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…

On Friday 5 February 2021 the online conference of the Dutch Platform of Empirical Legal Studies (ELS) took place. This conference served as a platform to bring young, enthusiastic and driven ELS scholars together in a research community and enable them to learn more and discuss about empirical research…

Waarom is empirisch-juridisch onderzoek van belang voor de rechtspraktijk en het wetenschappelijke onderzoek? Op die vraag kregen masterstudenten van de afstudeerrichtingen civiel recht, ondernemingsrecht en financieel recht antwoord tijdens het congres over empirisch-juridisch onderzoek en het privaatrecht…

See below for the full programme and abstracts of all papers.

To what extent are there differences between countries in and outside the European Union and the Schengen area in the level of crimmigration, the merger between migration control and crime control, and to what extent can these differences be explained by the way in which state and non-state actors in…

What are the institutional dynamics of the adoption of internal market legislation?

This week, Leiden University celebrates the fifteenth year of its world-class International Criminal Law Summer School. The International Criminal Law Summer School has convened every year since the creation of the International Criminal Court, guiding scholars and practitioners in this rapidly developing…

Despite an eventful afternoon – with Students for Palestine occupying the Academy Building – political scientist Hélène Landemore gave her Cleveringa Lecture as planned on 26 November. She reflected on the protest and the importance of open debate, within the university and within a democracy.

Palestinian national Abu Zubaydah was captured by the CIA in March 2002 and has remained in detention ever since, without any form of trial. Leiden professor Helen Duffy is doing all she can to secure his release or a fair trial. Her hopes now lie on international pressure and the UN Working Group on…

On 29 October, seven innovative lecturers from different faculties will join the existing ten fellows of the Leiden Teachers' Academy. The current fellows have been engaged for the past year in implementing their innovation projects. How are these progressing?

Learn more about the former members of the Young Academy Leiden who contributed to a better position for young academics.

Uniting an international consortium of scholars, the Skandapurāṇa Project comprises a team of researchers working in fields across the Humanities. We are creating a critical edition of a foundational work of purāṇic literature and, in doing so, tracing the dynamics of a textual tradition to better understand…

The Netherlands Academy for Empirical Legal Studies is now live with website!

Now the Dutch national Law Sector Plan has been positively evaluated, the temporary funding provided to Leiden Law School for the research projects ‘Institutions for Conflict Resolution’ and ‘Empirical Legal Studies’ will become structural.

To mark its 75th anniversary, the Netherlands War Graves Foundation is publishing a portrait of a war victim every week this year. On 24 January the drawing of Irawan Soejono, a Leiden student and Indonesian resistance member, was unveiled at the Groenesteeg cemetery in Leiden, the place where Soejono…

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…

Tan, former PhD candidate Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, received the award for the best dissertation with his thesis on armed conflict, international humanitarian law and human rights law.

On 24 March 2023, the University of Tartu, Estonia hosted a Workshop on ‘'Algorithms, Rule of Law, and the Future of Justice: Implications in the Estonian Justice System’.

On or around 26 November every year, Cleveringa meetings are organised for Leiden alumni throughout the world. Including in Tokyo, where Professor of Japan Studies Ivo Smits delivered his Clevering lecture to a packed hall.

Abstract submission is now open for the international conference of the ELS Academy, in Amsterdam on September 1 and 2.

The Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law organises an annual conference on various topics of equality and discrimination law. The 12th such conference took place from 2 to 4 July 2025 at the Faculty of Law of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana

The ERC-funded project Rethinking Disability was featured in the Fȇte de La Science which was held on 11 October 2019 at Sorbonne University in Paris.

On Monday, 18 January 2016 the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies hosted a roundtable on the practice, process, strategy and impact of the amicus curiae in international criminal trials.

In view of its aim to aim to promote and strengthen teaching and research in European Studies, the Jean Monnet chair ‘Europe and the World' organises a series of seminars. Several interesting speakers will present their research, and both students and staff members will have ample opportunities to engage…

One of LUCIR’s key objectives is to bring together scholars and students of International Relations. To this end, LUCIR regularly organises events such as conferences, roundtables, lectures and book launches.

Is private law ready for the challenges of our time?

The international legal order is in a process of transformation. But how transforms globalization the international legal order? This research programme provides a clearer framework to analyze this..

2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the first United Nations World Conference on Women (Mexico City, 1975), a process that led to the creation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995). The Global Transformations and Governance Challenges Programme organised a roundtable to reflect on…

On Wednesday 1 July 2020, Niek Strohmaier was awarded his PhD on the cognitive biases of financial backers and legal professionals in the context of the impending insolvency of companies.

February 2019 will see the launch of the Young Academy Leiden (YAL). Founded by the Leiden members of De Jonge Akademie of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences, the YAL has been designed to support the university’s talented early career scholars.

On 1 and 2 September, colleagues of Leiden Law School participated in the very first International ELS Conference, organised by the ELS Academy in Amsterdam.

The Grotius Centre, in collaboration with Duke Law School, will be hosting the Duke-Leiden Institute in Global and Transnational Law from 16 June to 17 July 2019 in The Hague, the International City of Peace and Justice. Applications for the second edition are now open!

Craft your own empirical research in workshops of the ELS lab @Leiden!

The Grotius Centre, in collaboration with Duke Law School, will be hosting the Duke-Leiden Institute in Global and Transnational Law from 14 June to 15 July 2020 in The Hague, the International City of Peace and Justice.

This research project from Leiden University looks at the opportunities and threats that flow from the existence of institutional and normative diversity in the area of fundamental rights for the effective protection of those rights in a pluralist world.

Great things are expected of Young Academy Leiden. The first 13 members of this society for young researchers will provide the Executive Board with fresh ideas on teaching, research, policy and how to connect with society. The researchers themselves will benefit from the contact with their peers from…

2025 was a year to remember at our faculty. We celebrated our 450th anniversary, launched new degree programmes and welcomed many inspiring speakers, yet we also felt the weight of budget constraints. Our year in a nutshell:

Cleveringa Lecture

Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law

Each year, Leiden Law School makes two Meijers PhD positions available to talented researchers. One position is open to participants in the Pre-PhD Programme (PPP) and one position is open to other candidates from within and outside Leiden University.

Our dear colleague and friend Kathy MacDonald passed away unexpectedly on August 9th, 2022, a few days after her 46th birthday. Her sudden passing came as a tremendous shock to her colleagues and friends at the Faculty of Archaeology and to colleagues and former students both in The Netherlands and…

The transatlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries represents one of the most traumatic chapters in history and is now widely recognised as a crime against humanity. EUROTAST is a new European-funded research network that will bring together an unprecedented range of researchers to examine…

Twelve weeks of hard work later, the big moment has finally arrived: the third-year students of International Studies are ready to complete the 'Practising International Studies' (PRINS) consultancy programme by pitching their advice. We were invited to attend the presentations on behalf of Free Press…

If Europeans eat less meat and dairy, this will have major consequences for farmers. New research shows that many barns and machines could lose their value. With the right policies, these losses can be limited. This is shown by research from Leiden, Oxford and Vienna.

The PhD Project “Agents of change? (Hi)stories, perspectives, and every-day practices of intra-Schengen border officials” as carried out by PhD Candidate Maryla Klajn got off to a flying start.