If you study law, you won’t necessarily end up striding round a law firm in tailor-made suits. Alumnus Harrie Schoffelen certainly hasn’t: he made the conscious decision to follow another path in life. Together with his fiancée he runs a successful food truck on the tropical island of Bonaire. ‘Return…

An article by Bert Fraussen, Adria Albareda, Caelesta Braun, Moritz Muller & Erin Sullivan, published as a three-part blog series.

The red carpet treatment of expats, terrorism studies and women professors who took over the Senate Chamber. These are the best read articles of 2018.

In a collaborative effort between the Leiden Children’s Rights Observatory, the Leiden Law Academy, UNICEF and the Petitions Section of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, a symposium held last week commemorated the tenth anniversary of the Optional Protocol to the Convention…

PhD candidates are encouraged to start thinking about job prospects well before the defence of their thesis. Many PhD graduates find employment in an academic or semi-academic environment.

Since the beginning of September, urban criminologist Marianne Franken has been the linchpin of a special partnership between Leiden University, the municipality of Leiden and the police. As a PhD candidate she will spend four years conducting research into how safe the people of Leiden feel.

Over the past year, many of our staff and students have won prizes, been awarded a substantial grant or been appointed to an academic association or a position in public life. All of these are good reasons to include them in our 2018 Hall of Fame. We are proud of them all.

In the context of growing political polarisation, the spread of misinformation, and increases in incivility and intolerance, how can Twitter assess and improve the quality of its conversations? To address this question, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Leiden University, Syracuse University,…

Wat kun je als burger doen wanneer de overheid je persoonsgegevens gebruikt en daarmee besluiten neemt waar je het niet mee eens bent? Fatma Çapkurt promoveerde op een onderzoek hiernaar. Burgers moeten verwerking van hun gegevens beter kunnen beoordelen.

It rarely happens: halting a decision by walking out of a meeting. ‘But there’s nothing wrong with it from a constitutional law perspective,’ says Geerten Boogaard, Professor by Special Appointment of Local Government, in ‘Leidsch Dagblad’.

The acquittal of Richard de Mos and his fellow party member has caused quite a stir in the Netherlands. Can De Mos simply return to local politics now? And has the issue finally been settled?

A lot of municipalities work with a points system to encourage construction projects to take biodiversity and creating green areas into account. But this way of working also benefits local neighbourhoods and residents, master's student Marije Sesink discovered. She based her study on The Hague.

Various ministries started building nuclear bunkers in the seventies to shield themselves from a possible nuclear attack from the East. One of these nuclear bunkers lies below our new Wijnhaven building. This specific bunker was designed for important figures of government, and was built to function…

This section provides an overview of online tools for the study of the medieval Low Countries. The websites linked down below are often times both available in Dutch and English.

On 12 September the students of the European Law Master gathered in the Lorentzzaal for the festive opening of their programme.

Researchers, civil servants and local residents met on 27 September to talk about partnering for sustainability. What were the results? In a green ‘city oasis’ in the centre of The Hague they spoke about the energy transition, bottom-up initiatives and citizen science.

The Tappino Area Archaeological Project aims to map and analyze ancient settlement patterns and dynamics in a small valley in Central-Southern Italy, in modern Molise (province of Campobasso). The first sites in the area date to the Bronze Age. In the Iron Age to Classical period, it was reportedly…

The bi-annual Children’s Rights Moot Court (CRM), organised by the Department of Child Law in partnership with Baker McKenzie, was initiated by Leiden Law School in 2014 on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Moot Court offers students…

By 2050, more than 70 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities. A group of International researchers has developed software that shows city planners where to invest in nature to improve people’s lives and save billions of dollars.

The University Council meeting on 2 June was largely dominated by the demonstration, occupation and policing in The Hague last month.

Buurtlab 070 is a new Leiden University project in which residents, researchers and students from The Hague work together on climate, sustainability and biodiversity solutions. What do they expect of the lab?

The challenges of building a sustainable society are unprecedented. But the Dutch municipalities cannot be faulted for their commitment. They are working hard, conclude Professor Eefje Cuppen and Lian Merkx, programme manager for energy at the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG). To exchange…

The third edition of the bi-annual Children's Rights Moot Court has come to a spectacular end in the first week of April.

Life returned to something resembling normal after Covid but other crises soon took its place. These great challenges are also being felt at the University and our researchers are working on solutions. The nitrogen crisis, problems with young people’s services and an increasingly urgent climate crisis:…

The team of WIIS-Netherlands exists out of the board members and the advisory council.

