Do you want to understand how language and culture shape our view of the world? At Leiden University, you explore societies across the globe - from ancient times to the present day. You’ll delve into topics such as migration, identity, media and heritage, and learn to read original sources in their…

The emergence of the Köprülü household that imprinted its stamp on the latter half of the seventeenth century in the Ottoman Empire. What is the power struggle they carried out against Ottoman dynastic power?

How did dynastic organization – that it, the employment of non-ruling family members and the development of dynastic traditions and concepts – influence state formation in both Catholic Europe and Muslim West-Asia?

North, Middle and South America together constitute the single largest area in World Archaeology that is taught as a single focus. It is also the only major world area that saw societies develop from hunter-gatherers to early empires entirely independent from developments in Eurasia & Africa. It is,…

The two-year master's in Korean Studies, a specialization of Leiden University’s master's in Asian Studies, offers a varied selection of subjects and the freedom to choose electives. You can also choose a research subject of your interest for your MA thesis.

Do you want to understand how language and culture shape our view of the world? At Leiden University, you explore societies across the globe - from ancient times to the present day. You’ll delve into topics such as migration, identity, media and heritage, and learn to read original sources in their…

Do you want to know more about the Bachelor of South and Southeast Asian Studies, 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.

Lecture, This Time for Africa series

Van Vollenhoven Lecture 2025

Whereas most outgoing professors are offered a congress, Nico Kaptein's former students and PhD students took a bigger approach. They treated him not only to a farewell congress, but also to a two-week tour of Indonesia, filled with lectures, and trips.

How have British cities changed in the years since the Second World War? And what drove this transformation? This innovative new history traces the development of the post-war British city, from the 1940s era of reconstruction, through the rise and fall of modernist urban renewal, up to the present-day…

This dissertation develops an innovative approach to cultural transformation in the kingdom of Commagene (modern south-east Turkey) during the 1st c. BCE, focusing on a palatial context in the capital Samosata.

The premier LUCIS lecture series, running since 2021. Each year, two eminent scholars visit Leiden to deliver landmark lectures in Islamic and Middle East Studies. This forum for presenting and discussing cutting-edge research brings together researchers, students, and other interested participants…

Links to related organisations, institutes, journals and archives.

Isis on the Nile. Egyptian gods in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt

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.

Urban development and lack of appropriate management has been threatening the archaeological site of Tell Balata. In order to save it from further destruction, in 2010 the Tell Balata Archaeological Park project was started.

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.

The ultimate aim of the project is to find out whether there are such things as

LUCIS’ research on Islam and society is guided by three overarching themes, which are fundamental to our research programmes.

Both on a personal and institutional level, the staff of Leiden CADS collaborates with:

As a student or staff member at Leiden University, do you want to organise a meeting and invite an expert? We advise you to contact one of these institutes.

Clustered Neighbourhood Settlements of the Central Anatolian Neolithic ca. 8500-5500 Cal. BC

In a modernist interpretation of migration controls, nation states play a major role. This book challenges this interpretation by showing that comprehensive migration checks and permanent border controls appeared much earlier, in early modern dynastic states and empires, and predated nation states by…

What makes a good historian? When historians raise this question, as they have done for centuries, they often do so to highlight that certain personal attitudes or dispositions are indispensable or studying the past. Yet their vieuws on what virtues, skills or competencies historians need most differ…

On the 18th of June, Abel Warries successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Abel on this achievement!

In October 1740, a tragedy unfolded in Batavia, the Asian headquarters of the Dutch East India Company on the island of Java. Faced with a spontaneous Chinese peasant uprising, Batavia’s vengeful inhabitants carried out a bloody massacre of their fellow Chinese within the city walls. The murderers marched…

Middle East Studies Lecture

Law is of major importance for socio-economic development. Ideally, law organises human interaction in a way that promotes justice and legal certainty and protects vulnerable groups from exploitation and arbitrariness.

Dr Amany Soliman joined the NVIC as a postdoctoral research fellow in October 2017. She is a lecturer of modern history and international relations at the Mediterranean Studies Institute at the Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University. For her PhD thesis, she examined the nationalist movements in Spain,…

Tolerance and democracy are not our European values

To what extent is the image of the Taino settlements on Hispaniola representative for the whole island, or is it only related to a few large settlements of known caciques?

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…

The prestigious Praemium Erasmianum Dissertation Prize is annually awarded to the five best dissertations published in the year before in the fields of Humanities, Social sciences and Law. During a festive ceremony in Utrecht Lennart Kruijer received the award from the hands of professor Bas ter Haar…

How did people move and form communities when human societies first shifted from hunting and gathering to farming? A new study of the Neolithic period in southwest Asia, the birthplace of agriculture, offers fresh insights.

The Faculty of Archaeology used to be involved in several excavations in Syria, before the outbreak of civil war made travel to the region impossible. One of these excavations is the one of tell Hammam al-Turkman, which started in 1981. Student Ruben Hartman, together with archaeologist Dr Diederik…

Procedural administrative law in a constitutional comparative law perspective

The historiography of the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944 is dominated by the personal clash between the principal negotiators, Harry Dexter White of the United States and John Maynard Keynes of Britain.

Southern Africa has a rich tradition of social history, one inspired by the tumultuous changes that have regularly convulsed the region from the 1780s onwards. Scholars have always sought to understand what these changes meant for everyday life and emphasised a perspective of marginal groups, how these…

On the 7th of November, Rasmus Thorsø Nielsen successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Rasmus on this achievement!

Climate finance, especially for developing countries, is crucial for limiting global warming to 1.5C. However, the current level of North -South climate finance is chronically inadequate. As the climate crisis intensifies, more actors are entering the climate finance market, transforming the global…

Do you want to follow a full academic programme? If so, after obtaining your bachelor’s degree you can continue with a master’s programme. Once you have successfully completed your master’s you will have earned the title of Master of Arts (MA).