With the launch of the Albabtain Leiden University Centre for Arabic Culture, Leiden University and the AbdulAziz Saud Al-Babtain Cultural Foundation will join hands in promoting the understanding of Arabic culture. Have a look at the centre's plans for the years ahead.

The European Research Council has awarded five Leiden researchers an ERC Consolidator Grant. These subsidies of up to a maximum of two million euros will enable the researchers to further expand their scientific research.

War and terrorism overshadow interest in the pre-Islamic heritage of the Arabic peninsula. The new Leiden Centre for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to make the general public more aware of the ancient history of this region.

When Petra Sijpesteijn became a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, she was the only Dutch member with an appointment at a Dutch university. Two years later, she is also the only Dutch member of the Austrian Academy and officially joined the British Academy on 7 October.

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.

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.

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.

The Austrian Studies Fund supports the Special Chair for Central European Studies, invites visiting professors from Austria and connects with Austria Centres over the world.

The researchers in the World Archaeology department of the Faculty of Archaeology concentrate on a range of different periods and regions: from humanity’s origins to the Middle Ages and the modern age, and from Asia to South America.

This book is a result of the collective research project Urban Societies in the Port Towns of Atlantic Europe in the Late Middle Ages. It studies the connections between diplomacy and trade from a comparative and transnational perspective throughout medieval Atlantic Europe.

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (the NVIC) was founded in 1971. Nine universities in the Netherlands and Flanders participate in the institute with an aim to stimulating internationalisation of their teaching and research activities in the Middle East.

On the 22nd of February, Ami Okabe successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Ami on this achievement!

Did you know that Arabic was for centuries the lingua franca in an area stretching from the south of Spain to the Chinese border? And that the Middle East under Muslim rule was the world’s beating heart of trade, but also of science and scholarship?

Long-distance Trade in Early Medieval Landscapes (ca. 6th-12th centuries)

Lecture, LIAS After-Lunch Talk Series

Lecture, Lunch Research Seminar

This project intends to provide an integrated linguistic assessment of the hypothesised migration route of the Tocharians.

Lecture, Lectures in Historical Linguistics and Philology

African oral literatures, new media and technologies: challenges for research and documentation

Mazatec chants and ancient Mesoamerican pictography

Explore the intersection of arts, literature, and media in this interdisciplinary research master’s programme. Whether you're interested in medieval manuscripts or modern digital culture, this programme offers the flexibility to tailor your studies to your interests.

Musical instruments are multiple things: they are objects but also means of communication; they are technological and also deeply connected to embodiment through the player; and they leave certain cultural traces (Ricoeur 1975/1984). This research project explores how literary texts from the 19th century…

The "Cognitive Turn" and the Middle Ages - There is an increasing interest in the cognitive sciences and how knowledge from this area influences literary studies, history, art history, and studies in material culture. This meeting seeks to discuss the possibilities, but also the limitations of incorporating…

In March 2020, the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo suddenly had to repatriate 57 students to the Netherlands and Flanders. Director and Arabic specialist Rudolf de Jong decided to stay in Egypt. ‘A lot of the work carries on.’

Dear friends of the NVIC,

Coming semester Karen Vet will be joining our team as the new intern. She has a BA in Middle Eastern Studies from Leiden University, specializing in Arabic language and culture.

The Netherlands Institute in Morocco is moving to a new location in the Moroccan capital, Rabat. Following a complete renovation of the building, the doors of the new NIMAR Rabat will open in September 2016.

This network brings together scholars whose work explores how contemporary frameworks of crisis produce experiences of the present, rehash or disrupt established narratives of the past, and broker specific outlooks on the future. We collaborate in studying these crisis-scapes and exploring how they…

Dr. Joanita Vroom (Near Eastern and Mediterranean archaeology) has been invited to join the prestigious French POMEDOR Project as co-applicant and regional coordinator for Greece and Turkey. The POMEDOR Project focusses on the interaction between population, pottery and food in the Medieval Eastern…

Recently, Valentina Azzarà joined the Faculty of Archaeology as a postdoc in the Archaeology of the Near East research group. She mostly focuses on the archaeology of Eastern Arabia, especially Oman. “I literally fell in love with the place.”

Report on the Excavations of the University of Amsterdam (1988) and the National Museum of Antiquities Leiden (1991-1993) in Syria.

In this book, Peter Akkermans provides a systematic overview of the Halaf culture of the 6 th millennium BC in the Syrian portion of the valley of the Balikh River, a tributary of the Euphrates.

Report on the Excavations of the National Museum of Antiquities Leiden in the Balikh Valley, Syria.

Lexicographical description of Greek; production of Greek-Dutch dictionary

Balikh Valley Archaeological Project Monograph 1 - BAR International Series 468

This volume investigates how loanwords can prove past contact events, taking into consideration ten different regions located in the Philippines, Eastern Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and New Guinea.

In the wake of controversial disclosures of classified government information by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, questions about the democratic status of secret uses of political power are rarely far from the headlines. Despite an increase in initiatives aimed at enhancing government transparency – such…

This project investigates the influence that Arabic (esp. dialectal Arabic) has had on the Berber languages of Northern Africa.

Documenting and describing languages of the world.

On Tuesday, September 16, 2025, Professor Elisheva Baumgarten (Hebrew University) delivered a Keynote Lecture at the Leiden Jewish Studies Network Conference “Care and the Jewish Experience".

Leiden University and the Netherlands National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden) are jointly involved in the intensive archaeological exploration of Northern Syria, by means of field surveys and large-scale excavations at a number of archaeological sites in the Balikh basin: the Tell…

Over 170 people took part in the panel on current events in Iran organized by LUCIS. A bustling crowd of Dutch-Iranians, students, University staff, and others came to listen to the panel of journalists and researchers in the illustrious Lorentzzaal.

Leiden University is home to over a hundred specialists studying the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. From 2017-2018 onwards, they will join forces to offer two new options for specialisation within existing MA programmes: Medieval Studies and Early Modern Studies.

Mariken Teeuwen started at the Institute for History as a professor by special appointment of Script Culture of the Middle Ages on 1 March. ‘I’m looking forward to doing research together with students.’

Online Book Launch

How did Fustat develop between 640 and 750 to become the capital of Egypt? At the time Egypt was a province of the Islamic empire - the caliphate - that had been started by the prophet Muhammad. Original sources used by Arabist Jelle Bruning give new insights into the city. PhD defence on 2 April.