Chinese organisations increasingly operate across the borders of China, and growing numbers of people from outside China are coming to live there. Professor Frank Pieke believes these movements have a significant effect on central and local government policy in China.

What categories exist in the languages of pastoralists? Do these semantic concepts reflect universal or languagespecific tendencies? What (environment? culture?) governs the similarities (or the differences) attested crosslinguistically in cattle colour systems?

Discover the admission requirements for the MSc in International Politics at Leiden University in The Hague: bachelor degree, 80 ECTS in political science, and English language proficiency (IELTS/TOEFL).

This dissertation offers a reconstruction of the propositional contents of the writings of Karl Popper, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt while bringing these into discussion with their performative meanings, such as polemical forms of reasoning, analogical and metaphorical uses of language, and hidden…

This project examines the notion of sacred fertility and sacred landscapes, associated rituals and material culture, both archaeological and ethnographic manifestations in the Horn of Africa.

Under what circumstances do paramilitary groups limit their use of political violence? This article examines the use of political violence by the PIRA.

The project Multimedia Research and Documentation of African Oral Genres: Connecting Diasporas and Local Audiences (Director: D.Merolla) focuses on multimedia as technology that allows scholars to share documentation and scientific knowledge with the cultural owners of the collected oral genres.

In what ways do historical and current events affect how we should judge the legitimacy of political authorities?

Promotores: G.R. de Snoo, B. Sinsin, Co-Promotor: H.H. de Iongh

African oral literatures, new media and technologies: challenges for research and documentation

Politics is about the authorised allocation of values: who gets what, when and how much? This question is relevant at many different levels, in many different places and in very different ways.

Combining approaches from intellectual history, philology and the study of Arabic manuscripts, this study places the Bornu scholar Muḥammad al-Wālī within his intellectual environment on the one hand, and it portrays him as someone who responded to the concerns of ordinary Muslims around him on the…

Profile Area Political Legitimacy, Leiden University

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