Transparency is seen as an important value for democratic government policy. Does that mean that we should do away with state secrets, such as confidential information involving intelligence agencies and political deals made behind closed doors? Political philosopher and ERC grant recipient Dorota Mokrosinska…

This summer, political scientist Thijs Vos received the Kaare Strøm prize for his paper ‘Power or Ideology? What structures legislative voting behaviour in Dutch municipal councils, ideology or coalition-opposition dynamics?' He was awarded the prize during the ECPR summer school on parliaments in F…

Leiden’s Institute for History has an exceptionally strong expertise in premodern European history in its global context, with specialists whose interests cover virtually the whole continent. We have a strong track record in leading larger research teams and work together with colleagues across Europe…

The Rutte-III coalition agreement has been presented and the commentary is flooding in. Public administration experts Arco Timmermans and Gerard Breeman examined the new agreement – as they have done for every coalition agreement since 1963 - and made a systematic analysis of it: it is very much about…

Away from the public eye, the court case in Turkey against the Dutch jihadist Reda N. came to a close this week. The verdict has far reaching implications for the case against Reda scheduled to appear in front of a Dutch court next week. Edwin Bakker, Professor Terrorism and Counterterrorism at the…

Maritime conflict management is the regulation of conflict in relation to the sea. It comprises conflict enforcement, conflict resolution and conflict avoidance. How did victims of maritime conflicts claim and obtain damages or demand compensation or reparation?

On June 16, 2025, the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University hosted a panel debate about the ongoing mass student-led protests in Serbia. The protests have shaken the increasingly illiberal regime in Serbia to its core and have grown into the largest student protests in Europe since 196…

Assistant Professor Juan Masullo of the Institute of Political Science has been awarded the 2025 Alexander George Best Article Award for his work on interviews and process tracing.

Joana Cook talks about the Islamist parties increasingly taking power in the last four decades on ABC News.

Conference

Lecture

Join us for an open conversation about the current situation in Gaza and its aftermath with two leading experts from the international community. How might we envision a postconflict future in Gaza? How should the international community approach reconstruction and reconciliation? What political and…

In this time of globalisation, the job market offers plenty of opportunities for people with intercultural competences and a global outlook. Graduates of our International Studies programme not only have expert knowledge of a specific world region, but also possess professional and consulting skills…

In the late 19th century, the Dutch government introduced a tax system in the Dutch East Indies, with the intention of transforming the colony into a modern state. PhD student Maarten Manse wrote his thesis on this development and discovered how grandiloquent colonial ideals became bogged down in daily…

Over 30.000 pages of new material have been added to the online collection of unofficial poetry publications from China in the Leiden Digital Collections. Produced outside the system, these journals and books are hugely influential yet very hard to find. To address this paradox, Leiden University Libraries…

That it was students who started the protests in China against its zero Covid policy makes things more dangerous for politicians. China expert Frank Pieke explains the role of students in China, what makes the protests unique and what might happen next.

Scholarship and politics are entangled in significant and intricate ways that affect academic work in many aspects. The aim of our workshop is to pose questions that will help you reflect on the relationship between your academic work and politics in the broadest sense. During plenary sessions, four…

In the nineteenth century many Dutch people believed in the end of time and the coming of God's thousand-year reign. This belief effectively slowed down the process of modernisation that was taking place in the Netherlands at that time, concludes historian Rie Kielman. PhD defence 13 April.

De Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging (NBV) zoekt een studentbestuurslid voor het academisch jaar 2022-2023. Deadline: 18 september 2022.

Het RKD – Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis - gaat het Nederlandse erfgoed aan verluchte handschriften online toegankelijk maken.

Corinna Jentzsch and Wouter Veenendaal, two political scientists affiliated with Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science, have been awarded a NWO ‘Veni’-grant. This grant brings them official recognition as ‘young outstanding researchers’, as well as financial support for conducting independent…

On 15 March, the 28-year-old Australian right-wing extremist Brenton Tarrant committed a terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand. Jelle van Buuren, Bart Schuurman, Daan Weggemans and Tahir Abbas all working at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) have been approached…

The Economist published an article about a working paper about the effects of democratic elections on satisfaction with democracy. The paper was written by Dimiter Koshkov, Associate Professor at the Institute of Public Administration and Honorata Mazepus, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security…

This event will be in Dutch. Read the Dutch event description here.

Vasiliki Kosta participated in the García Pelayo Seminar of the Center for Political and Constitutional Studies, Madrid entitled: ‘Discretionary Powers and Judicial Review: What Destiny for the Principle of Proportionality?’

The research project ‘The History of National Security, 1945-present', is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the Campus The Hague/Leiden University and the Netherlands Institute for Military History (NIMH). The project will run until the summer of 2013, when we hope…

Diana Dávila Gordillo, PhD candidate at Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science does field trips to her native Ecuador.

Four researchers from Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science have been awarded a grant to jointly investigate attitudes towards Venezuelan immigrants among youths in Ecuador. Combining their expertise and collaborating with the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, they will focus on school-going…

In tracing the deeper historical roots of what Xi Jinping contemporarily frames as a “Chinese dream” of “wealth and power,” the article discerns key actors, events, and organizing principles in a long process toward restoring China’s deemed rightful place in the regional system.

What is the impact of Indonesia’s democratization process on everyday state-citizen relations?

Michel Orrit was awarded the Physica prize 2016 for his groundbreaking work on single molecule spectroscopy.

On Wednesday 21 March 2018 Jeroen Dijsselbloem, former Minister of Finance, and former President of the Euro Group and the Board of Governors of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), gave a guest lecture at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs.

The Social and Cultural Plan Bureau (SCP) published the report “The social state of the Netherlands”. In this research is it stated that there is no such thing as a political shift to the right. In view of the fact that the right wing is better represented in the House of Commons, this is a remarkable…

On May 13, prof. Tom R. Tyler (Yale Law School) will hold a lecture at Leiden Law School on

Kan artificiële intelligentie (AI) helpen om subtiele veranderingen in de gewrichten op te merken op MRI-beelden van patiënten met reumatoïde artritis? Die vraag gaan Leidse wetenschappers beantwoorden dankzij een subsidie van de Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO).

Research on this theme concerns Europe’s position in global markets, its response to the emergence of new international trade and financial actors that challenge institutions where Europe has long had considerable influence.

We are pleased to invite paper proposals for the 1.5-day interdisciplinary workshop: “Who rules over migrants? Autocratic elements in migration policies”, that will take place at the University of Leiden on 14 and 15 November 2024.

The announcement by US President Donald Trump on 9 March in response to the invitation for a summit meeting with the North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un came as a big surprise. Media analyses vary from being very positive to almost cynically negative. However, according to researcher on Korea Koen…

‘‘Stop focusing on the money and start creating a heart for Europe’’ This Friday, the 29th of April, Bernard Steunenberg and his co-authors will launch their book ‘Fit for the Future’. We spoke with him about issues presented in the book, the EU Presidency and why people should read the book.

There was a lot of fuss last week about the ‘dragnet law’, in which intelligence services are now authorised to conduct large-scale tapping of cable communications. The public image here is that the privacy of innocent citizens will almost certainly be violated. Paul Abels, professor of governance of…

This month Johan Christensen, assistant professor at the Institute of Public Administration, published his new book: ‘The Power of Economists within the State’. The book explores four countries, Denmark, Ireland, Norway and New Zealand and analyses why these similarly sized and wealthy countries have…

In the second and final round of the French elections this Sunday, the French will vote for who is going to become their next president. In an article for the Washington Post, Alexandre Afonso, assistant professor at Leiden University, has tried to project the votes in order to predict whether Marine…