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

This dissertation provides a description of the phonology and morphology of Mambay, an Adamawa (Niger-Congo) language spoken by 15,000 people in Chad and Cameroon.

How does the presence of internally displaced people impact on the justice and security concerns of longer-term residents in host communities, and to what extent do residents have different concerns than displaced?

This thesis presents a detailed description of the phonology, the tone system and the grammar of Liko, a Bantu language spoken by about 70,000 people in the northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It provides numerous examples.

The book reinterprets the role of the UN during the Congo crisis from 1960 to 1964, presenting a multidimensional view of the organisation.

Since its inception, a central preoccupation of and for the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been the nature of its relationship to national jurisdictions. Complementarity—the idea that the Court is intended to supplement, not supplant, national jurisdictions—has been the dominant juridical logic…

Pursuing Whiteness in the Colonies offers a new comprehension of colonial history from below by taking remnants of individual agencies from a whiteness studies perspective. It highlights the experiences and perceptions of colonisers and how they portrayed and re-interpreted their identities in Afric…

From May to November 2017 the Van Vollenhoven Institute will carry out a research project, funded by NWO/WOTRO, on ‘Everyday justice and security provision for displaced and residents in Bukavu, DR Congo’.

Lecture

The book reinterprets the role of the UN during the Congo crisis from 1960 to 1964, presenting a multidimensional view of the organisation.

Lecture

Lecture

On 25 Februarry 2021 Hart Bloomsbury brings out a monograph by Frans-Willem Korsten: Arts as an Interface of Law and Justice: Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption. Its working title was 'Annoyance' but that did not sell. A sign in itself; most struggles for justice have been considered as annoying.

How should the international community of states respond to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity? How can the perpetrators of international crimes be brought to justice? How can international crimes be prevented? How can the international community of states promote international consensus…

PhD Defence

Lecture, Contemporary History and International Relations Research Seminar

Since August 2013, Alanna O’Malley is the new Assistant Professor for International Studies at the Institute for History, Leiden University.

This research programme seeks to understand the dynamics in the relationship between social media, mobile telephony and the social fabric under duress in Africa's mobile margins. It combines studies on mobility/migration, conflict and communication in an attempt to uncover these new dynamics, which…

Research in the History and International Studies 1900-present specialisation addresses the interconnectedness and interdependence of contemporary global political, economic and cultural developments from a multidisciplinary perspective which is rooted in the humanities.

This book presents the first comprehensive description of Tafi, one of the fourteen Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages, spoken by approximately 4,400 people in the southeastern part of Ghana. The description consists of thirteen chapters and is based on a corpus gathered during two fieldwork periods…

Meike de Goede has received a research grant of €14,600 from the Gerda Henkel Foundation for her research on the post-colonial silencing of anti-colonial resistance in Congo-Brazzaville.

'Refugees often have to run for their lives. In Leiden, we run to raise money to support them and to contribute to their education.' With these words Leiden biology student and and former refugee from Congo Lesage Munyemana, calls out to sponsor teams for the Leiden Science Run.

Alanna O'Malley has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to the United States from August 2017 to February 2018.

The international regime governing displacement shows a number of gaps, most notably with regard to (internally) displaced people who are not covered by the definition of refugee of the Refugee Convention. These protection gaps translate into solution gaps for displaced people.

Sam de Schutter recently started working as a PhD candidate in the ERC project 'Rethinking Disability: the Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in Historical Perspective'.

The Platform for Postcolonial Readings is organized by Elisabeth Bekers (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Sarah De Mul (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), Isabel Hoving (Universiteit Leiden), and Liesbeth Minnaard (Universiteit Leiden).

The center studies the many ways in which issues of law and justice are dealt with in art and literature with a focus on liminal issues and cases. These are issues and cases where law comes to the limits of what it is capable of dealing with and art and literature explore the implications of what is…

Understanding the complexities of world affairs requires an ability to think critically and to draw insights from a variety of perspectives, sources, and analytic frames. Leiden University’s Master of Arts in International Relations addresses these needs through distinctive humanities-based training…

Leiden University will be recording a brand-new series of podcasts in 2019: Science Shots. Our top scientists will talk about their research in less than 15 minutes. Tip: something to enjoy on the train journey between Leiden and The Hague, our two University cities!

