What do the cloth trade and slavery have to do with each other? Quite a lot, as it turns out, as by history student Sjoerd Ramackers demonstrated in his bachelor’s thesis. He reveals that cloth merchant Daniel van Eijs was closely associated with four plantations in Berbice, a former Dutch colony on…

On the occasion of the Workshop organized last July to officially launch the Leiden Chinese Queer Collection (LCQC), the National Museum of Taiwan Literature (NMTL) donated 30 titles of Taiwanese LGBTQ+ literature to support this initiative. These works where published between 1971 and 2022 by authors…

On 1 May, Casper de Jonge will be appointed Professor of Greek Language and Literature. ‘Greek literature did not come from Athens alone: authors from Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor also wrote in Greek.’

Trinidad and Tobago, a twin-island nation, has over 300 identified archaeological sites that testify to its diverse history, covering pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. Many of these sites were discovered by archaeologists in the 20th century and have not been regularly visited and assessed.…

Philosophy alumna Naomi Rebekka Boekwijt returns to Leiden University on 20 June to present her latest novel Stemmen (Voices) in Plexus. ‘I wanted to show that things could be done differently in psychiatric care.’

Mitchell van Vuren is a PhD candidate at the Centre for the Arts in Society. He studies the globalisation of Chinese science fiction/speculative fiction in the digital age, especially focussing on the platformisation of SVOD services.

On 1 July – Keti Koti, in the year ahead, our university community will be able to reflect extensively on the history of slavery by engaging in research, education and many other activities.

Carmen Kleinherenbrink is a lecturer and PhD candidate at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). She teaches in the Nederlandkunde/Dutch Studies bachelor's program and regularly organizes activities for both students and instructors to engage them in international Dutch studies. An example…

Lecture, Seminar

The film Blade Runner as part of the law curriculum? It’s not that weird to Maartje van der Woude, Professor of Law and Society, and Frans-Willem Korsten, Professor of Literature, Culture and Law. ‘The film raises a fundamental question: what’s a human and what’s not?’ From the next academic year onwards,…

Education

Harold van der Kraan is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History.

Sulakshana de Mel is a Scholarship PhD candidate at the Institute for History.

Ton Elias is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History.

Mark Loderichs is an external PhD candidate at the Institute for History.

Leonard Ornstein is an external PhD candidate at the Institute for History.

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) took healthcare seriously, albeit mainly for business reasons. Former GP Ton Zwaard’s PhD research reveals that although healthcare in Asia was well organised, the VOC faced persistent problems for two centuries.

What developments preceded modern Standard Dutch? PhD candidate Iris Van de Voorde conducted research on ‘pluricentricity’, or the idea that language norms arise in different places and spread outwards from there. PhD defence on 19 April.

Lecture

Inaugural lecture

Five researchers from Leiden University have been awarded an Open Competition Domain Science ENW XS grant by the Dutch Research Council for their research projects.

PhD defence

The terms of employment of university employees are set out in the CAO of Dutch Universities.

Karla Paola Cabrera Acuña is a PhD candidate at the Centre for the Arts in Society. Master of Arts in Literary Studies from the University of Amsterdam. Graduate in Hispanic Literature from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

Alicia Schrikker doesn't usually get involved in urban history. As a senior lecturer, her research field is generally the colonial history of Asia and partly South Africa. So, the fact that she is going to carry out an urban history research project together with colleagues, is something that even she…

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Vidi grants to Leiden researchers.

Histories Connected: Seminar

From travel stories, travel guides and hotel vignettes to postcards, drawings, menus, brochures, posters and photos. The collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) hold many sources that provide insight into the development of tourism in the Dutch East Indies, present-day Indonesia, from 1870…

When discussing enslavement, attention often focuses on Africans forcibly shipped to South America. Researcher Timo McGregor's new Veni research sheds light on a lesser-known method, whereby indigenous populations were enslaved through the households of colonisers.

Lecture, Research Seminar Medieval and Early Modern History

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to French writer Annie Ernaux (1940). In an explanation, the Swedish Academy praises Ernaux 'for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory'.

Fadly Rahman and Marleen Reichgelt recently joined the Institute for History within the NWO-funded project 'Epistemic actors. The role of Indonesians in the making of knowledge in the colonial era’ under the supervision of Fenneke Sysling. Below, they introduce themselves.

Stories of resistance in the Second World War are widely covered in Dutch historiography: Hannie Schaft, Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, and Professor Cleveringa are some of the best known. But these accounts largely focus on the Dutch domestic perspective. On the other side of the world, a complex colonial…

Professor Nira Wickramasinghe will research forgotten lineages with an NWO Open Competition grant, in particular the afterlife of Dutch slavery in the Indian Ocean World.