Institutes

All research at Leiden University is organised into institutes. To do justice to the wide spectrum of research (and consequently teaching) that comes from these, you will find descriptions of all the Leiden institutes on these pages.

Some institutes correspond with a particular discipline: philosophy, physics, political science or linguistics. Others cannot be reduced to a single field, but instead encompass several disciplines within a particular thematic strand. For instance, the Leiden Institute of Area Studies, the Africa Studies Centre, the Institute of Security Studies and Global Affairs or University College The Hague, which focuses on global challenges. And the Faculty of Medicine is almost a university in itself.

But even those institutes that do focus on a single discipline are considerably wider in range than they may seem at a first glance. Anyone tempted to think that the Institute for History only studies Dutch history will, on closer inspection, see the in-depth research into globalisation and global change, and important processes such as migration, colonialism, urbanisation and identity formation.

Or Leiden Institute of Chemistry, for example, where half of the researchers focus on gaining a better molecular understanding of the biological processes that lead to diseases such as hereditary conditions and neurogenerative diseases, while the other half develop new materials and processes that are required for the transition from fossil fuels to sustainable alternatives.

These texts give an idea of the depth of the research. For an idea of the breadth of the research and how Leiden researchers work together on interdisciplinary challenges, please see the research dossiers.