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

By the end of the sixteenth century, stories about the Revolt in the Low Countries (c. 1567-1648) had begun to spread throughout Europe. These stories had very different authors with very different intentions.

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.

On 17 August 1945, two days after the Japanese surrender that also brought an end to the Second World War in Asia, Indonesia declared its independence. The declaration was not recognized by the Netherlands, which resorted to force in its attempt to take control of the inevitable process of decolonization.…

Engin Kiliç defended his thesis on 11 june 2015

This interdisciplinary study focuses on (trans)national ethnic and popular networks, combining historical-ethnographic and computational methods to understand the ‘workings’ of networked conflict interfering in the increasingly violent conflict in the Sahel (Africa) and beyond. The project focuses on…

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

This is the 2017 paperback release of William Michael Schmidli's The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere, which won the 2013 Foreign Affairs Magazine Best Book of the Year.

To what extent have the Dutch and British militaries learned from their counterinsurgency operations in southern Afghanistan between 2006 and 2020?

A new vision on the Revolt of the Low Countries through the eyes of Spanish commanders

Jacques Waisvisz (98) is one of our oldest living alumni. As a Jewish student in the Second World War, he was forbidden from completing his studies. How does he look back at that time, and what was life like afterwards? ‘No one thought that the situation here would become so bad.’

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Two Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) have been placed in front of the University Library in memory of the Jewish Cosman family. At the time of the Second World War, they lived in one of the houses where the library is now located.

In Reframing the Diplomat Albertine Bloemendal offers a unique window onto the unofficial dimension of Cold War transatlantic relations by analyzing the diplomatic role of the Dutch Atlanticist Ernst van der Beugel as a government official and as a private diplomat.

The territories that would make up what is today the Republic of Zambia officially became British in 1891. However, this did not equate to an on-the-ground presence of colonial authority capable of affecting the destiny and daily lives of people.

Students were able to continue their studies in September 1945 after the University had been closed for several years during the Second World War. This moment was celebrated for four days, with the traditional cortège, commemorative services and a party in the Botanical Garden. Queen Wilhelmina was…

In this chapter, Linde Desmaele & Luis Simón examine NATO’s strategic adaptation since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

This book explores the reception of foreign news during the late sixteenth-century civil wars in France and the Netherlands.

Robert Pee, William Michael Schmidli (Eds.) This book posits that democracy promotion played a key role in the Reagan administration’s Cold War foreign policy.

Does foreign aid promote human rights?

Leiden researcher Ethan Mark has a mission, he explains in the alumni magazine Leidraad. He wants us to take off our Eurocentric glasses when we study the Second World War. We have focused on ourselves for far too long; after 75 years, it’s about time we listened to stories from the rest of the worl…

Herta Mohr was a promising Egyptologist who died in Bergen-Belsen. Lawyer Amandus Wolfsbergen died in Auschwitz, without knowing that the his work would continue to be a respected authority for many years. Thanks to research by PhD candidate Adriënne Baars, some more personal information has been added…

Stories of resistance in the Second World War are widely covered in Dutch historiography: Hannie Schaft, Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, and Professor Cleveringa are some of the best known. But these accounts largely focus on the Dutch domestic perspective. On the other side of the world, a complex colonial…

In this article, Thomas Maguire, assistant professor at the Institute of Governance and Global Affairs, examines the intelligence of the US, British and Ukrainian governments and NATO partners concerning Russia and its war against Ukraine. This article discusses how and why governments communicate intelligence…

Southern Crossings: Indian activists and the Afro-Asian movement in the early Cold War era

Emily Wolff, PhD candidate at Leiden University, wrote a paper about the inclusion of imperial citizens in the Dutch post-war welfare state.

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

Schuurman examines how Russia is escalating its covert operations against European countries.

Benjamin Fogarty-Valenzuela published the article 'Pedagogies of Prohibition: Time, Education, and the War on Drugs in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Norte' in Cultural Anthropology 37. The article’s three sections focus on three forms of temporal control—busyness, punctuality, and rhythm—and each demonstrates…

How were Spanish commanders fighting in the Low Countries between 1567 and 1577 portrayed in Spanish and Dutch narrative sources during the Eighty Years War?

Drugs-related violence in Mexico is similar in terms of dynamics and strategy to the IS hybrid war in the West. This is the claim made by Teun Voeten. PhD defence 20 September.

Exchanges between different cultures and institutions of learning have taken place for centuries, but it was only in the twentieth century that such efforts evolved into formal programs that received focused attention from nation-states, empires and international organizations.

A group of confidants including a former student of Meijers managed to avert his deportation to a death camp. In her lecture on 27 November, Cleveringa Professor Marjan Schwegman revealed the history of the persecution of the Jewish Professor Eduard Meijers.

This book closely analyses the rise and fall of Louis XIV's marine insurance institutions in Paris, which were central to the French monarchy's efforts to stimulate commerce, colonial enterprise and economic growth.

‘That hornets’ nest in Leiden must be destroyed,’ said Dutch National Socialist Party member Robert van Genechten in November 1942. He was referring to Leiden University. Why this hatred? Emeritus Professor of University History Willem Otterspeer has written a book about Leiden University during the…

How do first-hand narratives of war of commanders in the front line relate to the official narrative of the Eighty Years’ War?

When it comes to languages and cultures, Leiden University is the university. The global expertise present places our university at the top. In Leiden and The Hague, we study languages and cultures from all regions of the world and from prehistory to the present day. In this way we create a broad view…

The researchers in the World Archaeology department of the Faculty of Archaeology concentrate on a range of different periods and regions: from humanity’s origins to the Middle Ages and the modern age, and from Asia to South America.

Assistant professor Vincent Chang spoke in various media outlets about the Chinese commemoration of World War II.

The department of World Archaeology combines research and education about regions all over the world, from Human Origins to the Middle Ages, and from Europe, to Asia, Africa and the America’s. That broad range in time and space makes the department a dynamic pluriform community with many different approaches,…

Professor Ian Lilley, the Faculty of Archaeology’s Willem Willems Chair in Archaeological Heritage, was invited by Her Excellency Mrs. Marion Derckx, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Australia, to present the 2022 commemoration speech for Netherlands Memorial Day on May 4th at the Netherlands-Australia…

On 1 June 2022, Bruno Braak defended his thesis entitled 'Overcoming ruptures: Zande identity, governance, and tradition during cycles of war and displacement in South Sudan and Uganda (2014-2019).' The doctoral research was supervised by Prof.dr. J.M. Otto, Dr.ir. C.I.M. Jacobs, and Dr. C. Leonardi…

Four years of protracted negotiations and bitter warfare passed between the declaration of Indonesian independence on 17 August, 1945, and the official transfer of sovereignty on 27 December, 1949.

What makes peace missions succeed or fail? Which new technologies will determine the outcome of wars? In recent decades, insufficient use has been made of knowledge of modern warfare, when this is crucial to European security. This is what Frans Osinga, Professor by Special Appointment of War Studies,…

During the Dutch famine of 1944–45, people were much more creative in finding food than we thought. Biology student Tom Vorstenbosch discovered that people did not only eat flower bulbs at that time, but also radish leaves and wild plants such as sorrel and chickweed.

PhD candidate Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart has received the Stichting Elise Mathilde Fonds grant from the Leids Universiteits Fonds (LUF) to work on a research project focusing on the landscapes of the Second World War. ‘We will combine citizen science with deep learning to uncover traces of the c…

These days we do not just have wars and civil wars – more of a global civil war, says Bashir Azizi, who received a PhD in April 2020 for his thesis on global citizenship. The second edition of his thesis was recently published.