Keynote speakers: Jennifer Gaynor (University at Buffalo SUNY) and Sue Peabody (Washington State University)

In the Bachelor's programme Dutch Language and Culture at Leiden University you will learn to analyse how people use the Dutch language, culture and media and to place it in an international perspective.

A biographical approach to material cultural interactions between Caribbean communities and Europeans across the historical divide (AD 1000-1800)

How do you recount historic events if you are not allowed to talk about them? For his dissertation, Taufiq Hanafi tried to find out how a period of mass murder – despite heavy censorship – found a place in Indonesian literature. PhD defence 31 March.

The MSc Dutch Politics at Leiden University offers in-depth insight into contemporary political dynamics in the Netherlands, including parties, public policy, governance, and societal challenges.

On the 12th of September, Lorenzo Nespoli successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Lorenzo on this achievement!

Every month a member of the Institute for History tells about a book that inspired him or her. Afterwards, the pen is passed on to another colleague. This month dr. Meike de Goede tells about the book 'Between Tides' by Valentin Mudimbe. The novel, little known beyond the circles of Africanists and…

Dr. Maartje Janse (History) and Prof.dr. Gert Oostindie (History, KITLV) have been awarded a seed grant for:

Dutch-Caribbean research will get a boost. Gert Oostindie, working at the Institute of History and KITLV, has received a grant from NWO, consisting of 750,000 euros, for his research project 'Confronting Caribbean challenges: hybrid identities and governance in small-scale island jurisdictions'.

Was the progressive colonial civil servant the precursor of the postcolonial development-aid worker?

The Ager Venusinus Project studies the relatively small number of recognized colonial dwellings dated securely to the period of colonization (i.e. the 3rd century BC). With a special interest in the Black Gloss ceramic typochronology

Pressing Matter: Ownership, Value and the Question of Colonial Heritage in Museums is a large-scale research project funded through the Dutch National Research Agenda, and led by Wayne Modest and Susan Legêne (Vrije Universiteit). Work Package 3 on “Value” phrases its main research question as follows:…

Utrecht University is hiring an assistant professor Medieval English Literature. Candidates are invited to apply before April 6, 2024.

With a recently published major research project and an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, the struggle for independence in Indonesia has been thrusted back into the spotlight. Leiden University is devoting attention to this topic as well. History students Sander van der Horst and Melle van Maanen joined…

The physical landscape is the setting in which human activities take place. Landscape and site context during human occupation is one of the areas of concern for the geoarchaeologist. A detailed stratigraphical study -both on- and off-site- clearly enhances the interpretation of the archaeologists,…

Richard Chancellor, the English Willem Barentsz, discovered the North Cape during the first English expedition to attempt to find a northeast passage. But the ship, the Edward Bonaventure, was ‘robbed by Flemings on its return in 1554.’ Historian Louis Sicking and legal expert Remco van Rhee found the…

The Tappino Area Archaeological Project aims to map and analyze ancient settlement patterns and dynamics in a small valley in Central-Southern Italy, in modern Molise (province of Campobasso). The first sites in the area date to the Bronze Age. In the Iron Age to Classical period, it was reportedly…

Lexicographical description of Greek; production of Greek-Dutch dictionary

A contrastive English grammar with the focus on the differences with Dutch.

The main goal of this project is to answer the question: how did Dutch acquire its own, distinctive linguistic characteristics?

How do we account for historical power dynamics when writing new histories of slavery and emancipation? What critical methods can we employ when studying preserved archives and collections? A new book series aims to address these questions. The initiators Karwan Fatah-Black and Ilse Josepha Lazaroms…

Sophie Rose is one of the fellows of the Ammodo Science Fellowship 2024. She will use this fellowship to conduct research at Leiden University.

As Lila Abu Lughod pointed out in 1989, North Africa has been one of the geographical ‘zones of prestige’ for the development of canonical approaches and crucial theoretical debates regarding the comparative study of Islam.

What is the iconography of propaganda specifically as it relates to the historical development of political ideologies in modern Egypt and how was/is this propaganda disseminated among creative fields such as cinema, art, monuments, architecture, and literature?

How do the pathways of Dutch converts to Islam involved in jihadist movements differ from those of Dutch converts who are not, in terms of their life prior to Islam, their conversion experience and the form of involvement with the Islamic community after conversion?

Subproject of

Situated at the crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Spanish Philippines offer historians an intriguing middle ground of connected histories that raises fundamental new questions about conventional ethnic, regional and religious identities.

The Revolt in The Netherlands erupted in 1566 and tore apart the Low Countries. In Memory Wars in the Low Countries, 1566-1700 Jasper van der Steen explains how public memories of the Revolt in the Habsburg Netherlands in the South and the Dutch Republic in the North diverged and became the objects…

After the Second World War almost three million people emigrated from the Netherlands to countries such as Canada and Australia. The government information was anything but objective, Professor by Special Appointment of Dutch Studies/Dutch Literature Ton van Kalmthout concludes in his inaugural lect…

On Thursday 14 October, Dr Martine van Ittersum gave the first lecture of the Van Vollenhoven Institute’s year-long workshop 'Reconsidering the Socio-Legal Gaze'. Attended by over 40 people, her lecture, entitled 'Van Vollenhoven and Grotius: Soulmates in Empire' examined Grotius’ influence on Cornelis…

The project Going Dutch investigates why the link between being or becoming Dutch, and knowledge of Standard Dutch is so often taken for granted in public discourse, by diving into its historical roots.

Contemporary Maya Calendars

The Institute for History is pleased to announce the second call for the research program Cosmopolis Advanced, an initiative of the Institute for History at Leiden University (LU) in partnership with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta.