Efficiently responding to others’ emotions has great survival value, especially for social species, such as primates, who establish close, long-term bonds with group members. The closest living relatives to humans are the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Studying these species, and comparing them on the exact…

This study examines the system and poetics of literary patronage in the Renaissance by presenting a comprehensive analysis of the poetry of Giannantonio Campano. In this way, it addresses two themes largely overlooked by modern scholarship.

The project focuses on an intriguing aspect of André Chénier’s poetry, which has not received much attention in scholarship: Chénier’s indebtedness – in the form of translation, adaptation, borrowing, reference – to Hellenistic poetry; it interprets the role of this indebtedness in his poetical and…

Simona Demková, Assistant professor at the Europa Institute of Leiden University, publishes her book ‘Automated Decision-Making and Effective Remedies: The New Dynamics in the Protection of EU Fundamental Rights in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’.

The figure of the barbarian has captivated the Western imagination from Greek antiquity to the present. Since the 1990s, the rhetoric of civilization versus barbarism has taken center stage in Western political rhetoric and the media. But how can the longevity and popularity of this opposition be accounted…

This minor focuses on how our thoughts, emotions and behaviour are influenced by other people, and how we influence other people.

In their vision trajectory, the Office for the Senior Civil Service (in Dutch: Bureau Algemene Bestuursdienst) communicated its plan to renew its vision on public leadership. Over the course of 2021, the Leiden Leadership Centre contributed as a scientific partner to the substantiation of this visio…

The physical features of twelfth-century manuscripts from the Flemish abbey of Ter Duinen – such as script, page layout, and reading aids – show how their readers organized, interpreted, and transmitted knowledge.

Quietly read a book in our new reading nook, listen to interesting and bizarre stories set in early twentieth-century Leiden, walk past literary locations in Leiden and watch the best film adapted from a Leiden novel as decided on by you. April is Literary Leiden month! A month in which we pay special…

Cat Paw Tweet Goes Viral

This article provides an all-inclusive overview of public diplomacy literature that relates to a myriad of issues and has been studied from various points of view.

What are the essential determinants of (dis)trust? And, what are the effects of being (dis)trusted?

Our project focuses on the analysis of decision-making processes in the European Union (EU) and explores how approaches and tools to understand decision-making found in both the Natural and the Social Sciences can be linked, knowledge between these traditions exchanged and synergies utilized. To explore…

PACES is an innovative, inter-disciplinary and multi-level research project that asks, How do changes in society, individual life experiences and migration policy shape decisions to stay or to migrate over time and across countries? And how can this knowledge inform future migration policies and gov…

What political factors affect the speed or duration of EU legislative decision-making?

If you’ve graduated from the programme and you want to further your academic education you can continue with a master’s programme. It will earn you the title of Master of Arts (MA) and significantly increase your chances of finding a position at academic level.

Mariken Teeuwen started at the Institute for History as a professor by special appointment of Script Culture of the Middle Ages on 1 March. ‘I’m looking forward to doing research together with students.’

This thesis examines the complexity of legislative decisions within the EU, with a specific focus on the Council of the EU.

We present an extensive study of methods for exactly solving stochastic constraint (optimisation) problems (SCPs) in network analysis. These problems are prevalent in science, governance and industry.

The School of Celtic Studies (DIAS) is organizing a conference on medieval multilingual manuscripts. The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars working on medieval bilingual or multilingual sources from a variety of linguistic backgrounds, geographical areas, and literary genres. It will…

Every day, we make numerous decisions, from choosing what to eat to how we interpret the world around us. Traditionally, researchers have assumed that a key part of our decision-making process, namely the decision criterion, stays stable over time. However, increasing evidence suggests that instead…

Implementing all kinds of change and introducing new structures, far-reaching rules and administrative systems may sometimes seem to distract an organisation from its purpose. Furthermore, there is growing recognition of the need of staff of public organisations to find more meaning in their work: the…

The starting point for this research project is the notion that the human brain is susceptible to all kinds of fallacies and biases that affect our perceptions and influence our reasoning outside of our conscious awareness. Indeed, most people think they are merely observing facts and that they process…

Due to the unrest in the Middle East, many ancient Syrian manuscripts are no longer available or have even been destroyed. Professor of Old Testament Bas ter Haar Romeny received 77 microfilms of Syrian manuscripts, enabling him and his PhD students to research these ‘lost’ manuscripts.

