Marieke Liem, Professor Social Resilience and Security at Leiden University, and Katharina Krüsselmann, PhD candidate at Leiden University and Manuel Eisner mapped the flow of homicide cases with the help of a systematic review.

In an interview with Leidraad Alumni Magazine (no. 2, 2019), Marieke Liem states that it is almost impossible to compare between murders. ‘In our society we are inclined to frame murderers as monsters. Sometimes there is a very fine line between perpetrator and victim.’

It was a huge task, but it was worth it: Marieke Liem and her research group have completed a database of all murders committed in the Netherlands over the past 25 years. She will share their initial findings in a three-part lecture series organized by Studium Generale. ‘Beggars kill other beggars;…

The goal of this project is to keep a close watch on the developing nature of homicide in the Dutch Caribbean region.

Are all murderers calculating psychopaths with an obscene predilection for bloody chainsaws? Yes, if Hollywood is to be believed, but in the real world they are generally everyday people with problematic backgrounds. Professor of Violence and Interventions Marieke Liem therefore calls for the demythologisation…

Why is it that women less often stand trial for murder or for the planning of a murder than men? Marieke Liem was interviewed by Dutch radio programme ‘Radio EenVandaag’ on 20 November 2018.

Marieke Liem, professor at ISGA, discusses how the number of drug-related murders has not decreased in the last years

A higher level of legal firearm availability does not lead to more violent deaths in Europe but does lead to more female deaths.

Homicide engenders broad moral concerns in society, and its aftermath can be understood as a barometer for criminal justice policy. Of all homicides committed, however, only some lead to arrest, to prosecution and ultimately to conviction in court.

’25 years of fatal violence’, a collaboration of dr. Marieke Liem and prof.dr.Lenneke Alink about murder and manslaughter in the Netherlands, has received a research grant by the Leiden University Fund.

On 28 September, the Medieval Murder Maps website will be shared publicly for the first time. The makers have used fourteenth-century coroners' rolls to map the homicides in three medieval towns: London, York, and Oxford. These digital maps are interactive and come with podcasts of interesting cases,…

Marieke Liem is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Security and Global Affairs of Leiden University in The Hague. She was interviewed by local Leiden radio programme ‘Sleutelstad’ about her research into murder cases in the Netherlands.

Why are so many people killed on the Caribbean islands? And how can we reduce this number? Scientists aim to find answers to these questions by means of a databank. That could help justice and police on the islands to reduce the number of murders.

Italian nurse Daniela Poggiali was arrested and convicted of murdering two hospital patients in 2014. Her case attracted the attention of Leiden statistician Richard Gill. After his investigation, together with an Italian colleague, Poggiali was acquitted last autumn. Together with fellow statisticians,…

A mother who is far from the romantic ideal image of the mother as we know is the murderous mother. Genevieve Lhermitte, the mother who killed her 5 children, or the neurosurgeon who killed her 14-year-old daughter whose trial recently ended are examples of shocking stories. It goes against every thought…

After diving into the murder trial of nurse Lucia de Berk, statistician Richard Gill became a leading expert on the statistics of medical murder cases. Together with colleagues, he now wrote a peer reviewed report about the statistical missteps in past medical murder trials. It gives recommendations…

Following the murder of two Dutch people - of which Iran is suspected - Trouw investigates how usual these practices are. Paul Abels, Professor of Intelligence Studies and Ben de Jong, Researcher, both working at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), will address the subject.

How does the vision of problems and solutions from

This volume was edited by Jeroen Duindam, Jill Harries, Caroline Humfress, and Nimrod Hurvitz.

It is integral to many cluster members’ research to use Medieval and Early Modern Arts as a lens for studying the medieval and early modern periods at large:

On 12 April 2022 Alok Oak successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

On Friday 24 May, Marieke Liem, Associate Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs of Leiden University, appeared on the NPO 3 television programme ‘Vreemdgaan met Filemon’ (Cheating with Filemon). Liem discussed the link between jealousy and murder referencing scientific research into…

This programme starts from the idea that cultural discourse is one of the main engines of intellectual history and the history of ideas.

