On 1 November 2018, Marieke Bloembergen was appointed Professor of Archival and Postcolonial Studies at the Institute for History.

The Caribbean as we know it today is fundamentally a product of colonial activity and globalisation. Practically everyone that inhabits the Caribbean has ancestors from different continents due to colonial activity, which profoundly affects the area to this day. Caribbean writers, both in the Caribbean…

Rising geopolitical tensions are causing states and national elites to innovate their use of the past for present-day political ends. This is certainly true for the People’s Republic of China, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2024 amid mounting superpower rivalry, ideological tensions with the…

Maritime archaeologist Martijn Manders has been appointed professor of Underwater Archaeology and Maritime Cultural Heritage Management at Leiden University. He will combine his new appointment at the Faculty of Archaeology, which began on 15 July 2022, with his current position at the Cultural Heritage…

ASLU 29 Maarten E.R.G.N. Jansen, Valentina Raffa (2015)

Many members of Chicago's P'urhepecha community did not even know they lived a stone’s throw from some of their own historical heritage. Researcher Kate Bellamy organised a meeting to introduce them to books hundreds of years old.

What do climate change and traditional Japanese music have to do with each other? A great deal, university lecturer Andrea Giolai suspects. He has been awarded an NWO grant to study the relationship in more depth.

The current production of a number of critical metals is insufficient for the large-scale transition to electric vehicles. This is the conclusion of a report by environmental scientist Benjamin Sprecher and organisations Copper8 and Metabolic. As a solution, they advocate more electric car-sharing,…

Criticism from doctors in the Netherlands about the policy to combat coronavirus is becoming louder. A letter raising their concerns was signed by one thousand doctors. It calls for a new debate on the current measures to deal with the crisis which were recently tightened. Supporters of the letter believe…

Vertrekkend vanuit een communicatief perspectief en concentrerend op mediatiseringsprocessen, formuleert deze dissertatie een alternatief voor het probleem van equivociteit binnen de studie naar populaire muziek.

On the 25th of September, Alzenir Mendes Martins de Menezes successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Alzenir on this achievement!

When did the Mali Empire disintegrate? What does the Sunjata heritage demonstrate about the political situation after 1600?

Teens with depression appear to be more sensitive to criticism from their parents than their healthy peers are.

It may seem as though adolescents do as they please, but they are more sensitive to their parents’ opinions than they would appear. The adolescent brain reacts strongly to parental criticism or praise. These are the results of a study by an interdisciplinary research group of psychologists and neuroscientists…

The African Studies Centre Leiden’s Research Programme for 2025-2029 is called ‘African Trajectories: Past Dependencies and New Directions’. Building on its former programme, it extends the recognition of Africa’s pivotal role in world affairs. The continent’s global significance has become increasingly…

docARTES is a doctoral programme for performers and composers. It offers a unique environment for critical reflection on musical practice.

Open access, online talks on African Sign Language Studies, in International sign and English

On Saturday November 16 Alice Twemlow was awarded the Simon Mari Pruys prize for design criticism for her essay ‘Conflicting Definitions of Key Terms’.

Representing Japanese Colonial 'Heritage' in Taiwan

The map application includes information from old and new buildings archaeological projects. This makes it possible to investigate whether water facilities (wells, cisterns) and waste facilities (cesspits, sewers) were the privilege of Leiden’s wealthy elite in the late 16th and 17th centuries or whether…

The following dissertation reconstructs Paul Natorp's philosophical psychology. It argues that psychology's main object is the lived experience of concrete subjects, understood as a transcendental structure of logical-reflexive conditions for the recognition, appropriation, and evaluation of objective…

UNESCO has recognized an international set of fifteen manuscripts about Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe and the three Hikayat Aceh manuscripts as World Heritage. The manuscripts are inscribed in the global UNESCO Memory of the World Register. This list contains documentary heritage…

Svetlana Gorshenina, Associate Lecturer at Collège de France, Paris, will be the Central Asia Visiting Scholar from 17 February until 25 February 2018. Svetlana Gorshenina will deliver a guest lecture on Tuesday, 20 February and a masterclass on Friday, 23 February within the Central Asia Initiative…

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

What are the immediate and lasting effects of the colonial encounters on indigenous Caribbean cultures and societies and what were the intercultural dynamics that took place during the colonisation processes? How can the study of indigenous Caribbean histories contribute to a more sophisticated awareness…

How can we monitor and protect biological and cultural diversity in Suriname best? What can we learn from local knowledge and customs associated with biodiversity? How can we understand current species, acoustical, behavioural, and ecological diversity from an evolutionary perspective? Can we predict…

With its Green Deal The European Union has set itself much-needed ambitious climate goals. But the energy crisis and geopolitical tensions are making these difficult to achieve. Seven researchers from the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities (LDE) alliance have written a white paper offering solutions.

By documenting lexical and morpho-syntactic patterns among P’urhepecha speakers in Mexico and the US diaspora, this project will investigate the sources of language variation. The ensuing online dialect atlas will serve as an online resource for speakers, learners and researchers of the language.

The Leiden Faculty of Archaeology is a world renowned academic centre for the study of the past. Our archaeologists and heritage experts are involved in innovative projects all over the world.

Graduates of Book and Digital Media Studies have a strong foundation in the history, theory, and practice of textual media—manuscript, print, and digital. They pursue careers in publishing, libraries, cultural heritage, and academia.

Mazatec chants and ancient Mesoamerican pictography

In both the autumn and the spring semesters, full bachelor’s programmes worth 30 ECTS are offered. Besides these study programmes, NIMAR provides an honours track for bachelor’s students from various disciplinary backgrounds and contributes to study trips to Rabat.

The project Deconstructing Stability aims to improve reconstructions of late prehistoric landscapes and predictive models for the purpose of archaeological heritage management.

A technique originally developed for satellite imaging can now be used to recover pictographic texts from underneath the surface of a five hundred year old Mexican manuscript.