The debate on tax evasion by multinationals is in full swing in many Member States. Last week it was announced that the European Commission has started an investigation into possible illegal State aid from the Netherlands to Nike. It is likely that dozens of other companies are getting away with it.

The Schoof cabinet has several plans that are just not legally feasible. Yet they are often still forced through, knowing, or even hoping, that the courts will intervene. This is dangerous policy that in the long run even undermines trust in politics, the judiciary, and the law itself, argues Armin…

Het Hof van Justitie van de EU maakt duidelijk dat de doorlooptijd bij asielaanvragen in Nederland te traag verloopt. Mark Klaassen, universitair docent migratierecht, zegt in Dagblad Trouw dat personeelstekorten en/of achterstallig onderhoud bij de IND geen reden kunnen zijn voor het verlengen van…

On Friday 26 August 2022, the Dutch cabinet presented its new asylum agreement. According to Assistant Professor Mark Klaassen, the new agreement is barely legal.

On 5 May we celebrate freedom, a basic human right that should not be taken for granted. We asked international students and staff what it means to them.

Lecture

In zijn oratie bepleit Joachim Koops dat de toekomst van Security and Global Affairs ligt in onderzoek, onderwijs en academisch bestuur.

From 16 to 20 June 2025, the Institute of Security and Global Affairs of Leiden University hosted the annual Summer School The European Union, the United Nations and Global Governance in The Hague. The programme brought together recent graduates, PhD students, and young professionals from a variety…

Dr Robert Heinsch and his team of IHL Clinic researchers at the Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum on International Humanitarian Law have won a prestigious Erasmus+ grant for cooperation partnerships in higher education in cooperation with the IHL Clinics at Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany) and Roma Tre University…

Indigenous philosophies have been ignored for too long. This prompted Osiris González Romero to study the wisdom of the Nahua in Mexico. Their philosophy has an important message for the consumption society: see the earth and nature as living beings and not just as resources. PhD defence 22 June.

Yvonne Erkens and Fieke Weber, both from the Department of Labour Law and Social Security, recently organised a panel discussion on behalf of the International Labor Rights Case Law Journal (ILaRC). The discussion took place during the ISLSSL World Congress in Rome and was a huge success.

Jeugdhulpinstanties zijn ernstig tekort geschoten bij hulp aan het mishandeld pleegmeisje uit Vlaardingen, blijkt uit nieuw onderzoeksrapport. Hoogleraar jeugdrecht Mariëlle Bruning schoof aan bij Nieuwsuur: ‘Het gaat om extreem menselijk falen.’

Thousands of Ukrainian children have been transferred to Russia from occupied territories in eastern Ukraine, reports say. Is this, as the government in Kyiv has claimed, an act of genocide? Defined as an intent to destroy a particular group of people, the term genocide was first coined amid the horrors…

Lecture, LIMS seminar

Each year on the university’s birthday, children at primary schools in Leiden and The Hague have a lesson from a professor – about children’s rights and robots in surgery, for example. The children get to do activities. And ask questions: ‘How do you become a professor?’

Companies in Poland employ North Korean forced labourers on a large scale. Some of these companies are supported by the European Union. These are the findings of a research team headed by Leiden Professor of Korean Studies Remco Breuker and employment lawyer Imke van Gardingen. The study is still ongoing…

Political scientist Tom Theuns (Leiden University) has been awarded a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This means that he is recognised as a promising researcher and that he will receive support to develop his ideas further for a period of three years. Theuns will focus on the role…

A pregnant woman from Drenthe will lose her baby directly after it is born. A juvenile court has already ruled during her pregnancy that the infant will go to a foster family. The court believes that the child would risk physical neglect.

Leiden Law School and the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies are very pleased to announce that Dr. Mamadou Hébié will be re-joining the Grotius Centre on the 1st of May 2021.

In 1974 Professor Modderman (founder of the Institute for Prehistory Leiden; predecessor of the present Faculty of Archaeology) executed a small excavation in the city of Oss. The Middle Iron Age cemetery, built over by Roman Period farmhouses, proved to be the start of a unique archaeological regional…

With a special symposium at Museum Boerhaave, ESO celebrated its 60th anniversary on Monday, 26 September. More than 100 scientists, politicians and people from industry were present to look back on collaborations, milestones and discoveries. Leiden astrochemist Ewine van Dishoeck was one of the pre…

Lecture

Cooperation is the solution to international problems, demonstrated the final seminar of the Master Honours Class ‘Smart Regional Integration’ – even when it is sometimes easier said than done. “You can see the students struggle with that.”

On 28 and 29 June researchers from across the EU came together at Leiden Law School for the first MOSE Young Researcher Workshop.