This book explores the intellectual history of the Dutch empire from the sixteenth century to the postcolonial era, going beyond systemic thinkers to understand how empire was perceived in day-to-day life. It takes a transnational and transimperial approach to the Dutch empire, connecting European,…

Beauty is a central concept in the Italian cultural imagination throughout its history and in virtually all its manifestations. It particularly permeates the domains that have governed the construction of Italian identity: literature and language.

Subproject of

This recently released book takes a critical view of conceptual issues and practical problems that inevitably emerge when ‘excellence’ takes center stage in science systems in the Global South. What is ‘excellent science’? And how to recognize and assess it? After decades of inquiry and debate there…

On Monday 9 September, police officer Wendell C. (Dordrecht) shot and killed his two children and himself. The mother was also shot and died later that night in the hospital. Marieke Liem, Associate Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) spoke with Dutch news website ‘BN DeStem’…

Choong-Yeol Kim defended his thesis on 14 November 2019

Since the emergence of humankind people have maintained social contacts and traveled widely, establishing interaction networks in which goods are traded and ideas are transmitted, increasingly on a global scale.

Ömer Koçyigit defended his thesis on 7 July 2020

What did colonial officials and missionaries think they were doing?

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.

A juvenile suspect has been apprehended for the murder of 15-year old Megan from Breda last Monday. A highly unusual situation, according to Marieke Liem, Associate Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs in The Hague. She gave an interview to Dutch newspaper AD.

Huiselijk geweld is een ingrijpend probleem in Nederland, met jaarlijkse fatale gevolgen. De impact gaat verder dan alleen de slachtoffers zelf en raakt ook nabestaanden en de samenleving als geheel. Tot nu toe/Momenteel ontbreekt het echter aan een gestructureerde manier om fatale gevallen systematisch…

What are the foundations of the regulation of blasphemy, and in which manner, in legal as well as in extra-legal terms, has blasphemy developed over the last decades?

Marieke Liem wrote a contribution for DJIzien, a magazine published by the Dutch Custodial Institutions Agency (Ministry of Justice and Security), about her meetings with long-term prisoners. ‘For my research on long-term prisoners I made numerous visits to Dutch prisons. During these visits, I came…

A research into homicide.

On Wednesday 26 June, Marieke Liem, Associate Professor Physical Violence and Public Order at Leiden University’s Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), appeared on both Dutch radio programme ‘Nieuws & CO’ and the eight o’clock television news (NOS) to discuss life imprisonment.

‘A university is a slow-moving institution, which is in many ways a good thing,' commented student Josephine Rook at the opening of the Leiden University Green Office on 27 September in the Hortus botanicus. ‘Sustainability is not about following the latest trends, but about making structural improv…

The Leiden Asia Year is almost here. Asia will be the key theme for the University and the city throughout 2017. If staff and students have any ideas about how to make the programme even better, we'd like to hear from you!

Many pharmaceutical companies no longer have their own lab and are working more closely with universities and start-ups of scientists. Professor of Science-Based Business Simcha Jong is researching how scientific ideas result in new drugs, including at the Leiden Bio Science Park (LBSP).

In 2018 the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) was launched in the UK. The aim of this programme was to help laboratories work more sustainably and efficiently. The initiative got a Dutch spin-off in 2021. Since then, a couple of the laboratories at the Leiden Faculty of Science have…

The new startup idea of Arko Ghosh and his colleagues at CODELAB concerns seamless brain assessments using day-to-day digital interactions. The study aims to make algorithms tuned to consumer-grade brain recordings and test the market readiness for this technology. In order to achieve this, the researchers…

Rosemary's Baby is one of the greatest movies of the late 1960s and one of the best of all horror movies, an outstanding modern Gothic tale. An art-house fable and an elegant popular entertainment, it finds its home on the cusp between a cinema of sentiment and one of sensation.

Representations of violence have subliminal contagious effects, but what kind of unconscious captures this imperceptible affective dynamic in the digital age?