The chaotic years after the Civil War are often seen as a time of uniquely American idealism—a revolutionary attempt to rebuild the nation that paved the way for the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. But Adam Fairclough rejects this prevailing view, challenging prominent historians such…

Studying linguistics at the Leiden University Centre of Linguistics (LUCL) is a challenging but rewarding experience. There are few places in the world where such a broad range of languages are studied from so many different perspectives.

Inaugural lecture

The Leiden Institute for Philosophy has a unique profile in the Low Countries and is one of few of its kind worldwide. It takes a global and comparative perspective of philosophy, whereas most philosophy programs restrict themselves to European and Anglo-American philosophical traditions rooted in Greek…

In January 2014, the research project The Promise of Organization hosted a fruitful three-day conference:

On this page you will find more information about the selected projects of the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Fund for 2025.

This grammar describes Sumerian, an ancient Near Eastern language which was spoken in what is now southern Iraq, on the basis of written sources dating from about 2500 to 2000 BC.

How many cities were there actually in the Roman Empire? And why did some regions only have a few cities, while others consisted of a tight urban network? Luuk de Ligt, Professor of Ancient History, wants to know the answer to all these questions. With the ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million awarded to…

Robot technology is flourishing in multiple sectors of society, from retail, health care, industry and education. However, are robots representative towards minority groups of society, like LGBTQ+ people?

The United Nations has declared May 22 the International Day for Biological Diversity. A moment of global reflection on everything on Earth and its indispensability. Anthropologist Marja Spierenburg stresses the importance of the interaction between natural and social sciences in addressing sustainability…

How can we understand the material instability of photographic (mixed media) artworks (1960s - present) from an integrated approach of Art History, Conservation Science and Chemistry in order to preserve these works for the future?

How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

This subproject of 'From Homo Economicus to Political Animal' analyzes Greek economic thinking in late 5th- and 4th-century philosophical circles.

History and Religious Studies in Leiden rank # 17 and #32 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. With this, History in Leiden ranks as the best in The Netherlands and Religious Studies ranks as second best.

Last year, LUCSoR welcomed two new Ph.D. students from Iran: Kiyan Foroutan from Ahvaz and Amir Ardalan Emami from Tehran. Kiyan works on a project on the role of the family in medieval and early modern Zoroastrianism in India and Iran (15th-18th centuries). Ardalan works on a much earlier period, the…

The key subject of the research programme Cities, Migration and Global Interdependence 1500-now (CMGI) is Inequality (at local, national and global levels). We study this from an intersectional perspective: gender, class, ethnicity or race, religion, sexuality, age, ability/disability, citizenship and…

Professor Herman Paul has been appointed Scientific Director of the Institute of History from 1 February 2025. ‘Especially in these times, transparency is essential.’

The first biennial symposium Environmental History in the Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries is scheduled for October 25 and 26, 2024. This event aims to facilitate the exchange of recent research, ongoing projects, and key discussions within the realm of environmental history among scholars from…

Mexico is currently facing an unprecedented social and political crisis, with expanding criminal and political violence, rampant impunity and crumbling political institutions. Next to the daily report of anonymous victims of violence, last summer in Central Mexico at least 15 citizens were executed…

Despite the wealth of historical literature on the Second World War, the subject of religion and churches in occupied Europe has been undervalued.

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo

Marion Anker is a junior curator at the Rijksmuseum, the National Museum of the Netherlands. She studied History in Leiden and Amsterdam. Together with her team, she organised the controversial exhibition ‘Revolusi! Indonesië onafhankelijk!’ What did studying History teach her?

This workshop intends to bring together early-career researchers from different fields working on international organizations, to discuss methodological challenges together with peers and established scholars. A combination of a master class, keynote lectures, and roundtable discussions aims at providing…

Prof.dr. Henk te Velde is appointed as the new President of the Association for Political History.

This thesis provides explicit expressions for the density functions of absolutely continuous invariant measures for general families of interval maps, that include random maps and infinite measure transformations, not necessarily number systems.

Humans can see the world through the eyes of other humans and imagine what they know, want, and intend. This competence is known as Theory of Mind.

Dutch Title:

One way for governments to conduct foreign policy and promote national interests is through direct outreach and communication with the population of a foreign country. This is called public diplomacy. Historians such as Helmer Helmers and William T. Rossiter have shown that printed media were already…

Lecture

How did nineteenth century scholars evaluate each other and each other’s work through more or less informal practices of peer review?

Nobuaki Murai defended his thesis on 24 January 2018.

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

This project aims to study the Aesopian fable from 1500 to the present day in its complex relationship between text, illustration and education, adopting a broad, transnational perspective.

Museums have long focused on power, wealth and a few famous figures. But that is changing, says Valika Smeulders, head of the history department at the Rijksmuseum. What this change comprises and how it has come about is the subject of her keynote speech at the D&I Symposium on 11 January.

King Willem-Alexander has commissioned independent research into the role of the House of Orange-Nassau in Dutch colonial history. The research will take three years to complete and will cover the period from the late 16th century to the postcolonial present. The research will be carried out at Leiden…

On 25 and 26 October 2024, the first biennial symposium Environmental History in the Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries, is scheduled to take place at Leiden University.

The Washington Post reviews Nationalism by university lecturer Eric Storm. In this book, Storm explores how nation-states became the dominant political organizational form.

The History of Art section at Radboud University is looking for a Full Professor of History of Art and Architecture between 500-1500 CE (1,0 FTE). Apply before: May 2, 2023.

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.

European integration is under pressure. At the same time, the notion of a European administrative space is being explicitly voiced. But does a shared idea of the public servant exist in Europe?

Even embryos can become embroiled in an evolutionary arms race with another species. Leiden biologists demonstrate this with larvae of the rosy bitterling that parasitize the gills of freshwater mussels. They published their research on February 19 in PNAS.

How is our perception of sound informed by the way we participate in the world? That is the question PhD candidate Gabriel Paiuk has been pondering in recent years. 'The way we experience sound is informed by material, technical and collective conditions that influence our interaction with the envir…

Five research projects of the Institute for History have been selected for the Research Traineeship Programme 2016-2017. The programme was initiated by The Faculty of Humanities to offer motivated students the opportunity to develop themselves in academic research. In December the research trainees,…

Call for Papers: Imperial Artefacts. History, Law, and the Looting of Cultural Property

The Institute for History has a new academic director. Professor of Early Modern History Jeroen Duindam will take on this role from 1 September. ‘You can only do this job properly if you make time for it.’

In QS’s World University Rankings of 2016, Leiden University’s History and Linguistics programme rank #19 and #28, respectively. This makes the History programme the best of its kind in the Netherlands, and Linguistics the second best.

This subproject of 'From Homo Economicus to Political Animal' will be on ancient analogues for modern-day “ersatz economics”, the economics of the “man in the street”.

We live in a data-drenched society awash with numbers. An inhabitant of the democratic polis of Athens (5th and 4th centuries B.C.E.) increasingly found himself surrounded by numerical data. This project aims to analyze the communicative functions and the political meaning(s) ascribed to these public…