The Houthis are attacking ships in the Red Sea. Rerouting via South Africa is expensive, whereas the Arctic route only takes a week. Once a no-go zone, this route might be a more realistic option. Mind the nuclear submarines, though…

Starting January 18, the online exhibition Images of the Indonesian War of Independence, 1945-1949 can be viewed via the UBL website. The exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) and Leiden University Libraries…

On 26 November historian Jan Grabowski and sociologist Barbara Engelking will both give the Cleveringa Lecture. They wrote a book about the Holocaust in Poland and were taken to court for defamation.

This dissertation explores how domestic political power struggles in Greece and Turkey during the Cold War engaged with the ongoing conflict in Cyprus and aims to demonstrate how socialist parties in Greece and Turkey struggled with the concept of the “nation” in battling for power and political positioning…

Dr Moritz Jesse (Associate Professor at the Department of European Law) was invited to present a lecture on the role of migration on peace and stability in post-war Europe at a masterclass for students and staff at the Catholic University of Lille, France. The talk, which bore the title ‘People’s mobility…

This book examines the history of The Netherlands in a way that connects global processes to local developments.

Remembrance Day on 4 May may be different this year, but it will make no less of an impression. Ethan Mark, who specialises in modern Japanese history, will give an online lecture about forgotten stories from the Second World War. Via Open Jewish Homes, moving stories can be heard online of Jewish alumni.…

Isabelle Duyvesteyn, Professor of International Studies and Global History at the Institute of History and member of the advisory board of Leiden University’s Centre for International Relations (LUCIR) is widely regarded as an expert on civil wars and conflicts. Her new book, Rebels and Conflict Escalation,…

Classical mathematical models treat space and time as a continuum, while it is sometimes more useful to regard it as granular. Hupkes is studying what this means for a number of important patterns that are often found in computer calculations and in nature.

Insect egg development in a warming world: the eco-evo-devo of embryonic developmental time: What is the genetic basis of developmental time?

The war between Ukraine and Russia is playing out not just on the battlefield but also on the geopolitical playing field of gas. Conflicts at the start of this century about this energy source were, says PhD candidate Ilia Barboutev, a precursor to today’s war.

The World of the Fullo takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with high-quality garments, of Roman Italy. Analyzing the social and economic worlds in which the fullers lived and worked, it tells the story of their economic circumstances, the way they organized their workshops, the…

On Tuesday 10 September 2024 May Shaddel Basir successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, visited Leiden Law School on 8 December within the scope of International Human Rights Day.

After a lobby lasting many years, the Dutch government has decided to finance an independent study of the war of decolonisation (1945-1950) in the former Dutch East Indies. This is partly due to the work of Professor of Colonial and Post-Colonial History, Gert Oostindie, Director of the KITLV. ‘The…

A portrait of the complex historical process of over 500 years of European colonialism in the New World.

This book examines the critical role of information and knowledge in early modern Europe's global pursuits, exploring challenges in trusting distant information, the development of doubt in intercultural encounters, and the impact of misinformation.

Compared to its European neighbouring countries, the Netherlands undertake relatively few attempts to bring back women and children from Iraq and Syria. De Roy van Zuijdewijn explains why on Dutch NPO 1 radio.

Ukraine has filed an innovative claim against Russia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Ukraine asked the court to rule that it has not committed genocide and that a war initiated based on a false genocide claim was unlawful. Larissa van den Herik, Professor of Public International Law, discussed…

Are there general principles or values that should govern our actions as moral agents and/or as political subjects?

Soft structures that can take on different shapes without any external drive. Leiden physicists Daniela Kraft and Julio Melio created them in their lab. They present their groundbreaking research on microscale metamaterials in Nature - a breakthrough that opens the door to smart, reconfigurable materials…

The annual commemoration of the nation’s war dead on Dam Square and at Waalsdorpervlakte, the Dutch apologies for historical slavery and the Cleveringa Lecture itself: our relationship with history is often ritualistic, Cleveringa Professor Frank van Vree will say in his inaugural lecture on 27 Nove…

NTER-SECTION is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal focusing on contributions from junior archaeological researchers at Leiden University. The journal offers an accessible platform for the publication of individual research by undergraduate and graduate students. The Editorial Board consists of PhD…

Imagining the Americas in Print contains eleven essays, seven of which have been published before and four of which are new.

A memorial stone honouring professor and resistance hero Ben Telders was unveiled on 12 September at the site of the former concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.

This book published by Oxford University Press discusses religion and trade in world history.

Bacteria caught red-handed, deeply frozen just as they were about to cause Lyme’s disease. Ariane Briegel is wildly enthusiastic about the wonders she observes thanks to three elements: a freezing technique, a camera-equipped microscope, and AI. ‘It’s fascinating. Every single cell is different.’

University lecturer Aya Ezawa has received a Certificate of Commendation from the Japanese Embassy in the Netherlands for her efforts to promote reconciliation between the Netherlands and Japan, in particular by supporting Japanese-Indonesian war children. As a member of the Foundation for War Victims…

During the period 500–1000 CE Egypt was successively part of the Byzantine, Persian and Islamic empires. All kinds of events, developments and processes occurred that would greatly affect its history and that of the eastern Mediterranean in general. This is the first volume to map Egypt's position in…

Sheltering is an immediate human need and determines well-being andhealth.

Who had a say in making decisions about the natural world, when, how and to what end? How were rights to natural resources established? How did communities handle environmental crises? And how did dealing with the environment have an impact on the power relations in communities?

Scientists have discovered that starlings and parrots can imitate the complex sounds of Star Wars droid R2-D2 remarkably well. Their study reveals how the structure of a bird’s vocal organ determines its vocal abilities – and how citizen science helps uncover it.

On 7 June, the National Museum of Antiquities opened a mini exhibition 'Scanning for Syria'. The exhibition shows how Leiden archaeologists and Delft technical specialists make reconstructions of 3000-year-old Assyrian clay tablets. The originals, stored in museum depots in Raqqa (Syria), have been…

The war between Russia and Ukraine plays out not only physically but also digitally. Van Den Berg, Professor of Cybersecurity Governance at the FGGA, talked about it at several news outlets.

President Zelensky of Ukraine has asked the UN International Court of Justice to issue an urgent order to stop Russian military activity in his country. According to Zelensky, Russia has twisted the concept of genocide to justify aggression.

This project aims to excavate and date the setting of the east gate of the Roman fortress of Udhruḥ. This will be compared with other Diocletianic military installations from the region. We also hope to retrieve another gate inscription which can shed light on the function and political embedding of…

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the magna carta of civil aviation, the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention 1944), Professor Steven Truxal has written a leading piece for the European Civil Aviation Conference: The Chicago system: a steadfast legal blueprint for…

Carl Li defended his thesis on 30 June 2015

The four thousand war victims buried at the Netherlands Field of Honour at Loenen include a number of Leiden students who were in the Resistance. The War Graves Foundation is looking for volunteers to take part in a special event to honour the deceased.

Dr. Gruni published an article on the impact on sustainable development in the EU Common Commercial Policy of recent Opinion 2/15 CJEU on the Global Trade and Customs Journal.

Machine Learning is becoming a more and more substantial technology for industry.

This project investigates how early print media covered distant but urgent geopolitical conflicts, using newspapers from the Low Countries, north and south.

Political scientist Corinna Jentzsch received an NWO Veni grant for her research on the conditions of collaboration between militias and state forces and its consequences for safety and political order.