Following a series of diplomatic catastrophes and human rights violations in the country, Nicaragua has left the Organization of American States (OAS) on 19 November 2023. Unlike Brexit, where the decision to leave the EU was based on the famous 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum,…

Lecture, Introductory meeting

Esa Kasmir (21) is a third-year student in International Studies and is doing a minor in Philosophy. How does he cope with the present situation and how does he keep in touch with friends and family?

Conference

In the Digital Humanities Lab, students and staff can make use of various technical facilities. PhD student Caeso tells us more about his experiences with the printer in the Maker Space.

Who is the real creator when a musician uses AI? This was the burning question for Adam Lukawski, himself a composer. During a fascinating premiere at Amare, The Hague’s cultural hub, he demonstrated what cocreation sounds like.

Conference, Workshop

Master’s students in Industrial Ecology and Governance of Sustainability have helped answer organisations’ questions about sustainability

The logic seems inescapable indeed. The bigger the population, the higher the probability it contains an Einstein. Hence, bigger populations are more likely to develop complex culture.

On 8 December, in honour of Human Rights Week, Roeland Böcker gave a public lecture about his experiences as ambassador to the Council of Europe. Between 2017 and 2021, Roeland Böcker was the representative of the Netherlands in the Council of Europe.

On 8-9 October 2020, ACES and the T.M.C. Asser Instituut organised an interdisciplinary online conference ‘Migration deals and their damaging effects’ on the implications of the increasing use of informal (non-binding) instruments in the field of migration.

On 22 November 2018, Henk Hulshof and dr. Yannick van den Brink from the Department of Child Law participated in a juvenile justice conference in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The central theme of the conference was ‘establishing a child-friendly criminal justice system in Mongolia’.

On Thursday 29 April 2021, Melanie Fink appeared before the European Parliament’s Working Group on Frontex Scrutiny.

Lecture

Studying languages enables you to unearth a lot of valuable information about humans: it reveals our history and explains cultural differences and it even illustrates the process of learning new information. The University is sharing its knowledge of and passion for languages in various new ways, including…

A female body equals a woman. Nonsense, says Professor by Special Appointment to the Socrates Chair Annemie Halsema. She argues that our sense of identity and social environment also determine our identity. ‘We should stop assigning people’s sex at birth.’

The underwater world around present-day Indonesia has changed greatly in recent centuries as a result of human activity. University lecturer Johannes Müller has been awarded an NWO XS grant to map the history of the Indonesian ecosystems.

Neanderthals in cold regions probably ate a lot more vegetable food than was previously thought. This is what archaeologist Robert Power has discovered based on new research on ancient Neanderthal dental plaque. PhD defence 1 November.

Annual PhD training

The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled in favour of a group of older Swiss women. The issued concerned the health of senior citizens, especially women, who experienced symptoms as a result of climate change. They claimed that the Swiss Government should have taken more climate action, as…

Symposium

In the coming years, Hilde De Weerdt gets to spend over three million euros. She received grants from both the European Research Council (ERC) and the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for research on Chinese infrastructure. ‘It is great that it is also possible to develop large projects in the social sciences…

On 15 July 2019 Hans-Martien ten Napel started a new series on freedom of religion or belief for the London School of Economics research-led interdisciplinary Religion and Global Society Blog.

Emma de Vries, PhD candidate in the Department of European Law at Leiden University, has written an annotation for EHRC updates on the ECHR judgment in Suprun and Others v. Russia (June 18, 2024, case number 58029/12).

From July 25th till August 7th, a team led by Professor Marie Soressi went to France and worked at La Grande Roche de Quinçay, a cave site located in a forested area close to the city of Poitiers. The corona outbreak triggered the need to rethink the organisation of the excavation.

By spreading fake news via TV spots and Twitter with the use of Social Bots, Pascal professor Heike Trautmann is investigating the characteristics of fake news. She is calling on Leiden researchers to cooperate in the project.

Following periods of oppression and widespread violations of human rights, there is often a need for transitional vetting – a sort of ‘cleansing’ of the civil service. Where does this need come from? There are many answers to this question. But vetting, among other things, can contribute to recovering…

Just imagine new AI technology is able to read human emotions flawlessly. How would that affect us as humans? That is the question PhD candidate Alexandra Prégent is exploring.

Last week Mariana Gkliati gave a working group session in the context of the Refugee Studies reading group of the Refugee Law Initiative of the University of London.

Symposium on the extraordinary excavations at Middenbeemster

How were ideas about politics and society distributed in ancient China? Hilde De Weerdt, Professor of Chinese History, investigates this using new digital methods. We speak with her about networks, big data and digital humanities.

Conflicting reports about an airstrike on a school in Iran are causing international concern. Helen Duffy, Professor of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights was asked to clarify states obligations under international law. In Euro News she called in for a swift and independent investigat…

The legal distinction between victims of human trafficking and victims of migrant smuggling is unjust, argues De Massol Rebetz in her PhD thesis. In certain instances, smuggled migrants should be treated the same as victims of human trafficking.

On 20 and 22 November Rick Lawson, Professor of European Law at Leiden Law School, gave lectures at Cleveringa events in Bratislava and Budapest.

Claartje Levelt is professor of First Language Acquisition. She researches how babies and toddlers learn their mother tongue. Besides her work, she enjoys being involved with music.

Even as a teenager Asa Splinter was determined to study Japanese in Leiden. A HAVO diploma and a change in legislation threatened to throw a spanner in the works, but Asa persevered. After ten years of studying, Asa obtained a master’s degree in Japanese and was nominated for the IHLIA thesis award…

Archaeological finds off the coast of Java, Indonesia provide insight into the world of Homo erectus, 140,000 years ago. Skull fragments and other fossil remains provide a unique picture of how and where these early humans lived, says Leiden archaeologist Harold Berghuis.

Advanced LL.M. European and International Human Rights Law and LL.M. European Law students won one of three regional rounds of the Helga Pedersen Moot Court Competition in Athens, qualifying automatically for the final rounds at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.