Studies of perceptual decision-making typically present the same stimulus repeatedly over the course of an experimental session but ignore the order of these observations, assuming unrealistic stability of decision strategies over trials. However, even ‘stable,’ ‘steady-state,’ or ‘expert’ decision-making…

This week sees the first edition of the textbook Mouse&Manuscript published online. Mouse&Manuscript is a collection of interactive lessons on codicology and oriental manuscripts. Its aim is to stimulate teaching on codicology in and outside of the classroom, and to contribute to the disclosure of Leiden…

How was the future United Nations Organization promoted to global publics during WW II?

How can innovation help or hinder public procurement processes?

This collection brings into conversation several kinds of scholarship on medieval authorship which have tended to remain separate over the last two to three decades, a period of steadily increasing scholarly interest in this topic.

This article is aimed to shed light on the Swahili-‘Ajam ī manuscripts, focusing on the major Swahili classical genre: the

‘Schiedsgerichte in den Aussenverträgen der EU. Neue Entwicklungen unter Einbezug der institutionellen Verhandlungen Schweiz–EU’, Jusletter 28 May 2018

An overview of our exhibition catalogues and research monographs on the Middle Eastern collections.

In my research I am concerned with the possibility of a politics of sexuality without reverting to identitarian conceptions of sexuality. In a reading of the work of the American author James Purdy, I propose to move towards a politicizing of the concept of narrative identity as developed by the French…

The NWO-funded research project ‘The Multilingual Dynamics of the Literary Culture of Medieval Flanders, c. 1200- c. 1500’ is hosting a series of e-workshops on the topic of ‘Multilingual Literary Cultures in the Middle Ages’. The program is now available online.

The La Galigo manuscript at Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been digitized. The manuscript, which was inscribed in 2011 on UNESCO's ‘Memory of the World’ Register, is now freely available online and can be used for teaching and research. La Galigo is the world's longest epic, written in the Buginese…

In the research project ‘Furthering public leadership’ the Leiden Leadership Centre collaborates with several public organisations in order to obtain academic insights on public leadership and to develop leadership in practice. This allows for evidence-based development of public leadership and direct…

This symposium (May 22) will explore topics such as the loss of and damage done to medieval manuscripts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through an interdisciplinary set of papers. Speakers will highlight projects aimed at identifying and rehabilitating damaged manuscripts and archives, and…

Do you frequently search the catalogue of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) for western medieval manuscripts? Then you must have noticed important changes lately. Some 1800 summary catalogue records in Dutch were replaced by more elaborate descriptions in English. Furthermore, the catalogue interface…

The subject of motherhood is interwoven with themes of survival, power and identity. It is also at the heart of any consideration of women’s writing. Conversations of Motherhood sensitively charts common themes, intersecting experiences and related topics within the cultural specificities of South African…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been able to acquire four remarkable medical manuscripts partly thanks to support from the Friends of Leiden University Libraries, the Pieter van Foreest Stichting and the Van de Sande Fonds. All four are largely written in Dutch and can be dated between 1595 and…

Recently, some changes have been made to the catalog of Leiden University Library, making more than 1000 digitized codices more accessible than before. The 'Inventory of Western Medieval Manuscripts Held by Leiden University Libraries,' created by manuscript curator André Bouwman, is also now available:…

This book is a much-needed update on our understanding of public diplomacy. It intends to stimulate new thinking on what is one of the most remarkable recent developments in diplomatic practice that has challenged practitioners as much as scholars.