Semantics and pragmatics are united in the study of linguistic meaning.

The Intelligence and Security Studies Group offers specialised teaching and research on contemporary intelligence and security challenges. We support both academic and professional development, with a focus on governance, ethical norms, and international cooperation.

This article explores crisis communication research clusters in the literature, examining overlaps and intersections among diverse fields.

The LHSC booster grants awarded are described below. The summaries below are aimed at the general public. For further detail, please contact the researchers in question.

Promotores: B. van de Water; P. Hogendoorn; J. Bovée Co-Promotor: E.H.J. Danen

LUC historian Jacqueline Hylkema unmasks forgeries from the early modern Dutch Republic in the research project

This special issue of Media History (22-3/4, 2016), co-edited with Helmer Helmers (University of Amsterdam), develops a new perspective on the early modern communication revolution. It discusses news as a specific kind of information – by its nature continuous, unreliable, and diffuse – which needed…

Understanding the formation and preservation of Pleistocene fire traces through laboratory-based experimental research

The LUGO team is part of the Administration and Central Services department of the university, with it falling under the Strategy and Academic Affairs department. Naturally, it falls into the sustainability team of the University, which consists of two full-time employees alongside the LUGO Team. The…

Acta Politica is the official journal of the Dutch Political Science Association.

Course, ARCHON Workshop

How did early modern people find out about new knowledge? And did that make them more willing to accept innovation? In the coming years, we will study how and to what effect, new knowledge anchored among the wider public in the early modern Low Countries.

Political scientist Luzia Helfer (Leiden University) empirically tested claims about media-politics relatiopns using unique data from experimental studies with elected politicians and political journalists in Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the phenomenon that pathogens become insensitive to the antibiotics that we use against them. A growing number of pathogens is becoming resistant, with methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) as the most famous example. But while the threat of AMR represents a slow-moving…

Research on the process and construction of news stories about human rights issues in Latin American newspapers.

Rising geopolitical tensions are causing states and national elites to innovate their use of the past for present-day political ends. This is certainly true for the People’s Republic of China, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2024 amid mounting superpower rivalry, ideological tensions with the…

This edited volume suggests promising new avenues of research in analyzing coalition politics. Written by a group of leading scholars, the book clarifies a number of concepts too often taken for granted in the existing literature, performs theoretically-driven and methodologically novel comparative…

The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics fails to explain several observed phenomena and is incomplete. In order to resolve this problem, one may extend the SM by adding new particles.

This project suggests a reconceptualisation of pre- and non-capitalist imperial monetary policy, arguing that the existing literature about imperial financial flows has unnecessarily privileged ideas of largesse and seemingly chaotic monetary distribution.

The War, Peace and Justice group unites scholars and practitioners to explore war dynamics, peace promotion, and justice’s role in conflict and global affairs.

Both play and politics have the potential to create worlds in which new rules apply, meanings are created, and possibilities emerge for collaboration, strategy and creative solutions. In this sense, play and politics have always been very much alike. But what happens to this kinship in a post-digital…

What are the immediate and lasting effects of the colonial encounters on indigenous Caribbean cultures and societies and what were the intercultural dynamics that took place during the colonisation processes? How can the study of indigenous Caribbean histories contribute to a more sophisticated awareness…

In traditional style, 2025 was ushered in at our faculty with the Meijers Lecture followed by the New Year's Reception. On Thursday 16 January 2025, the Meijers Lecture took place in the Lorentz Lecture Hall where the Meijers Prizes and the Van Wersch Springplank Prize were also awarded. At the New…

Protestant missionaries have provided the earliest and most detailed sources regarding the ritual art of the Papuan peoples of the Geelvink Bay.

Inequality could be addressed in the classroom without taking too much time, effort or money. By making one small change, teachers can make a big difference, says Professor by Special Appointment in Equal Educational Opportunities Lisa Gaikhorst in her inaugural lecture.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in the Netherlands, and, with over 100 different types of cancer, it’s not a simple disease. Today, skin, breast, lung, prostate and colon cancer are the most diagnosed forms. Therefore, the discovery and development of new drugs has the ability to significantly…

How was the future United Nations Organization promoted to global publics during WW II?

PhD defence

‘Schiedsgerichte in den Aussenverträgen der EU. Neue Entwicklungen unter Einbezug der institutionellen Verhandlungen Schweiz–EU’, Jusletter 28 May 2018

This thesis contributes to studying primordial cosmology theories and their detectability in future observations.

To what extent is it possible to utilise traditional and new media data to examine and understand the nature and scope of homicide in Indonesia?

From deepfakes and disinformation to killer robots, surgical robots and AI lawmaking: AI (Artificial Intelligence) is changing our world. That raises the question whether this requires some form of regulation. At eLaw, the Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University, prof. Bart Custers…

What socio-cultural transformations did indigenous communities in the Lesser Antilles undergo from the late precolonial to the early colonial period in response to Amerindian­ European-African cultural encounters? How did Amerindian populations realign themselves in response to the colonisation…

The research presented in this thesis concerns one of the most important questions in software engineering of our time: how can we make sure that software is free from memory safety bugs?

The Europa Instituut is pleased to announce that on 21 November 2016 a new handbook “EU State Aids” (31 Chapters, 1500 pages) was published.

How can we let the sonic speak in public urban environments? What is the function and position of sound in our daily encounters with urbanity? How do we experience cities aurally? This was the topic of Marcel Cobussen's inaugural lecture on November 28th, 2016.

Volume 4 and 5 of the Leiden series 'Dutch Sources on South Asia' are now available, written by Markus Vink (vol.4) and Carolien Stolte (vol.5).

The figure of the barbarian has captivated the Western imagination from Greek antiquity to the present. Since the 1990s, the rhetoric of civilization versus barbarism has taken center stage in Western political rhetoric and the media. But how can the longevity and popularity of this opposition be accounted…

Jochem van den Boogert defended his thesis on 18 November 2015

Surreal Geographies recovers a forgotten archive of Holocaust representation. Examining art, literature, and film produced from the immediate postwar period up to the present moment, Kathryn L. Brackney investigates changing portrayals of Jewish victims and survivors.

Environmental Humanities in the New Himalayas: Symbiotic Indigeneity, Commoning, Sustainability showcases how the eco-geological creativity of the earth is integrally woven into the landforms, cultures, and cosmovisions of modern Himalayan communities.

On 29 June May 2022 Yujing Tan successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This recently released book takes a critical view of conceptual issues and practical problems that inevitably emerge when ‘excellence’ takes center stage in science systems in the Global South. What is ‘excellent science’? And how to recognize and assess it? After decades of inquiry and debate there…

If gifted children are experts in using strategies, why do they experience problems with learning? Why do they underachieve?

Death, fire and identity in North-West Europe

This research cluster is a part of the Institute of Political Science’s research programme ‘Institutions, Decisions and Collective Behaviour’. Its members investigate the drivers of political conflict and various types of crises. They study how citizens, political institutions and international organizations…

Annually the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology awards the Speckmann prize for the best Fieldwork NL report, as well as the most accomplished master’s thesis.