In the Pioneers of Leiden University series we talk to past and present students who were the first in their families to go to university. In this third instalment we talk to Jos Schaeken (1962) dean of the Honours Academy and Professor of Slavic and Baltic languages and Cultural History: 'I had to…

Persian stories with beautiful miniatures, letters on papyrus from Egyptian traders and medicinal manuscripts translated from Greek and edited in Arabic. Studium Generale organizes a lecture series on the world-famous manuscripts from the Middle East collection of Leiden University Libraries (UBL).…

Interested in an internship at the Dutch Ministry of Defence? Good news! Leiden University and the Royal Netherlands Air Force have formalized their cooperation to offer students an unique opportunity to conduct an internship at an active military base in Woensdrecht, the Netherlands.

Dear friends of the NVIC,

Beatrice Noun (alumna BA International Studies) currently lives in Paris and works for the World Bank as a consultant while doing a master’s degree at Sciences Po in International Development. We caught up with her and asked her a bunch of questions like which steps lead her to this career path? And…

Are you interested in ancient Egypt, the rich cultural heritage of Mesopotamia or bliblical Hebrew and Aramaic? Students of all faculties can follow electives of Ancient Near Eastern Studies without prior knowledge or special entry requirements. Archaeology student Annely Arends talks about her expe…

Research conducted in this group aims at furthering our understanding of how communities and individuals deal with social change, conflict and trauma through remembrance and commemoration as well as forgetting in the arts.

With Muslim Futures, our ambition is to create spaces where imagination leads. In an increasingly destabilizing global context, where climate, economic, and social crises expose the limits of current systems, people across disciplines are beginning to ask: 'What kind of society do we want to live in?'…

Studying one another’s languages and cultures fosters understanding between groups of people, which leads to more equality, along with increased economic, administrative, and cultural cooperation.

On 25 January 2024 H.J. Pak successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Sarah Cramsey's first book, Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the

Three young lecturers are to receive a Comenius Teaching Fellow grant of 50,000 euros. The grant will allow each of them to implement an innovation project in their teaching.

The Netherlands Institute in Morocco is open to students from all Dutch universities. Two students explain why they are spending a semester studying in Rabat.

The relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia is worse than ever. According to Iran specialist Maaike Warnaar, it will be difficult to achieve peace in the region if there is no rapprochement between the two countries.

How has interreligious encounter in Ogbómòsó created multiple religious belongings and identities among individuals and groups?

Vocal learning is a trait shared by songbirds and humans. It is also a trait that is restricted by the brain rather than by a species' vocal apparatus. In this dissertation, functional MRI is employed in both species in order to explore potential common neural mechanisms underlying the ability to develop…

On October 9th, Peter Alexander Kerkhof succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Peter Alexander on this great result.

On Wednesday 21 May Adrian Perkasa successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

I’m Laurence Peelen and I am the new intern at the NVIC. I just finished my BA Islam Studies at the Radboud University Nijmegen and I wanted to gain some more experience in the MENA region at the start of my Master’s program.

The new mission of the Netherlands Institute in Morocco, NIMAR, is a broad one, in which the focus is on strengthening knowledge of each other's societies, languages and cultures. Leiden University will be responsible for research and education within the NIMAR.

For the second year in a row, the Austria Centre Leiden sponsored a festive gathering for the Paula Hyman Mentorship Program at the Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, which convened in San Francisco, California, USA in December 2023. This meeting allowed Hyman Committee Members…

On April 14, 2025, Dr. Hans Petschar, the recently-retired Director of the Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung at the Austrian National Library in Vienna, delivered the Sixth Annual Austrian Studies Lecture 'Austria’s Present Past: A visual journey through Austrian history 1925 – 2025'.

In this article in The Irish Times, Pádraig Corrigan talks about his experience studying abroad at Leiden University College in The Hague.

Leiden scholars succeeded in making Arabic accessible to Western academic communities as early as the sixteenth century. But how did they approach this problem?

I am Sijmen Wals and this semester I'll be the new intern at the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo.

The Leiden Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia (LeiCenSAA) announces a new open access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the epigraphy of Arabia and its cultural and linguistic context: Arabian Epigraphic Notes

In its session of 15 April 2024, the Austrian Academy of Sciences elected professor Petra Sijpesteijn as one of its new Corresponding Members.

International conference “Bodies of Knowledge: Arabic Language, Egyptian Labor, and Communities of Practice in the History of Archaeology & Egyptology” 19-21 November 2024

The book on Turkey. A Modern History written by Professor Erik-Jan Zürcher, Professor of Turkish Studies, is now available in nine different languages. Arabic and Polish versions have now been published.

Our MA student Marie Costers from the University of Antwerp wrote about her experiences as a student at NVIC in Spring 2025!

Mei-Wen Chen defended her thesis on 29 June 2016

With this podcast series 'Introduction to Security Studies', you will get to know more about the bachelor's programme Security Studies at Leiden University in The Hague and life as a student in The Hague.

Markus Altena Davidsen and colleagues Michaël van der Meer, Maurits Berger and Kim Beerden received a subsidy from the KNAW-Pilotfund. They will use the 10.000 € for an inspiration book for teachers religion/worldview.