Recently, a new edition of the ELS bulletin was sent out. Furthermore, we are thrilled to share the Midterm Report of the ELS lab @Leiden with you!

Sarah Cramsey's first book, Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the

How has interreligious encounter in Ogbómòsó created multiple religious belongings and identities among individuals and groups?

On October 9th, Peter Alexander Kerkhof succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Peter Alexander on this great result.

Get the most out of your studies at Leiden University by taking part in our extracurricular activities.

On Wednesday 21 May Adrian Perkasa successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

For the second year in a row, the Austria Centre Leiden sponsored a festive gathering for the Paula Hyman Mentorship Program at the Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, which convened in San Francisco, California, USA in December 2023. This meeting allowed Hyman Committee Members…

On April 14, 2025, Dr. Hans Petschar, the recently-retired Director of the Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung at the Austrian National Library in Vienna, delivered the Sixth Annual Austrian Studies Lecture 'Austria’s Present Past: A visual journey through Austrian history 1925 – 2025'.

In this article in The Irish Times, Pádraig Corrigan talks about his experience studying abroad at Leiden University College in The Hague.

Jifeng Liu defended his thesis on 2 February 2017

Mei-Wen Chen defended her thesis on 29 June 2016

What if particles don’t slow down in a crowd, but move faster? Physicists from Leiden worked together and discovered a new state of matter, where particles pass on energy through collisions and create more movement when packed closely together.

Chaider Bamualim defended his thesis on 9 September 2015

Studying abroad and going on an exchange is a great way to broaden your horizons and explore new places, cultures, and fields of study. In addition to a full-semester exchange, there are many other possibilities such as a summer school or an internship. For example, Bart Geldermans, Public Administration…

Boundaries in the collaboration between private and public interests are more blurred in the US than Europe, says Reijer Passchier, Professor of Digitalisation and the Democratic Constitutional State at the Open University and Assistant Professor in Constitutional Law in Leiden, in ‘de Volkskrant’.

The Executive Board of Leiden University has asked the University Council to advise on its proposed decision to reactivate the person counters/sensors in due course. The Council will now look at this carefully before the Board makes a final decision. The advice of the University’s participation body…

With this podcast series 'Introduction to Security Studies', you will get to know more about the bachelor's programme Security Studies at Leiden University in The Hague and life as a student in The Hague.

How does a lecture work? What does Urban Studies entail? What are International Studies’ career prospects? During the Experience Day, prospective students were given the opportunity to learn more about the programmes of the Humanities Faculty in The Hague.

Markus Altena Davidsen and colleagues Michaël van der Meer, Maurits Berger and Kim Beerden received a subsidy from the KNAW-Pilotfund. They will use the 10.000 € for an inspiration book for teachers religion/worldview.

What are International Studies Alumni doing after graduation? Get to know Guido, Paulien and Lennart. They all studied International Studies at Leiden University in The Hague and are now working in three different fields.

On Thursday 28 March 2024 Said Reza Huseini successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Material culture and the role of rural communities in exchange systems of the eighth and ninth centuries

On 30 January 2024 Jurre van der Meer successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The Excellence of the Arabs is a spirited defense of Arab identity—its merits, values, and origins—at a time of political unrest and fragmentation, written by one of the most important scholars of the early Abbasid era.

Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a powerful technique used to visualize the inside of cells and to study specific protein complexes. Within this thesis, I describe the use of various cryo-EM techniques to gain insight into the structural changes of the human pathogen, Vibrio cholerae, as it…

Global climate change is manifest by local-scale changes in precipitation and temperature patterns, including the frequency of extreme weather events (EWEs). EWEs are associated with a myriad range of adverse environmental and societal consequences, including negative impacts to agriculture and food…

Stylianos Irakleous defended his thesis on 6 February 2020

Studies on representative bureaucracy have often confirmed the positive performance effects of bureaucracies mirroring the demographic characteristics of their clientele. However, little is known about the underlying individual level mechanisms leading to these outcomes.

This PhD project analyses the politics and aesthetics of depictions of torture in American and European ‘war on terror’ films.

Exploring cultural production in Europe, Latin America and Africa, the institute’s research programme focuses on the continuous interconnectedness of the Arts and Society in both the textual culture of literature, learning and public debate and the visual culture of art, architecture, film, photography…

Channi Li defended her thesis on 15 October 2019.

A fully corona proof graduation at Campus The Hague and the first class of graduates for the Bachelor Security Studies. It was a day to be remembered for 36 students and their families.

Source: Br. J. Pharmacol., Volume 172, Issue 3, pp. 940-55 (2015)

Niek Strohmaier and Gitta Veldt will start as assistant professors within the project Empirical Legal Studies (ELS). Their appointments are part of the sector plan of Leiden Law School.

Abstract submission is now open for the international conference of the ELS Academy, in Amsterdam on September 1 and 2. For the 2022 International ELS Conference, we invite all involved in legal research using qualitative and/or quantitative methods to submit abstracts, that may focus on ongoing or…

Do citizens care for interest representation? A study on citizens’ perceptions and feelings towards the representative potential of civil society

On Wednesday 5 February 2025 Milan Ismangil successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

On 1 April 2023, Rowie Stolk of the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law started a new appointment for 0.7 FTE at Empirical Legal Studies Leiden (ELS@Leiden). ELS provides a platform that brings together legal scholars and social scientists to collaboratively explore legally relevant…

On 8 October, the Independent Expert, Prof. Manfred Nowak, leading the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty presented his report to the UN General Assembly. The presentation of the final report is set for 19 November 2019, at the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the…

In this study, we investigated the electrochemical behavior and surface evolution of Au(111) electrode under different conditions and electrochemical techniques, using a homemade electrochemical scanning tunneling microscope (EC-STM), revealing the intricate interplay between surface roughening, atom…

On Tuesday, February 10, 2026, Professor Saskia Jaszoltowski, the new Visiting Professor for Central European Studies at Leiden University joined students, colleagues and friends of Austrian Studies at Leiden for a lunch-time talk that introduced her exciting research to our community.

Every January, students of the Minor Sustainable Development have the opportunity to put what they’ve learned over the last few months into practice in a choice of exciting and practical courses called Area Studies. This year, for the first time, there was a choice of four locations: The Netherlands,…

On Wednesday 25 June 2025 Dechun Zhang successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

On Wednesday 24 September 2025 Marija Šerić successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.