In a modernist interpretation of migration controls, nation states play a major role. This book challenges this interpretation by showing that comprehensive migration checks and permanent border controls appeared much earlier, in early modern dynastic states and empires, and predated nation states by…

This book was published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Pera Museum in Istanbul. It contains seven articles on the global panoramic visual history from the early modern to modern times and Istanbul's place within this history.

Based on interviews with feminist Instagram users, this article studies emergent feminist visibilities on Instagram through the concept of filtering.

Disciplinary History and Epistemology

More than 100 anthropologists work at Leiden University – not only at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (CA/DS) in the Faculty of Social Sciences, but also within other faculties, for example at Archaeology, Law, the Humanities, or the Leiden University Medical Centre…

Spirit priests and ancestor cults in new guinea's far west

Ironies of Solidarity is an ethnographic study of how financial products and services affect inequalities and conflicts in South Africa.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published Annemarie Samuels' article on the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. It's a detailed ethnographic account of the experiences of three Indonesian survivors.

This volume investigates how urban growth and prosperity transformed the cities of the Roman Mediterranean in the last centuries BCE and the first centuries CE, integrating debates about Roman urban space with discourse on Roman urban history.

This study offers a new approach to the history of sites, archaeology, and heritage formation in Asia, at both the local and the trans-regional levels.

This volume examines how the history of the humanities might be written through the prism of scholarly personae, understood as time- and place-specific models of being a scholar.

What does it mean to live in an era of ‘posts’? At a time when ‘post-truth’ is on everyone’s lips, this volume seeks to uncover the logic of post-constructions – postmodernism, post-secularism, postfeminism, post-colonialism, post-capitalism, post-structuralism, post-humanism, post-tradition, post-Christian,…

If you've ever wondered why people behave the way they do or how societies work, studying cultural anthropology and development sociology could be for you. Although these two disciplines once followed separate paths, they are now closely intertwined. This article explores what each involves, where they…

Although graduate schools and PhD programs at various Dutch universities do provide methodological training in the social sciences, PhD students in anthropology frequently express a need for more specialized anthropology courses that provide in-depth discussions of cutting-edge theory and state-of-the-art…

This project focuses on urban commercial space in Roman Italy and deals with the impact of economic growth on urban communities in the late Republic and the Imperial period (200 BCE – 300 CE).

Rachel Schats has been a familiar face at the Faculty of Archaeology since she started her bachelor’s in Archaeology in 2005. Now she is an assistant professor, working on her Veni project on malaria in the Middle Ages. ‘I have included in this project so many skeletal collections that no one has ever…

This study aims to provide a long time perspective of human landscape manipulation. Studying the roles of prehistoric foragers in past ecosystems is of great importance to establish the character of past 'natural' landscapes and to enhance the management of current ones.

Cosmopolis seeks to explore the transnational and cultural dimensions of intra-Eurasian encounters through Dutch sources.

Audiovisual and Digital Ethnography is a state-of-the-art introduction to this dynamic and growing subject. The authors explain its fundamental aspects in a clear and systematic way.

Visiting Researchers at the Leiden University Institute for History

Chad-born youngsters in Paris come into contact with youngsters actually in Chad via Facebook: it would be difficult to find a better way to demonstrate the possibilities social media offer for people scattered across the world by war. Mirjam de Bruijn has been awarded a Vici grant for a study of the…

Tarini J. Shipurkar was the winner of the 2016 IIAS National Master's Thesis Prize in Asian Studies. She wrote her thesis, entitled ‘Gender on Campus: Redefining Gender Identities at Jawaharlal Nehru University’, at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University.…

Blended and hybrid teaching are presented as crucial in promoting teaching innovation, as well as more flexible study approaches allowing students to develop their own tailor-made study programmes. While the strategy document focuses on the positive aspects of digital teaching tools, no systematic study…

Volume II of The Cambridge History of Strategy focuses on the practice of strategy from 1800 to the present day.

Writing a story from the perspective of a Rwandan girl set in Africa is not an easy task. Alumna Cultural Anthropology Ruth Erica did it. Her debut novel The tree with the bitter leaves, in which an important supporting role is played by a student of cultural anthropology, appeared in August 2020.

Speeches and speech acts have been crucial in settling the question at the centre of every political debate: who gets what, when and where?

Announcement of the publication of Vamping the Stage: Female Voices of Asian Modernities, the first book-length study of women, modernity, and popular music in Asia (University of Hawai'i Press, 2017).

Punching Back is a detailed ethnographic study that demonstrates that young Muslim women who kickbox develop agentive selves by challenging gender norms, challenging expectations, and living out their religious subjectivities.

This is the first special issue of any organisation studies journal on food labour. Why is this a big deal? In this Introduction, we argue that the field should pay much more attention to the agri-food system and the work that goes into producing, distributing and consuming foodstuff. Food is such an…

Carsten Stahn has just published Confronting Colonial Objects: Histories, Legalities and Access to Culture. The book is part of the OUP Cultural Heritage Law and Policy Series.

In A History of Plague in Java, 1911–1942, Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk demonstrates how the official response to the 1911 outbreak of plague in Malang led to one of the most invasive health interventions in Dutch colonial Indonesia.

Surreal Geographies recovers a forgotten archive of Holocaust representation. Examining art, literature, and film produced from the immediate postwar period up to the present moment, Kathryn L. Brackney investigates changing portrayals of Jewish victims and survivors.

The territories that would make up what is today the Republic of Zambia officially became British in 1891. However, this did not equate to an on-the-ground presence of colonial authority capable of affecting the destiny and daily lives of people.

Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker will head a delegation that is visiting Indonesia at the end of June. The visit is to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘Leiden’ institute KITLV-Jakarta. What does this institute do and why is Indonesia important to the University?

Benjamin Fogarty-Valenzuela published the article 'Pedagogies of Prohibition: Time, Education, and the War on Drugs in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Norte' in Cultural Anthropology 37. The article’s three sections focus on three forms of temporal control—busyness, punctuality, and rhythm—and each demonstrates…

The premier LUCIS lecture series, running since 2021. Each year, two eminent scholars visit Leiden to deliver landmark lectures in Islamic and Middle East Studies. This forum for presenting and discussing cutting-edge research brings together researchers, students, and other interested participants…

Overview of the Leiden Asia staff per area or country.