The pre-master's is a bridging programme for students who have applied for the MA Literary Studies but who, according to the Board of Admissions, still have deficiencies in their educational background. Once you have completed the pre-master’s programme, you will be admitted to the relevant specialization…

Leiden University offers ambitious students a rich environment in which to reach their potential.

French is a global language. It is spoken on every continent and serves as an official language for many international organizations (NATO, UN, WHO). In this minor, you improve your language skills, study French from a linguistic perspective, and immerse yourself in the rich global Francophone culture…

The wide-ranging interests of the Dutch archeologist Maurits van Loon -prehistory, art history, and ancient history - are reflected in these papers, which commemorate his 30 years of archeological research in the Near East

The research project MAXCAP: Maximizing the integration capacity of the European Union: Lessons and prospects for enlargement and beyond starts with a critical analysis of the effects of the 2004-2007 enlargement on stability, democracy and prosperity of candidate countries, on the one hand, and the…

Moving to a different city as a student can be a daunting prospect, let alone to a different country. Each year, many students come to Leiden, and many find a home away from home thanks to the Humanities Master’s Buddy Programme. Kathleen Burke and Victor Jarzargaray experienced it first-hand. “It’s…

On 17 March Renate Dekker was awarded the Cardinal Willebrand Prize for her MPhil thesis on 'The Sahidic Encomium of Pesunthios, bishop of Keft: towards a new understanding, based on a recently discovered manuscript.'

At LUCIS we offer a varied programme of scholarly meetings (conferences, workshops) which reflect our multidisciplinary and comparative view on Islam and Muslim societies in past and present.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of the Faculty of Humanities with two partners in Uzbekistan.

LIAS has a School of Asian Studies (SAS), a School of Middle-Eastern Studies (SMES) and a School of Religious Studies (LUCSoR). These designations, and the fields within them, remain foundational to our work. At the same time, the academic community benefits from the presence of cross-regional networks…

A project aimed at understanding the complicated process of religious transformation in one of the centres of the early Muslim world.

Why follow the Middle Eastern Studies programme? Because it will improve your insight, expertise, and understanding of the region, the central debates and issues, and its interconnections with other regions, global issues, and processes. And why at Leiden University? Because thanks to our experts, expertise,…

Conference

How did ancient Greeks and Romans regard work?

Objects, Appropriation and Cultural Change

The Register of Early Modernists aims to facilitate collaboration between early modern researchers at Leiden University.

This is the first comprehensive commentary on a section of Xenophon's Anabasis in English for almost a century.

Neo-Baroque construction and deconstruction of the concepts of paradise in fiction.

This book examines how renewed forms of artistic activism were developed in the wake of the neoliberal repression since the 1980s.

This study presents a re-evaluation of Malay adventure stories.

Inspired by a critical reconsideration of current monolithic approaches to the study of Greek religion, this book argues that ancient Greeks displayed a disquieting capacity to validate two (or more) dissonant, if not contradictory, representations of the divine world in a complementary rather than…

D.P. Kok defended his thesis on 10 October 2017

Haneen Omari defended her thesis on 29 October 2019

Learn the newest insights from established scholars.

This MA explores contemporary literature and culture—art, film, pop music—through critical and theoretical lenses, including feminist theory, phenomenology, and ecocriticism. Key themes include diversity, interculturality, popular culture, and the intersection of culture, politics, and justice.

What do you do if you have a book from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, but you suspect that the binding contains a fragment of a medieval manuscript? University lecturer Thijs Porck has received an NWO grant to experiment with a camera attached to a tube. 'The project boils down to keyhole surgeries…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

The Center participates in East European Politics, one of the major political science journals focusing on the contemporary post-communist space.

The Passion in Profession series features researchers who are specialised in Islamic, Middle Eastern and Central Asian studies. With the series, LUCIS aims to show what inspires them in their work by highlighting an object or concept that they feel passionate about.

Funded by NWO, this project explores how environmental conservation initiatives in the Eastern Himalayas intersect with the cultural expectations of ‘indigenous’ ethno-linguistic minorities. Focusing on human–more than human relationships and their implications for the future (‘futuring’), the project…

Many thanks for visiting the Master’s Open Day on Friday 15 March! We hope that you enjoyed the day and that all your questions were answered.

The MA in Middle Eastern Studies provides intensive and comprehensive training to prepare you for a range of careers requiring specialist language, cultural, or political knowledge.

Arabist and papyrologist Petra Sijpesteijn has received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council for her research on the early Islamic Empire. The five-year ERC grant will fund the research project

The main objective of this research is to map out the cities of the Roman Near East in the imperial period, with a focus on location, city size and urban features, in order to study the form the urban system and its levels of integration.

The archaeological heritage of South America is facing increasing threats due to the expansion of agricultural activities, infrastructure expansion, illegal wood harvesting, and the current fire emergency plaguing the Amazon and other biomes of the continent.

This project seeks to create a research group to explore the uses and meanings of memory in ancient cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East. It capitalises on the broad interest in memory in the humanities and social sciences and provides a forum for researchers to reflect on the processes of…

This special issue of the Journal of European Policy presents results from the research on the European Union Enlargement and its Integration Capacity. The Journal of European Public Policy is one of the leading journals in this field.

Workshop

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University with the American University in Cairo.

Annual Meeting

LUCAS hosts a wide variety of research. Here we outline some of the most important research themes.

Lecture, Lectures in Historical Linguistics and Philology

Lecture, LIAS After-Lunch Talk Series