Africa has a population of 1.5 billion people. In 30 years’ time, this will be 2.5 billion. The continent’s impact on the global economy, but also on the environment, will therefore increase drastically.

Political scientist Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden University) explains why Mozambique is not (yet) a success story.

The research master's in African Studies at Leiden University is unique in continental Europe for the interdisciplinary range of subjects offered and the variety of perspectives.

The master’s in African Studies at Leiden University is an advanced area studies qualification that combines world-class scholarship with practice-based learning.

How did African actors engage with the idea of Eurafrica?

This Collaborative Research Group acts primarily as a platform for discussion of historical issues related to the African continent, its place in the world and in African Studies.

In the last couple of decades an ‘animal turn’ has taken place in the social sciences. This has led to a call to study social issues by including non-human animal perspectives. This Collaborative Research Group thinks it's high time that African Studies joins the chorus of minds that try to contribute…

Do you have an open-minded and unprejudiced worldview and do you want to get the know the African continent? In the Dutch-taught Bachelor's programme African Languages and Cultures you will dive into the fascinating culture, history and literature of Africa, and you will learn how to read and speak…

Politics, governance and law form a triangle of themes defining power and the production of power. The themes constitute a crucial domain in African societies and economies, reinvigorated by contemporary new forms of youth politics across the continent.

Humanities, Institute for History

Conference

African oral literatures, new media and technologies: challenges for research and documentation

Madeleine Hosli, Professor of International Relations at Leiden University, together with two other authors, wrote a chapter in Group Politics in UN Multilateralism. This chapter assesses the composition and functioning of the African Union (AU) within the United Nations.

Published by Brill Nijhoff and written by leading experts including national judges, academics and practitioners East African Community Law is the first comparative as well as open access textbook on EAC law. The book provides a key resource for the research, teaching, and practice of EAC law. It also…

How do Central African refugees navigate through uncertainty in a new and hostile environment in the DR Congo?

African Studies Centre Leiden

The ASCL Research Programme for the years 2019-2024 is called ‘Strident Africa: Societal and Environmental Change in the Context of 50 Centuries of History’. It examines the dramatic changes taking place on the continent in terms of population growth, urbanization, the role of external actors and the…

The eleven innovative essays in this volume explore the notion that all forms of modern mass politics, including liberal democracies, need such a form of sacralization of politics to function.

The project Multimedia Research and Documentation of African Oral Genres: Connecting Diasporas and Local Audiences (Director: D.Merolla) focuses on multimedia as technology that allows scholars to share documentation and scientific knowledge with the cultural owners of the collected oral genres.

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.

Promotores: H.A. Udo de Haes, H.H.T. Prins, Co-promotor: H.H. de Iongh

Political scientist Matthew Longo (Leiden University) takes a detailed look at the evolution of border security in the United States after 9/11. Far from the walls and fences that dominate the news, he reveals borders to be thick, multi-faceted and binational institutions that have evolved greatly in…

The Leiden Political Economy Group (L-PEG) is a multi-disciplinary network of scholars with a research interest in (comparative / global) political economy based at Leiden University. Our members belong to various institutes and faculties across Leiden University, and from other universities across…

The Leiden Lectures in Media | Art | Politics (MAP) is a series of talks organized by Pepita Hesselberth and Yasco Horsman. Speakers from various academic backgrounds and in different stages of their careers reflect on diverging ways in which technological and social changes challenge and transform…

The research group on terrorism and political violence studies the phenomena of terrorism-related and other politically motivated violence.

This book celebrates Maarten Mous, professor of African Linguistics at Leiden University.

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A comparative anthropology of commercial insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

Political scientist Corinna Jentzsch received an NWO Veni grant for her research on the conditions of collaboration between militias and state forces and its consequences for safety and political order.

Political scientist Maurits de Jongh (Leiden University/Sciences Po) argues that political liberalism is self-defeating as a framework of justification for liberal conceptions of justice. He explores how the framework's self-imposed criterion of acceptability in the eyes of all reasonable citizens leads…

Why obey the state? Dorota Mokrosińska presents a fresh analysis of the most influential theories of political obligation and develops a novel approach to this foundational problem of political philosophy, an intriguing combination of the elements of natural duty and associative theories.

In African societies today, growing inequality and continued exclusion due to ethnicity, gender, religion, disability or sexual orientation give rise to both contestation and cooperation for social change. How does the written or spoken word lead to collaboration and contestation in areas of social…

The Centre for the Study of Political Parties and Representation (CSPPR) is an interdisciplinary platform for scholars of Leiden University focusing on the historical and contemporary operation and functioning of political parties, with a particular emphasis on the causes and consequences of the changing…

Politics is about the authorised allocation of values: who gets what, when and how much? This question is relevant at many different levels, in many different places and in very different ways.

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

Profile Area Political Legitimacy, Leiden University

This dissertation offers a reconstruction of the propositional contents of the writings of Karl Popper, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt while bringing these into discussion with their performative meanings, such as polemical forms of reasoning, analogical and metaphorical uses of language, and hidden…

We are very happy to welcome you to spend the fall semester, spring semester or full academic year studying with us at the Institute of Political Science Leiden or campus The Hague. Here you will find practical information as an exchange student.

In what ways do historical and current events affect how we should judge the legitimacy of political authorities?

As of 1 September Jan-Bart Gewald has been appointed as Professor of Southern African History in the Leiden Institute for History, in conjunction with the African Studies Centre, Leiden.

On 27 September 2017 a new book by Prof. Luuk van Middelaar appeared, entitled The new politics of Europe. The book is at the same time a front line account of Europe’s recent crisis years – from monetary turmoil to tensions around Ukraine, from refugee crisis to Brexit – and an analysis of the Union’s…

This volume challenges the idea that the development of ‘democracy’ is a story of rise and progress at all. It is rather a story of continuous but never completely satisfying attempts of interpreting the rule of the people.

Hegemony and World Order explores a key question for our tumultuous times of multiple global crises.

The research group Politics, Culture and National Identities 1789-present investigates a wide range of national political cultures in Europe and the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries. Instead of only analyzing high politics (the acts of governments and political parties), the research group focuses…

Choice is at the very heart of politics. War or peace, left or right, liberty or security, sovereignty or integration, consensus or conflict—choices matter. Choice is also key to your education. Choose an intellectually challenging programme in which you develop your knowledge and expertise in the study…

This research cluster is a part of the Institute of Political Science’s research programme ‘Institutions, Decisions and Collective Behaviour’. Its members study the design and functioning of Dutch political institutions as well as attitudes and behaviour of political elites and citizens.

The Centre for Political Philosophy (CPP) at Leiden University is an interdisciplinary platform for political thought. It aims to bring together all those with an active interest in the field from different institutes, branches and fields of study at Leiden University.