How do insurance products transform intimate and personal relations? What are the consequences of the classifications that insurance companies use and how do these affect solidarity, morality and inequality?

Are you eager to explore traditional and experimental audiovisual methods for ethnographic research? Do you consider translating your research findings into a documentary? Are you highly motivated, committed and hard working? Then Visual Ethnography is the right specialisation for you! Visual Ethnography…

In the master's specialisation Global Ethnography, will follow several courses that aim to make your research project as successful as possible. From writing an academic research proposal to the complex task of writing up data once you return from the field. Each student also receives individual supervision…

Do you want to carry out your own three-month research project? Then Global Ethnography is the path for you! This Master's specialisation allows you to conduct a customised three-month ethnographic field research, learn how to study global issues at the local level, and develop excellent social scientific…

Research on the process and construction of news stories about human rights issues in Latin American newspapers.

This ethnographic research is a joint project with the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, and KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies. It aims to understand the experiences of social inclusion and exclusion of female migrants…

The ‘Locke drawings’ collection and the representation of Brazilian native peoples in global perspective

Audiovisual and Digital Ethnography is a state-of-the-art introduction to this dynamic and growing subject. The authors explain its fundamental aspects in a clear and systematic way.

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

On 18 May 2022, Annelien Bouland defended her thesis 'Please give me my divorce: an ethnography of Muslim women and the law in Senegal'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof.dr. J.M. Otto, Prof.dr. M.M.A. Kaag and Dr.ir. C.I.M. Jacobs.

The purpose of LENS is to foster, coordinate and support research of visual media of analog and digital photography, film, and video, and the visual arts.

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.

A brief review essay on some of the work that has been recently published in the emergent field of digital ethnography.

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.

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A Comparative Anthropology of Commercial Insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

ASLU 27 Sjoerd van der Linde (2012)

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.

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.

How did parties as political organizations emerge?

The Institute of Political Science is a vibrant department with nearly 70 academic staff in Leiden and nearby The Hague.

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.

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…

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.

Social and Behavioural Sciences, Political Science

Profile Area Political Legitimacy, Leiden University

Are you thinking about studying Political Science? Watch the introduction video’s and learn more!

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…

Both play and politics have the potential to create worlds in which new rules apply, meanings are created, and possibilities emerge for collaboration, strategy and creative solutions. In this sense, play and politics have always been very much alike. But what happens to this kinship in a post-digital…

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

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…

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 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.