Should we ban snack bars from neighbourhoods where residents are overweight or have diabetes? At the Common Sense about Health knowledge festival, scientists, civil servants and other professionals discussed how South Holland can become healthier. The Healthy Society Map makes it clear where there are…

Lecture, CMGI Brown Bag Seminar

Leiden University has joined the Hague Climate Agreement. This comprises 38 climate deals aimed at making The Hague climate neutral by 2030.

When we talk about the Kingdom of the Netherlands, it is not just about the Netherlands. On the contrary: our Kingdom consists of no less than four countries, three of which are Caribbean islands. This structure is complex, to say the least. Although all countries are officially equivalent, in practice…

Health conditions and social problems often go hand in hand. To address this complex issue in families in The Hague, researchers, managers, support services, policymakers and residents are joining forces. What are the results of this transdisciplinary approach?

Better health for all the residents of The Hague region. This is the mission of Health Campus The Hague – formerly LUMC Campus The Hague. Eight partners – the LUMC, Leiden University, the municipality of The Hague and five healthcare institutions (see box) – are collaborating intensively in healthcare…

Eva is in her third year at Leiden University College The Hague, but she is also very active outside her studies. Besides Youth Ambassador of The Hague she worked for Plan Nederland and UNICEF, where she cooperated in exciting projects on a national as well as on an international level. In order to…

How do you set up a successful collaboration between science and practice? That was the main theme of the final meeting of a triptych of symposia on how Leiden University can improve inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration.

Dr. Mark Westmoreland (Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology) and Dr. Francesco Ragazzi (Institute of Political Science) have been awarded a Seed grant for their project, ‘Other “ways of knowing”: should we prepare for a post-textual turn in the social sciences?’. The grant amounts…

The Netherlands in September 2021 could be characterised as a low-trust society. Trust in the government has declined significantly in the past one-and-a-half years: from almost 70 percent in April 2020 to less than 30 percent in September 2021. There has also been a slight decrease in trust between…

Specially for an experiment conducted by Leiden University, public administration experts and water authority officials came together in a laboratory.

The new minor ‘The (un)just society’ will start in September 2024. We asked Judi Mesman some questions about this new minor.

Upcoming activities by docARTES PhD candidates Shaya Feldman, Anne Veinberg, Ned McGowan and Nizar Rohana, PhDArts candidates Brigitte Kovacs, Eleni Kamma, Danne Ojeda, Andrea Stultiens and K.G.Guttman and ACPA PhD candidate Henri Bok.

With a 'Kiem grant' of up to €10,000, Leiden University stimulates initiatives in research and education where diverse fields of study meet. This interdisciplinary approach helps solve complex issues.

As coordinator and lead promoter respectively of the Leiden Healthy Society Center, psychologists Sandra van Dijk and Anke Klein use interdisciplinary collaboration to resolve the major health problems of the present day. How are they going to do that in the coming period?

During the kick-off meeting, master students taking part in the Thesis Workshop The Hague Southwest presented their thesis ideas to stakeholders from the neighbourhood.

How do you study complex disasters like a nuclear explosion or a natural disaster? Who can help unravel the legal knot that Brexit has become? The important societal themes of the present day call for interdisciplinary collaboration. Leiden scientists pitched their research at a symposium at Leiden…

On Thursday 30 May, Leiden University hosts a workshop to foster collaborations to improve the governance of European textile waste export. Different stakeholders, including municipalities, associations of textile collectors and sorters, industry and consumers associations, are warmly invited to join…

From 1 August 2018, Alanna O'Malley was appointed as Chair of United Nations Studies in Peace and Justice, focusing on the ‘lesser-known actors’ of the UN: women, the youth, the agents of informal diplomatic networks within the UN and actors from the Global South. This Special Chair has been created…

Of the 32 historic buildings that are opening their doors to the public on the Open Monument Days on 8 and 9 September, five are University buildings. The Hortus Botanicus is also open.

Leiden University contributed to colonialism and slavery through its research and teaching. And governors and residents of Leiden had an active role in colonial networks. These are the findings of two explorative studies presented on 3 April.

A smart city is of no use if its residents don’t trust it. Tanaquil Arduin, Chief Data Officer at the Municipality of The Hague, and Bram Klievink, Professor of Digitalisation and Public Policy at Leiden University, explain how this can be avoided – to some extent. ‘Make sure civil servants and residents…

Leiden students working to solve a sustainability problem at the request of an external party: that is the Sustainability Challenge. During a recent symposium, 28 groups of four to five students unveiled their solutions. The commisioners expressed great enthusiasm.

Tackling human trafficking has been a priority on international, national and local policy agendas for some decades now. Yet a number of knowledge gaps stand in the way of how the issue is approached. Interdisciplinary research is essential if we want to expand our knowledge to benefit policy and pr…