The decades around 1800 constitute the seminal period of European nationalism. The lin­guistic corollary of this was the rise of standard language ideology, from Finland to Spain, and from Iceland to the Habsburg Empire. Amidst these international events, the case of Dutch in the Netherlands offers…

My research project focuses on the development of a popular national agency in late nineteenth century Amsterdam and the question how ‘ordinary’ citizens imagined ‘the Netherlands’ through the experience and use of their urban surroundings.

Adopting a largely chronological approach, Gerrits links the historiography of post-war Europe and the major theoretical approaches to nationalism with analysis of key historical developments and events.

Bandura Witharana defended his thesis on 27 September 2018

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…

In case of registration of more than one team from the same country a National Pre-Selection Round is necessary, because a country can only be represented by one team.

This dissertation describes the history of the Ottoman county of Foçateyn as a case study of the process of transition from the Ottoman Empire to nation states.

This project explores the community of engineers in Sri Lanka and their role with regard to three domains of inquiry.

Material outflows from industrial economies.

What is nationalism and how can we study it from a historical perspective? Writing the History of Nationalism answers this question by examining eleven historical approaches to nationalism studies in theory and practice.

Building projects Real Estate Department

Leiden University is realizing a new and sustainable building with state of the art research and educational facilities for the Faculty of Science: the Gorlaeus Building. The new sustainable building will stimulate academic cooperation and knowledge sharing.

The first phase of the Gorlaeus Building has been completed and it is in use by the Faculty of Science since 2016. During the second phase we will further develop the building, which will get a nice, characteristic entrance. In January 2021, out of three candidates, one contractor was selected: construction…

The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, in consultation with the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), provides funding for the Netherlands National Sector Plan Law, part of the domain ‘Social Sciences and Humanities’.

Making sure our buildings are sustainable will contribute to Dutch and European environmental standards. Leiden University meets these standards in all its building projects.

During the development of the Humanities Campus, many aspects of sustainability are combined. For example:

The Role of Law in Libya’s National Reconciliation (RoLLNaR) was a research project that ran from 2017 to 2020. It identified and assessed the role of law – both actual and potential, enabling and constraining – with regard to major challenges of reconciliation in Libya. The project was led by Dr. Suliman…

This study seeks to partially fill the knowledge gap about national culture in Africa, basing its research on data on ethnolinguistic groups (instead of administrative regions).

The refurbished P.J. Veth Building - the first completed sub-project in the Humanities Campus project - was officially opened in the summer of 2017. The Faculty of Humanities moved in straight away. . The building was meticulously transformed into a modern teaching building with attractive areas for…

The nation-state is not so old as we are often told, nor has it come to be quite so naturally. Getting this history right means telling a different story about where our international political order has come from—which in turn points the way to an alternative future.

This project will explore how Chinese digital networks are grounded in real-world institutions, and how interest groups and individuals use digital infrastructures to shape public discourse on national history.

The main aim of this project is to reveal and unravel the invisible histories of the UN, transcending the dominant Western perspective to recover the historical agency of Global South actors. The research will investigate how the UN has both facilitated and limited their role in shaping global order…

In the track Intelligence and National Security you will be introduced to intelligence and security services in their political, societal, and bureaucratic contexts. The track will give you a thorough understanding of the modus operandi of these agencies, their interaction with the surrounding world,…

How do videos, movies and documentaries dedicated to indigenous communities transform the media landscape of South Asia? Based on extensive original research, this book examines how in South Asia popular music videos, activist political clips, movies and documentaries about, by and for indigenous communities…

This project focuses on urban commercial space in Roman Italy and deals with the impact of economic growth on urban communities in the late Republic and the Imperial period (200 BCE – 300 CE).

On 3 December 2019, Meda Couzens defended her thesis 'The application of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by national courts'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. T. Liefaard and Prof. J.J. Sloth-Nielsen.

The Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, the Africa Museum in Berg en Dal and Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden merged in April 2014 to create the National Museum of World Cultures. Together the three museums are custodians of over 370,000 objects and almost 1,000,000 photographs drawn from across the world. Bringing…

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.

Large carnivore population is globally declining as a result of the fragmentation of habitat, large prey depletion and retaliatory killing by pastoralists.

The Tragedy Of The Stupid Nation retraces three decades of political instability during which the people of the Central African Republic suffered from several waves of violence that led to the breakdown of the social cohesion between the different communities (first along ethnic, then along religious…

Investigate why and how people mobilise around group identities, as well as the institutional arrangements for resolving or reducing ethnic conflict.

State Building Through Life Stories: Incorporating Local Perspectives

A new website has been set up that provides information about the government funded Law Sector Plan in the Netherlands, including the plans of the participating universities and developments within the agreed themes.

For the Netherlands, like many other European countries, the nineteenth century was a period of strengthening national identity. Anne Petterson describes how 'the ordinary people' of Amsterdam expressed their patriotic feelings differently from how the elite had hoped. PhD defence 24 January.

This PhD-thesis presents a study on micron-sized particles, so-called colloids. By controlling the chemical and physical properties of these particles, such as the interparticle interaction and the particles’ shape, colloids can act as building blocks that self-assembly into larger structures.

In the master’s programme Politics, Culture and National Identities, 1789 to the Present at Leiden University you will be at the forefront of a new approach to understand how national politics and identities in Europe are conceived.

The Summer School ‘The European Union, the United Nations and Global Governance’ will focus on a range of topics relevant to interactions between the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) and the EU’s role within current patterns of global governance.

Zeynep Sarlak defended her thesis on 25 August 2020

This research studies the future perspectives for Malaysian space law. It aims at demonstrating the development of Malaysian outer space activities inclusive of her status with respect to United Nations space conventions and her membership of international and regional space-related organizations.

This dissertation gives an ethnographic account of Kurdish dengbêj narrative from a theorethical perspective.