Museum Jan Cunen in Oss presents the very first retrospective exhibition of the richest graves from the early Iron Age (800-500 BC), including the one of the iconic Lord of Oss. Leiden archaeologist Richard Jansen was guest curator and the exhibition tells the story of the funeral rituals of the local…

Landen proberen steeds strengere maatregelen te nemen om minder aantrekkelijk te worden voor asielzoekers. Mark Klaassen, universitair docent vreemdelingenrecht, noemt het Europese asielbeleid in de Volkskrant ‘een race naar beneden.’

An important component of this master consists of extracurricular activities. Get the most out of your programme by taking part in our extracurricular activities.

Universiteit Leiden en Unicef werken al 10 jaar samen om kennis over kinderrechten uit te breiden en te verspreiden. Ze verlengen deze samenwerking.

Debate, Academic Roundtable

Naar aanleiding van de aanhoudende oorlog tussen Rusland en Oekraïne willen verschillende Europese landen een inreisverbod invoeren tegen Russische staatsburgers. Maar mogen zij dit zomaar doen?

Since the horrific events of October 7, 2023, Leiden students have grappled with difficult questions about Israel, Gaza and Israel/Palestine conflict more generally. Drawing on her expertise in the history of the Jewish experience in the diaspora and beyond, Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey has held multiple…

On Sunday, November 9 2025, Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey presented a film at the “Eastern Neighbors” Film Festival in The Hague.

Bernhard Brandl, the new Leiden Professor of Infrared Astronomy, is developing instruments for the world’s largest telescopes. These telescopes can be used to observe objects in space that are more than 13 billion years old. Brandl will deliver his inaugural lecture on 26 September.

Lecture

The ERC project 'Food citizens?' is a comparative analysis of a growing phenomenon in Europe: collective food procurement, namely networks of people who organize direct food production, distribution, and consumption.

The first full-colour images of the cosmos from ESA's space telescope Euclid were presented today. Never before has a telescope been able to take such crystal-clear astronomical images of such a large part of the sky and so far into the deep universe. The five images illustrate Euclid's full potential;…

To be eligible for European and International Human Rights Law Law, you must meet the admission requirements as listed on this page.

Gerrard Boot and Yvonne Erkens attended the annual conference of the European Association of Labour Court Judges (EALCJ) which was held from 12 to 14 June in Warsaw, Poland.

Dr Amy Strecker (Heritage Dept., Faculty of Archaeology) has recently been awarded a LGI BREED grant to develop her project on property and spatial justice in international law. Building on her previous research into landscape protection from cultural heritage, environmental and human rights perspectives…

Het asielbeleid blijft een hoofdpijndossier voor het kabinet. Een akkoord zou bereikt zijn waarin iedere partij een kleine concessie zou doen. De VVD gaat uiteindelijk toch niet akkoord met deze nieuwe asielwet die gemeentes kan dwingen om asielzoekers op te vangen. De VVD fractie heeft moeite met ‘dwang’…

PhD defence

On 15 June 2023, the book presentation for the ‘Panta Rhei: recht en duurzaamheid’ (Panta Rhei: law and sustainability) was held at the Oude Sterrenwacht in Leiden. The book provides an overview of research in the field of sustainability conducted at Leiden Law School and was compiled by Yvonne Erkens,…

On 11 November 2016, The Hague Law Labs and the department of Constitutional and Administrative Law, in collaboration with the Italian Association for European and Comparative Law, will organise ‘The Dutch Constitution Beyond 200: tradition and innovation in a multilevel legal order'.

Over the past two centuries, the concept of human dignity has moved from the fringes to the centre of the international legal system. This book is the first single-authored detailed historical, theoretical and legal investigation of human dignity as a normative value, the intellectual sources that shaped…

Professor David Fontijn is fascinated by the question why people destroy objects that are dear to them. It is a phenomenon that you find everywhere in the world, gaining particular strength in the European Bronze Age. Fontijn wrote a book on this ‘economy of destruction’, published by Routledge.

Political scientist Wouter Veenendaal (Leiden University) has been awarded a Vidi grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This enables him to further develop his innovative line of research on and set up a research group in the coming five years. Veenendaal et al. will analyse the democratic consequences…

On 3 December 2019 Hanna Bosdriesz defended her dissertation on the fight against impunity for grave human rights violations in Latin America.

The European Court of Human Rights has published a Case-law Guide on Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Case-law Guides series presents the Court’s major judgments, organised by Convention article.

On 13 September 2017, Tess de Jong defended her PhD Thesis: 'Procedurele waarborgen in materiële EVRM-rechten'. The supervisors are prof. mr. T. (Tom) Barkhuysen and prof. mr. Y.E. (Ymre) Schuurmans.

On Tuesday 24 April 2018, Nick Clegg, who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, gave a guestlecture to first year students public administration about the profound dilemmas on Brexit. The lecture was part of a political science course within the Bachelor Public Administration of Leiden…