Leiden University is a unique international centre for the advanced study of languages, cultures, arts, and societies worldwide, in their historical contexts from prehistory to the present.

Crossing borders and connecting people in archaeological heritage management. Essays in honour of prof. Willem J.H. Willems

How should we address our colonial heritage? And how digital and accessible are our collections? Outgoing State Secretary Fleur Gräper spoke with researchers and heritage specialists about this on 25 January.

Conference

Conference

Imprint of Action is the first large-scale study focussing entirely on sociocultural impact in archaeology and, as such, is explorative in nature; it provides unique insights into the workings of interaction and participation in archaeological events, and openly shares qualitative and quantitative research…

NEARCH aims to explore the different dimensions of public participation in contemporary archaeology and uncover new ways to work and collaborate within this field of expertise.

Cultural heritage throughout the world is under threat from wars, neglect and looting. Learn more about it during a free online course.

PhD defence

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

War and terrorism overshadow interest in the pre-Islamic heritage of the Arabic peninsula. The new Leiden Centre for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to make the general public more aware of the ancient history of this region.

Jelle Wouters (RTC Bhutan), Erik de Maaker (CADS Leiden) and Radhika Gupta (CADS Leiden) have been awarded a €260.000 grant by the Gerda Henkel Foundation for the research project ‘Perpetuating Highland Heritages of Bhutan’. This 4-year research project focuses on vernacular and unacknowledged heritages…

AI has huge societal and economic potential and is widely used. But it also brings challenges: how do we combine human values with AI, how do we make AI more transparent and understandable, and what can AI and human cognition learn from each other, for example about language learning?

On Monday 9 May, IIASL alumnus Adrian Young gave a very satisfying cross-disciplinary session between law and the arts, on the preservation of heritage in space.

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.…

How do contemporary authorship and scholarship work together to shape the way that early twentieth century literary and cultural movements are remembered today?

Highland Bhutan is facing unprecedented challenges from a combination of climate change, new economic opportunities, and changing cultural aspirations of its residents. Today, what does highland heritage constitute, to who, and how does it matter?

Past, Present and Future of Nubian Communities in Sudan

Dr Gül Aktürk Hauser (Assistant Professor, Department of Heritage and Society, Faculty of Archaeology) and Dr Sophie Starrenburg (Assistant Professor, Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden Law School) organised a workshop titled ‘An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Heritage Reparations:…

The construction of the new building for the Faculty of Science is in full progress. The Cell Observatory of the Institute of Biology Leiden will be moving to the new building in the beginning of 2016. Professor Annemarie Meijer and Dr. Marcel Schaaf had a sneak preview.

Gelderland Heritage and Leiden University’s Faculty of Archaeology have won the European Heritage Award / Europa Nostra Award 2022 in the ‘research’ category with the Heritage Quest citizen science project. ‘Heritage Quest has shown that citizens can play an active role in protecting cultural heritage…

Ian Simpson is a relatively new face at the Faculty of Archaeology. Starting as an assistant professor in the Heritage and Society department in 2018, he is one of the faculty’s members in critical heritage studies and looks both at the past as well as the future. ‘I study how heritage can be employed…

Lecture

ERC Starting Grant: The Van Manen Project. This five year project (2023-2028) is made possible with an ERC Starting Grant. It aims to (digitally) reunite all parts of the Van Manen Collection. This enables us to study it as a whole, helping us to understand the process of collection formation. More…

As of 1 September 2019, Prof. Pieter ter Keurs will assume the position of Scientific Director at the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Global Heritage and Development as well as that of Professor of Museums, Collections and Society at the Faculties of Humanities and Archaeology at Leiden University.…

Explore how cultural heritage can proactively respond to global crises, from geopolitical conflicts to climate change, through innovative cross-cultural collaboration between Latin American stakeholders and Una Europa.

In a significant step toward restoring cultural heritage, PhD candidate Marie Kolbenstetter has played a pivotal role in repatriating a collection of 133 archaeological artefacts from the prestigious Musée du quai Branly in Paris back to their place of origin in southern Honduras. Her efforts underscore…

There is no heritage without emotional sharing and clashing. This article explores the involvement of divergent emotions in heritage making by discussing the debate series of Imagine IC and the Reinwardt Academy and zooming in on the commemoration of slavery and imagery of ‘Black Pete’ in the Netherlands.…

Work has begun on an accommodation complex for international PhD candidates and postdocs at the Leiden Bio Science Park.

A Centre for Global Heritage will be set up at Leiden University, that integrates the unique global breadth and quality of academic expertise at the University and the Leiden Museums with the global infrastructure of practical consultancy expertise built up over the past years by the Centre for International…

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.

Grassroots heritage initiatives and community engagement

Professor Ian Lilley, the Faculty of Archaeology’s Willem Willems Chair in Archaeological Heritage, was invited by Her Excellency Mrs. Marion Derckx, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Australia, to present the 2022 commemoration speech for Netherlands Memorial Day on May 4th at the Netherlands-Australia…

HERLING (Research Lab for the Study of Heritage Languages of the Netherlands) is a new centre that aims to bridge the gap between scientific research and language communities.

Dean Prof. Willem J.H. Willems will be travelling to Mongolia in september 2010, as participant of the Mongolian International Heritage Team (MIHT). Prof. Willems is co-president and expert member of ICAHM, the ICOMOS International Committee of Archaeological Heritage Management and will serve as evaluator…

Pakistani archaeologist Abdul Ghani Khan (MPhil) and Dr Marike van Aerde (Leiden University) have been awarded the Prince Claus Heritage Emergency Grant for the rescue and preservation of ancient rock art in the Karakorum mountain range of the Pakistani Himalayas. The project will run for a year, from…

Two short documentaries by Till F. Sonnemann highlight the work conducted by Leiden archaeologists on Hispaniola as part of the Nexus1492 project.

What does it mean to be Aruban, Bonairian or Curaçaoan? In the Traveling Caribbean Heritage project historian Gert Oostindie studies this question together with PhD candidate Joeri Arion and heritage specialist Valika Smeulders. Other researchers and the islanders themselves are also collaborating…

Violent conflicts all over the world pose a great threat. Not only to the region’s inhabitants, but also to the cultural heritage in the area. This is the subject of the Europe Lecture in The Hague on 13 June.

Amy Strecker assesses the institutional framework for landscape protection, analyses the interplay between landscape and human rights, and links the etymology and theory of landscape with its articulation in law.

This programma, an initiative of the Institute for History in partnership with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta. Aims to study more than 20 kilometers of Dutch archival materials in The Netherlands, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and South Africa.

Researchers from FOM Institute AMOLF, Leiden University and Harvard University made a rubber beam that bends faster when subjected to less pressure. They published their work on 21 July online in Physical Review Letters.

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

Researchers are pulled in various, sometimes contradictory directions by the multiplication of performance metrics and new incentives to align with societal needs. Management structures, funding systems, and publication practices are increasingly influenced by pressures to promote only the highest quality…

The project will support Responsible, Research and Innovation (RRI) policy experiments in the healthcare sector in three European territories: in Murcia (ES), Örebro (SE) and the Republic of Cyprus (CY). CHERRIES will engage the territorial stakeholder ecosystems in participatory agenda setting, need…

Promotores: J. Kok, M. Chaudron (Chalmers University)