On 17 May 2018, a delegation of LUC students from all different majors, coordinated by Dr. Joris Larik, participated in the Roosevelt Awards Laureates Dialogue Event at Nieuwspoort in The Hague (‘Roosevelt in The Hague 2018’).

Dr. Alanna O’Malley, from the Institute for History, has been awarded a research grant of €12,000 from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, based in Dusseldorf, Germany. The Foundation supports scientific projects in the field of humanities that have a specialist scope and are limited in time. Dr. O’Malley’s…

The new special issue on non-western non-state diplomacy, edited by Natalia Grincheva and Robert Kelley, is available online now and contains two Forum essays, four articles and two book reviews.

Since 2017 guest researcher Gerrit de Wit has been working together with Congolese linguists and the Boa community to develop the oral Boa language into a written one. He tells us about 2 unique projects, which are steadily unearthing and describing the structure of a new language.

From help with filling in complex forms to a buddy who will introduce you to student life. The Meeting Point for refugee students meets many needs. This was the finding of experienced experts at the symposium in honour of the one-year anniversary of the Meeting Point.

At the Institute’s Council meeting of last December the Institute’s biannual prize for teaching was awarded. The award is named after Carla Musterd, a former, highly valued, member of staff, who was famous for her unflinching dedication to teaching standards and excellence.

Are you interested in meeting Bede Sheppard, Human Rights Watch’s Deputy Director of the Children’s Rights Department? Bede will be at LUC on Thursday the 26th of May for the #WatchOurSchools event in the auditorium, and we are giving our students the chance to meet with him before. In order to win…

Every month a member of the Institute for History tells about a book that inspired him or her. Afterwards, the pen is passed on to another colleague. This month dr. Meike de Goede tells about the book 'Between Tides' by Valentin Mudimbe. The novel, little known beyond the circles of Africanists and…

Sam de Schutter won the Brill/Diplomatica Mattingly Prize 2019 for his article “A Global Approach to Local Problems? How to Write a Longer, Deeper, and Wider History of the International Year of Disabled Persons in Kenya”. We asked him some questions about the research he is doing that has led to this…

On 17th December, the Global Compact on Refugees has been adopted at the UN General Assembly. One of the central goals of the Compact on Refugees is to improve the protection and resilience of refugees and to enhance trust and cooperation between refugees and host communities. With the new EU-funded…

What is a refugee? This question might seem easy to answer, but it is not, concludes Catherina Wilson. For 7 years she did research in The Democratic Republic of the Congo near the Ubangi river, on refugees from the Central African Republic. The research shows that among refugees there exists a wide…

This was the question Leiden researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences CML posed in an article published last week in the journal Resources, Conservation, Recycling

On 29 June 2018, Jan Michiel Otto, professor of Law and Governance in Developing Countries and director of the Van Vollenhoven Institute until 2018, delivered his valedictory lecture entitled De ander als spiegel: reflecties over recht en bestuur in ontwikkelingslanden (The Other as a Mirror. Reflections…

Prof. Julia Sloth-Nielsen has been awarded the Schim van der Loeff grant by the Leiden University Fund to conduct research on unaccompanied migrant children in Zambia.

During an open debate in the UN Security Council on the topic of peacekeeping and human rights, the project "Protection of Civilians in UN Peace Operations" co-directed by prof.dr. Joachim Koops was mentioned.

On World Refugee Day, held every year on 20 June, we commemorate the strength, courage and perseverance of millions of refugees. Leiden University is committed to students with a refugee background. For example, the university has set up a Meeting Point and the Leiden Science Run raises money for UAF,…

From virtual education to a friendly meeting place where refugees and Dutch students can get to know one another. Investing in refugees is in the interest of the whole of our society. This was the message of the students who opened the Academic Year of Leiden University on 5 September.

Lecture, Seminar

We would all like to live in a world in which individuals feel safe, conflicts are resolved peacefully and the interests of future generations are taken into consideration. At Leiden University legal scholars investigate to what extent public international law meets the needs of a globalised society.…

We regularly publish reviews of recent books on diplomacy. For more information, contact the Book Reviews Editors Constance Duncombe and Sophie Vériter.