“What exactly is the arranged marriage?” That is the central question that this book evolves around. The author argues that the arranged marriage is often misrepresented in academic literature as it is generally analyzed through a Eurocentric lens. This is not neutral lens. The Eurocentric frame perceives the free-choice marriage system as the ideal. As a result, the arranged marriage is perceived to be a lesser marital tradition, a “marriage of shortcomings”, one that fails to meet t...

This text was presented as inaugural speech, held on the occasion of accepting the chair of Social Resilience and Security with a study focus on Violence and Interventions at Leiden University on May 30, 2022.

The prevalence of the rules and practices on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments gradually blurs the dividing line between ‘recognition’ and ‘enforcement’.

However, recognition is not an afterthought of enforcement. Recognition of Foreign Judgments explores how the courts in the selected jurisdictions, namely the European Union, England and Wales, and the United States, decide whether and to what extent to grant some preclusive effects to foreign judgments, while giv...

In a globalizing world, national borders are frequently crossed. Moreover, flexibility is a key skill in the knowledge economy of the 21st century. Accordingly, an increasing number of workers can be labelled as ‘highly mobile’, which are persons that combine various forms of work (on-call contracts, employment agency work, platform-work, teleworking etc.) that are carried out in several countries.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of a current and pressing problem for an increasing...

In Interwoven Histories: Contemporary Art, Migratory Narratives and Textiles curator and textile researcher Christel Vesters unravels the intricate connections between textile, history and society from a contemporary art perspective. Through essays and detailed examination of five seminal works of contemporary art, she looks at textile and textile techniques as a medium and as a mediator, exploring how textile objects – old and new – bear witness to histories and stories that are often m...

Corporate Art Collections have been initiated and curated to educate staff, stimulate creative and out-of-the-box thinking, improve brand image, and express corporate cultural responsibility through support for artists and the art world. Yet while Corporate Art Collections are an important part of the international cultural and art worlds, their position, significance and agency in those realms are rarely considered in its transnational entirety. The usual perspective is either within nationa...

Constantijn Huygens was a poet, composer and connoisseur of art and the classics. He was also secretary and confidant to three princes of Orange for 62 years. Hofwijck was also the place where Constantijn’s son Christiaan spent a significant part of his life. Christiaan Huygens was a member of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge and became one of the greatest inventors and scientists.

At the end of his life, at Hofwijck, he wrote Cosmotheoros, his magnum op...

Prometheus was punished by the supreme god Zeus for giving to mankind the Olympic fire with which they learned to think and feel. He was chained to a cliff in the Caucasus, where, to make matters worse, he was visited daily by an eagle who ate part of his liver. At night, however, his liver grew back. We now know that the liver can regenerate, but were the ancient Greeks aware of this quality?

The myth of Prometheus has been a source of inspiration for many visual artists over the centuries....

This dissertation is an invitation to the reader to explore Güzel İzmir / Beautiful İzmir in Turkey. Through three different semi-fictional narratives, it aims to draw attention to specific and singular spaces as they were recorded and remembered through old postcards, black and white photographs, stories, and written travelogues in the past centuries and decades. Thus, it wants to discuss the specificity of an eastern Mediterranean port city by addressing it on eye-level through the exper...

In the Chinese Revolution of 1925–27 the Communist International played a very great role, depicted in this book quite comprehensively. We would, however, seek in vain in the library of the Communist International for a single book which attempts in any way to give a rounded picture of the Chinese Revolution. Instead, we find scores of “conjunctural” works’ which docilely reflect each zigzag in the politics of the Communist International, or, more correctly, of Soviet diplomacy in Chi...