On Monday 23 January 2023 J.T.P. (Hans) de Bruijn passed away at the age of 91. Until 1995 he held the Chair of New Persian Language and Culture at Leiden University.

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.

What if a major world event alters the trajectory of your research project? Tsolin Nalbantian was studying citizenship along the Turkish-Syrian border when the Syrian Civil War erupted and led to a global refugee crisis. While her research participants were forced to flee the region, she was forced…

Hifadhi ya Dijiti ya Ustadh Mau

One of the three long-term research interests of our group concerns the Transformation of the Roman World (c AD 450-900).

Democracy in Action is a Horizon Europe-funded initiative exploring how grassroots movements, cultural spaces, and digital innovations can strengthen democratic participation. With a special focus on youth, women, ethnic minorities and night culture, we bring together researchers, grassroots movements,…

During this course, specialists from Leiden University and beyond will provide instruction on issues of editing, paleography and conservation of oriental manuscripts. They will also speak about philology, literacy and orality and the transmission of knowledge in the Islamic manuscript culture, presenting…

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Thousands of students and researchers from eight partner universities in the Netherlands and Flanders have been able to gain valuable experience in Egypt through the institute. Good reason for a celebrat…

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.’

The skin has recently gained attention within body studies for its many specific cultural and social associations, in addition to its biology. This project aims to examine the different layers of meaning and the functions invested in the skin in ancient Greece: how did ancient Greek literary and medical…

LUCAS members are experts in the fields of literary history and theory, film and media studies, and art, architectural, and book history.

Links to various Digital Humanities organizations and resources, mainly in English.

To what end and how does Plautus constantly underline the Helleni(sti)c provenance of his art? How does this aspect relate the author’s originality?

Do you want to know more about the Bachelor of Linguistics, and experience what it’s like to study in Leiden? Leiden University offers you a variety of introductory activities to help you with your choice of study:

If you’re considering the Philosophy: Global and Comparative Perspectives bachelor’s programme and would like to experience what it’s like to study in Leiden University, introductory activities that include an Open Day, Experience Day, Online Experience and Student for a Day, will help you make up your…

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

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

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

If you’re considering the Arts, Media and Society bachelor’s programme and would like to experience what it’s like to study at Leiden University, introductory activities such as an Open Day, Experience Day, Online Experience and Student for a Day, will help you make up your mind.

The multidisciplinary one-year master’s programme in North American Studies provides students with comprehensive knowledge of North American history, literature, film, and culture and their connection to contemporary social, political, literary and cultural developments in an international perspecti…

This project investigates how the first generation of Dutch printed books (the incunabula, 1473-1501) affected late medieval spirituality, religious practice and visual culture in the Low Countries.

The Israel-Palestine conflict regularly sparked intense debates in university lecturer Noa Schonmann's classes. She decided to start a podcast with journalist Rajaa Natour to teach her students to have deep and difficult conversations in a nuanced way.

How should the Quran be read? The manuscript of this holy book makes different interpretations possible. Researcher Marijn van Putten has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant of two million euros to explore centuries-old recitations.

Sarah Cramsey was appointed professor by special appointment of Central European Studies at the Institute of History on 14 September. 'I am keen to incorporate different scholarly approaches into my work and raise the profile of Central European Studies in Leiden.'

Recently, archeologists of Leiden University made an excavation in Oegstgeest, where they found a unique silver bowl from the first half of the seventh century as well as imported pottery and winebarrels. Thijs Porck, lecturer in Old English language and culture at Leiden University, places the Oegstgeest…

Early Christian Encounters with Town and Countryside - Essays on the Urban and Rural Worlds of Early Christianity.

How are contemporary art practices from Southeast Asia negotiating notions of art and tradition?

This series of publications brings together new material on wellconsidered themes within the wide area of Early Modern Studies.

From Crisis to Critique

In Humanity’s End As A New Beginning, Emeritus Professor Mineke Schipper reflects on myths about ‘the end’.

The World of the Fullo takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with high-quality garments, of Roman Italy. Analyzing the social and economic worlds in which the fullers lived and worked, it tells the story of their economic circumstances, the way they organized their workshops, the…

Sanne Dokter-Mersch defended her thesis on Thursday 15 April 2021.

An interdisciplinary cultural analysis of how the Hindustani double migration informs contemporary processes of identification and problematises the juxtaposition of tradition and modernity.

If Dutch cinema is examined in academic studies, the focus is usually on pre-war films or on documentaries, but the post-war fiction film has been sporadically addressed.

At LUCL, researchers aim to understand, describe, and preserve the linguistic diversity of the indigenous Americas.

The Phantom of the Ego is the first comparative study that shows how the modernist account of the unconscious anticipates contemporary discoveries about the importance of mimesis in the formation of subjectivity.

Aristotle's Poetics: the oldest and most influential work of western literary theory.

Legibility in the Age of Signs and Machines offers a compelling reflection on what the notion of legibility entails in a machinic world in which any form of cultural expression – from literary texts, films, artworks and museum exhibits to archives, laws, computer programs and algorithms – necessarily…

In the Brill series Intersections a new volume has been published, entitled Ronsard and Du Bartas in Early Modern Europe.

This book argues that the combined literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence supports the theory that early-imperial Italy had about six million inhabitants.

The topic of Historical Linguistics and Philology at LUCL is language change in its broadest sense.

In this workshop the focus is our language, our mother tongues, and translation. It consists of two parts. During the first hour, Daniela Vicherat Mattar and Ting Ting Hui will talk about translation. After this introductory part, Nanne Timmer will lead a poetry lab in which “misunderstanding” is the…

The writings of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) are famously and purposely marked by fragmentariness. Paradoxically, a central aim of his work was to connect: all his life he sought to further the integration of scholarship in the humanities which, he believed, had too long suffered from the prevalence…

If Gerard Fieret’s photography has been unjustly ignored until recent exhibitions in New York, Amsterdam, and Paris, his poetry continues to be unknown outside of the Netherlands. Across more than ten published collections, Fieret gives form to a body of poetry in which a desire to record the urban…

The Dutch colonial past in Indonesia has had a major influence on literature.

Imitation is, perhaps more than ever, constitutive of human originality.