This special issue of Media History (22-3/4, 2016), co-edited with Helmer Helmers (University of Amsterdam), develops a new perspective on the early modern communication revolution. It discusses news as a specific kind of information – by its nature continuous, unreliable, and diffuse – which needed…

From 1550 onwards, a great interest in the natural world developed across Europe. This interest was not only stimulated by a growing knowledge of local flora and fauna, but also by the import of numerous exotic animal and plant species. Think, for instance, of researches and collectors like Gessner…

This project investigates the transposition of natural historical material, knowledge and vision, between different media (collection, scientific drawing, academic texts, the visual arts and/or literature) – a transmission that happens in the borderline between the traditional, emblematic worldview…

This project investigates the full ecosystem of Middle Dutch prayerbooks in order to answer questions about their role in – and impact on – religion, culture, and society in the late medieval Low Countries.

On the 23rd of June Arianna Sacco successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Bas Rietjens and his colleagues researched the Russia-Ukraine war, exploring this multitude of facets and their interconnections.

The research group War, Peace and Justice brings together scholars, researchers as well as current and former practitioners to explore issues related to the drivers, nature and (new) dynamics of war and conflict, comprehensive approaches to the promotion of sustainable peace, and the role of justice…

This reflection for Critical Studies on Terrorism, explores two decades of the 'War of Terror' and what it means today.

Why do some civil wars experience quagmire, a situation in which belligerents are trapped in fighting? To explain this puzzle, Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) analyses the overlapping strategic interactions between foreign powers and the warring parties. Studying…

In the track War and Peace Studies, you will gain a thorough understanding of the history, theories as well as the contemporary and future policy challenges related to war, warfare, and the multidimensional promotion of peace.

In 1940 the Germany occupiers ordered the dismissal of all Jewish staff of the university. This resulted in protest speeches by fellow academics.

This book explores the lasting legacy of the controversial project by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, funded by the CIA, to promote Western culture and liberal values in the battle of ideas with global Communism during the Cold War.

Information about the situation in Ukraine

Leiden University commemorates its victims of the war and pays tribute to all members of the university community who resisted injustice. Rudolph Cleveringa, for instance, the dean of the law faculty who gave a protest speech in 1940 after his Jewish colleagues were fired. We honour their memory through…

Despite the wealth of historical literature on the Second World War, the subject of religion and churches in occupied Europe has been undervalued.

Citizens in multiple crime-ridden countries strongly support the militarization of security—that is, placing the military in charge of traditional policing duties. Yet, we know little about the determinants of such support. Do people approve of militarization even in the face of human fatalities? Political…

Writing under Wartime Conditions is a study into North and South Korean literature written during the Korean War.

How was anti-communism organized in the West? New volume edited by Giles Scott-Smith, Luc van Dongen and Stephanie Roulin on the aims, arguments and associations of a range of transnational anti-communist activists during the Cold War.

On 1 September 2022 Güldeniz Kibris successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

A new special issue on translation and the cultural Cold War sheds light on the understudied and yet important role of translation in cultural transfer.

Studies on the Ottoman Jihad on the Centenary of Snouck Hurgronje's

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,…

This thesis seeks to examine the emergence of Persian novels and short stories during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).

From Apartheid in South-Africa to 9/11 in the United States: there is not a single culture that is not shaped by the memory of war or conflict. The minor Cultural Memory of War and Conflict focuses on how such memory cultures influence and shape societies today.

This project investigates the effects of the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953) on the production, distribution, preparation and consumption of food in transwar Japan and Korea.

This volume provides an authoritative, cutting-edge resource on the characteristics of both technological and social change in warfare in the twenty-first century, and the challenges such change presents to international law.

Through a range of case studies spanning the post-Cold War period in Iraq, Moldova and Serbia, this book studies asymmetric conflicts where warring sides exhibit vast power differentials.

Why does the past elicit this intense activity in the present? What does the past mean for the present, and what does it do to it? A WAR OF WORDS will engage this complex of Chinese claims to Manchu-Korean ancient history, South Korean reactions, public discourse and cultural expression in both states,…

Investigating the relations between Tupi Indigenous Knowledge, Museum Collections and the Dutch Colonization of Brazil

Book launch

If Dutch cinema is examined in academic studies, the focus is usually on pre-war films or on documentaries, but the post-war fiction film has been sporadically addressed.

Saeedeh Shahnahpur defended her thesis on 13 September 2016.

This book offers novel perspectives on the national and international dimensions of the post-war welfare state in Western Europe and North America.

Are you thinking about studying Crisis and Security Management: War and Peace Studies? Learn more and watch the videos.

The Revolt in The Netherlands erupted in 1566 and tore apart the Low Countries. In Memory Wars in the Low Countries, 1566-1700 Jasper van der Steen explains how public memories of the Revolt in the Habsburg Netherlands in the South and the Dutch Republic in the North diverged and became the objects…

In this article, Ben de Jong, research fellow at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, examines the relationship between double agents and their handlers.

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

Tom Buitelaar is an Assistant Professor in the War, Peace & Justice programme of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs. This paper discusses four important challenges to the involvement of UN peace operations in international criminal justice: its effects on host state relations, peace and justice…

The Afro-Asianism of the early Cold War has long remained buried under the narrative of Bandung, homogenising and subverting the different visions of post-colonial worldmaking that co-existed alongside the Bandung project.

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of…

The programme focuses on the medieval dynamics of intellectual life in the Rhineland and the Low countries, nowadays divided over five countries (Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands) but one cultural region in the later Middle Ages.

The historiography of the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944 is dominated by the personal clash between the principal negotiators, Harry Dexter White of the United States and John Maynard Keynes of Britain.

In the last two decades, there have been heated public and scholarly debates in France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands on the violent end of empire. Nevertheless, the broader comparative investigations into colonial counterinsurgency tend to leave atrocities such as torture, execution, and…

In this article, Thomas Maguire, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, examines why states use intelligence to influence external audiences.

Who are open-source intelligence activists and how reliable are their contributions to public understanding of Russia’s war in Ukraine?

In Freedom on the Offensive, William Michael Schmidli illuminates how the Reagan administration's embrace of democracy promotion was a defining development in US foreign relations in the late twentieth century.

Cigdem Oguz defended her thesis on 13 June 2018

This edited volume by Jeff Fynn-Paul pushes forward the debate on the role of entrepreneurs in making war and building states in Europe and the Ottoman Empire.