In the History of the Roman Emperors, what does Herodian’s method of composition consist of and how does it relate to his writing intention, particularly in terms of political and moral idea(l)s?

Distance / Fiction is a sound installation that deals with the ways listening is entwined with processes and techniques of sound mediation.

Mari Nakamura defended her thesis on 14 March 2017

How can theories about modern disinformation help to understand how Roman documentary fictions functioned?

This thesis seeks to examine the emergence of Persian novels and short stories during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).

Markus Davidsen defended his thesis on 16 October 2014

Carl Li defended his thesis on 30 June 2015

How is tradition constructed and belief made plausible in fiction-based religion?

If Dutch cinema is examined in academic studies, the focus is usually on pre-war films or on documentaries, but the post-war fiction film has been sporadically addressed.

On 30 January 2024 Jurre van der Meer successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This week 'Dutch Post-war Fiction Film through a Lens of Psychoanalysis' by Peter Verstraten was published by Amsterdam University Press, the sequel to Humor and Irony in Dutch Post-war Fiction Film from 2016. Each chapter in his 482-page new study begins with a title of Fons Rademakers who made films…

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Byzantine and Ottoman Archaeology, Amsterdam, 21-23 October 2011

This project aims to uncover a series of sites of difference and innovation. In particular, it locates itself in two kinds of distancing: geo-cultural (ie. in the non-European space of Japan) and medial (ie. in innovative expressive media).

Markus Altena Davidsen’s PhD dissertation is the first major study of Tolkien Religion. In it, he analyses the religion that is based on the stories by acclaimed British fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien. He also discusses how fiction itself can become religious. Davidsen will defend his dissertation on…

He could also have written a paper for his honours assignment,

Prof. dr. Marieke Liem, Professor Social Resilience and Safety at ISGA, discussed the facts and fiction surrounding serial killers on Dutch NPO Radio 1.

Researchers and policymakers are welcome to attend the AI & Society Conference in The Hague on Friday 23 June. The SAILS interdisciplinary research programme will be taking a nuanced look at the state of the art of AI technology. And offering fresh perspectives.

There's a myth that people with autism avoid eye contact in conversations. This can come across as indifferent. Unjustified, stresses Jiayin Zhao, who is doing her PhD research on the socio-emotional development of children with autism. 'That people with autism don't care is anything but true.'

How do religious narratives persuade their readers to believe their message? And how can it be that some readers even come to treat fantasy and science fiction as authoritative religious texts? These are the core questions treated in Markus Davidsen’s new book Narrative and Belief: The Religious Affordance…

Half the world's population is introverted and comes home drained after an evening of drinks. Their social battery is empty. 'People with autism have a similar experience, but much more intense,' says Boya Li, who researches emotional regulation in children with autism and hearing impairment. Does this…

1000 Years of World History in 100 Old Maps.

'You’ll know right away when you meet your true love’ or ‘Opposites attract’: Some persistent beliefs exist about love and attraction, but are they true? Researcher Iliana Samara investigates the dynamics of attraction and explains which love myths we can let go of.

How did the imperial administration of justice function during the reign of the Severans?

How do religious narratives persuade their readers to believe their message? And how can it be that some readers even come to treat fantasy and science fiction as authoritative religious texts? These are the core questions treated in Markus Davidsen’s new book Narrative and Belief: The Religious Affordance…

The Leiden Ancient History specialization concentrates on the study of the economies, societies and cultures of the large empires of the Graeco-Roman world, starting with the empires of Alexander the Great and his successors. The appearance of these empires led to the development of an interaction network…

Neo-Baroque construction and deconstruction of the concepts of paradise in fiction.

Western thought has often dismissed shadows as fictional, but what if fictions reveal original truths?

How do documentary moving images and fictional narratives involve and evolve each other?

Lecture, LIAS Lunch Talk Series

Numismatic research of Roman coin hoards in the Netherlands. The use of numismatic sources is incorporated in Claes’s research project “Dialogues of Power”. This project aims to analyse the legitimising dialogue between Roman emperors and their Germanic legions during the so-called “crisis of the third…

Fake news a new phenomenon? Not according to Rens Tacoma and Indira Huliselan. In an NWO project, the associate professor and PhD student will delve into the twisting, scheming and tampering with facts that went on thousands of years ago.

This study addresses and explains the issue of negative descriptions of the Arab Other in modern Iranian thought.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

This paper explores the historicity of state and Buddhist accounts of the monk Xuanzang 玄奘 (602-664), arguing that in the reconstruction of Xuanzang’s life and career we ought to utilize the former to help adjudicate the latter.

For thousands of years, societies have fallen under the reign of a single leader, ruling as chief, king, or emperor. In this fascinating global history of medieval and early modern dynastic power, Jeroen Duindam charts the rise and fall of dynasties, the rituals of rulership, and the contested presence…

Proceedings of the Vth International Conference of Isis Studies, Boulogne-sur-Mer, October 13-15, 2011

How did digital intermediality symbolise and facilitate the transfer of content from popular culture into policy statements and vice versa in the period between 1945 and the new millenium?

When psychologists repeated a hundred studies in 2015, their results differed in two-thirds of the studies. ‘Research into research is not a luxury but a necessity,’ says Professor of Methodology and Statistics of Psychological Research Mark de Rooij. ‘My aim is to improve psychological research, to think…

On 18 October 2022 ms. Comstock-Skipp successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

In the study of West-East relations, difference often takes centre stage. This holds for both culturalist and postcolonial perspectives. By contrast, in my investigation of Netherlands-Iran political relations in the 1960s and 1970s, I will focus on the role of SIMILARITY. What lay at the root of the…

Leiden University seeks to bring knowledge, academic top talents, and resources from Leiden and China together in mutually beneficial joint research projects that are content-driven, based on existing excellent research.

In this sub-project a selected number of narrative texts will be examined written in the Eurasian realm in the period 1300-1800, focusing on representations of kingship and royal authority.

The project “Digital Materials” is about the conception, exploration and analysis of possibilities to make digital processes directly operative and tangible in physical materials and examines how the fiction of these “Digital Materials” could affect on figures of interaction between human subjects and…

Religions involve belief in the unbelievable: in evil spirits causing disease, in souls surviving death, and in gods punishing wrongdoers and blessing the just. Cognitive studies suggest that humans are predisposed to speculate about fate and divine agency, but support from so-called ‘plausibility structures’…

Truth is stranger than fiction. In 1997 Juan Maldaceña discovered a remarkable dictionary that translates equation for equation the physics of black holes in string theory into the more conventional physics of quantum mechanics of interacting particles. The remarkable possibility exists that…

Evert Jan van Leeuwen’s entry in Auteur Press’s Devil's Advocate series provides a complete study of the aesthetic appeal of Roger Corman's influential first Poe picture House of Usher.

LIAS aims to advance the globally conscious vision of area studies, both within and outside the academic community. Focusing on Asia and the Middle East, the institute is a meeting place of multiple fields of inquiry, theories and methods, historical periods, and areas.

How did the slave peculium function in the socio-legal context of the Roman Empire?