The hinterland of important centres like Petra (Southern Jordan) can provide essential information that contribute to the understanding of their rise, expansion and decline.

The stadtholder’s court in the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands has long been underestimated. Real courts and the associated court culture were to be found elsewhere in Europe. PhD candidate Quinten Somsen is trying to reverse this image. ‘The stadtholder’s court was actually very lively.’

On Tuesday November 25, 2025, Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey traveled with students from her masters seminar on “New Approached to the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe” taught at the History Institute to Amsterdam for a unique opportunity. There, Ms. Lotte Sophie Groenendijk, an alum of the History…

Louis Sicking's Maritime Conflict Management in Atlantic Europe was awarded an 'Internationalisation in the Humanities' grant from NWO. What can we learn from how maritime conflicts were managed in the past?

Language plays a central role in human life. We use it every day to communicate, learn and share ideas. But how do children acquire their first language? Why do languages differ from one another? And how do adults learn new ones? Linguistics is the scientific study of language and seeks to answer these…

On Tuesday November 25, 2025, Sarah Cramsey travelled with students from her masters seminar on 'New Approached to the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe' taught at the History Institute to Amsterdam for a unique opportunity. There, Lotte Sophie Groenendijk, an alumna of the History Research Masters…

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,…

Commentators and scholars view both social media and cities as sites of fragmentation. Since both urban dwellers and social media users tend to form assortative social ties, so the reasoning goes, identity-based divisions are fortified and polarization is exacerbated in digital and urban spaces.

Both within the university and also with outside partners, Leiden University participates in sustainability programmes. These initiatives hopefully contribute to a growing and more robust sustainability movement, locally and world wide.

Jasmijn Rana demonstrates in the article 'Secular-religious self-improvement: Muslim women’s kickboxing in the Netherlands' that young Muslim women who kickbox develop agentive selves by challenging gender norms and living out their religious subjectivities.

In his historical analysis of upland societies of the Zomia massif, James Scott (2009) emphasizes how the modern state strives to control and “make taxable” all of its subjects. For Tania Murray Li (2014), the development of neoliberal markets is the primary driver of change, as she shows based on long-term…

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A Comparative Anthropology of Commercial Insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

Sarah Giest and Annemarie Samuels, both Assistant Professors at Leiden University, researched the quality and coverage of the data being collected for policiymakers to be used, specifically pertaining to minority groups.

How does the social infrastructure affect administrative burdens associated with digital government services? The paper 'Administrative burden in digital public service delivery: The social infrastructure of library programs for e-inclusion' published in the Review of Policy Research by Sarah Giest…

Reworking Culture: Relatedness, Rites, and Resources in Garo Hills, North-East India provides intimate insights into the lives of hill farmers and the challenges they face in day-to-day life. Focusing on the ongoing reinterpretation of traditions, or customs, the book critiques the all too often taken-for-granted…

Andrew Littlejohn published the article 'Ruins for the future: Critical allegory and disaster governance in post-tsunami Japan' in American Ethnologist about the ruins left by Japan's 2011 tsunami.

The article 'Standardising care of the dying: An ethnographic analysis of the Liverpool Care Pathway in England and the Netherlands' by Erica Borgstrom and Natashe Lemos Dekker is published in Sociology of Health & Illness.

Une étude archéo-anthropologique de la céramique des sociétés caribéennes multiculturelles de la période précoloniale à nos jours

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A Comparative Anthropology of Commercial Insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

This is special issue of the journal Language & Communication. The papers of this issue delve into the multifaceted realm of (non)belonging.

This article discusses local expressions of crisis in Beed district, central Maharashtra. Both in public and academic discourse crisis has become the term of choice for the many structural deficiencies which make agriculture an increasingly precarious livelihood in India. While most voices subscribe…

In this book chapter, Andrea Malaya M. Ragragio and Myfel D. Paluga unpack the indigenous category

In this article, published in Brill’s Encyclopedia of the Religions of the Indigenous People of South Asia Online, Erik de Maaker posed three questions. How can the persistence of the community religion, albeit marginalized, be explained? What role is left for the practices, objects, and beliefs associated…

Museums and collections are often frontpage news nowadays. The collections stored and curated in museums, universities and private institutions are no longer seen as 'neutral' entities to be enjoyed without political connotations.

This procedure is relevant for contract and external PhD candidates only.

Intergenerational transmission refers to the complex and dynamic process with which values, ideas and behaviors are transmitted across generations. We are specifically interested in the intergenerational transmission of behaviors and beliefs that might result in harm to the individuals involved or society…

This book focuses on the element of thresholds – makeshift gates, makeshift structures and house doors – as concepts of liminality in ancient Near Eastern magical rituals, and the idea of transformation they reflect.

The ERC project 'Food citizens?' is a comparative analysis of a growing phenomenon in Europe: collective food procurement, namely networks of people who organize direct food production, distribution, and consumption.

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…

LUCIR aims to bundle together, strengthen and disseminate existing research in the field of international relations.

A new publication on changes in the relationship between news and their public in Chile

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A comparative anthropology of commercial insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

This research aims to study the practice of cremation in Alexandria and Graeco-Roman Egypt, through the examination of its cinerary urns.

Leiden University research institutes based in Leiden and The Hague.

Published on 26 February 2021.

Special Issue in: Visual Anthropology, Volume 29, Issue 3, 2016

The Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society focuses on the relationships between past and present, the role of heritage in society, and how heritage can contribute to the improving quality of life and our (future) environment.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University’s Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences with Royal Thimphu College in Bhutan.

The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FSW) offers an inspiring and competitive, international working and learning environment to around 1,025 staff and around 7,000 students from home and abroad on 13 bachelor's, master's and research master's programmes.

During the project, this page will be updated with various written and audiovisual research outputs.

Tax scandals, like the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, and the Pandora Papers, have made taxation a major topic of public debate. Learn more about this in the new minor Tax and Society: Building a Sustainable and Fair Tax System.

This study examines recovery planning committees across Japan's Tohoku region.

The master's specialisation in Sociology of Policy in Practice provides academic and professional skills to independently design and execute research projects within and outside organisations.

Discover the connection between skateboarding and sensory ethnography in 32 of The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography as part of the Multi-modal sensory ethnography.