The aim of this project is to study the influence of Longinus’s treatise ‘On the sublime’ on practice and theory of architecture and theatre in seventeenth-century Paris and Amsterdam.

In what ways and to what ends did Parisian buildings overwhelm the early modern public? This study is concerned with the experience of the sublime in architecture in seventeenth-century Paris.

Eschatology played a central role in both politics and society throughout the early modern period. It inspired people to strive for social and political change, including sometimes by violent means, and prompted in return strong reactions against their religious activism.

What was the name, the appearance, development and the playing technique of the cello in the Low Countries between 1600 and 1800 and what music was composed for it?

This collaborative project aims to explore the history of the concept “barbarism” in Europe from the 18th century to the present, with a particular emphasis on the role of literature and art in the concept’s shifting functions.

This volume challenges the idea that the development of ‘democracy’ is a story of rise and progress at all. It is rather a story of continuous but never completely satisfying attempts of interpreting the rule of the people.

By analysing neglected (continental) spy centres and integrating these groups of female intelligencers into the traditional, male-orientated historical narratives, this project will proceed towards a gendered history of early modern espionage.

My current research focuses on criminality and gender interactions in nineteenth-century Europe. This project uses a comparative methodology to explain gender constructions in a criminal and in a court setting.

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume project, authored by an international team of researchers, and offering the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe.

Lecture, Global Questions Seminar

This project will clarify how these concepts operated in theoretical writings on performance ,this broadened conceptual framework will not only give us a clear view on how sublime effects in performance were theorized, it will also provide us a concrete apparatus to understand the cultural and political…

Promotor: F.J. van Lunteren, E. Jorin

Barbarism: from the 18th century to the present.

The project re-examines the role of the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox missionaries in the cultural and social developments of the Middle East and their interactions with the indigenous communities, from the nineteenth century until today. It seeks to discover and retrace such ‘entangled histories’…

The 18th-century rediscovery of the three archaic Greek-Doric temples in Paestum in southern Italy turned existing ideas on classical architecture upside down...

This research will investigate which aspects of On the sublime received attention in the intellectual milieu of the seventeenth century and how the sublime found its way in the political and artistic discourse of that time. Thus I aim to shed light on the role of art in politics and society in this…

The Leiden Lectures in Media | Art | Politics (MAP) is a series of talks organized by Pepita Hesselberth and Yasco Horsman. Speakers from various academic backgrounds and in different stages of their careers reflect on diverging ways in which technological and social changes challenge and transform…

The central theme of the NWO-project ‘The Promise of Organization’ is the evolution of political organization during the 19th century. We focus on the enthusiasm, arguments and concrete activities of the organizers as well as the criticism offered by opponents of modern political organization.

Leiden’s Institute for History has an exceptionally strong expertise in premodern European history in its global context, with specialists whose interests cover virtually the whole continent.

The aim of this project is to study what makes an act or form of violence a specifically political reality.

The revolutionary organizations in Paris and Berlin around 1848.

How did the medieval manuscript develop as a physical object during the Twelfth Century Renaissance and what do these changes tell us about the intellectual culture of the period?

Ms. Anaïs Massot defended her thesis on 26 January 2021

Fascinating images, articles of clothing and other unique objects from the past four centuries of the history of Leiden University can now be seen in the ‘Celebrating Curiosity’ exhibition in the hall of Rapenburg 70.

A Spanish translation of Herman Paul’s 'Key Issues in Historical Theory' has appeared under the title 'La llamada del pasado: claves de la teoría de la historia'.

La naissance d’une thalassocratie considers the contribution of the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands to the rise of the Dutch Republic as a maritime power. In Braudelian fashion, its chapters follow three lines of research.

This programme aims to identify the intellectual contexts that were of importance for the architectural theory of the period, and especially to clarify the relation of architectural theory to primitivism.

The Discovery of El Greco: The Nationalization of Culture Versus the Rise of Modern Art (1860-1915)

What can we learn from how maritime conflicts were managed in the past? What significance did Maritime Conflict Management have in shaping the standards of diplomacy and international law in pre-modern Atlantic Europe (1200-1600)?

Long into the 19th century, seascapes were considered an expression of patriotism. Artists who painted in a 17th century style were valued more. This tradition stifled innovation in the genre, Cécile Bosman has concluded. She will defend her PhD thesis on 13 October.

Where did the new generation of antislavery activists get their inspiration to organize in large-scale pressure groups?

In 2005 and 2015 the Leiden University Academy of Creative and Performings Arts awarded two Honorary Doctorates.

Prof.dr. Henk te Velde is appointed as the new President of the Association for Political History.

Aileen Schuurmans finished her MA International Relations this summer. She wrote an article titled 'How to Change the Story of the Pandemic with Daoist IR', which got published on E-International Relations, the world’s leading open access website for students and scholars of international politics.

This beautifully illustrated volume investigates the social life of objects moving between the Middle East and the West, revealing the range of agencies and subjectivities involved in their trade and reuse.

Two statues of gorillas abducting women: they were what led PhD candidate Dick van Broekhuizen to write a new type of history of nineteenth-century sculpture. ‘If you view nineteenth-century art history from a less narrow perspective, the narrative changes completely.’ PhD ceremony on 21 June.

In the project ‘Coin production in the Low Countries: 1334-1789’, Leiden University, the International Institute of Social History, and Het Nederlands Economisch-Historisch Archief, team up to create a website that provides access to five centuries of coin production figures.

How did rulers in the Netherlands and in adjacent smaller German territories adapt their regimes to ongoing change in legitimacy and decision-making during the transition period 1780-1820?

The project focuses on an intriguing aspect of André Chénier’s poetry, which has not received much attention in scholarship: Chénier’s indebtedness – in the form of translation, adaptation, borrowing, reference – to Hellenistic poetry; it interprets the role of this indebtedness in his poetical and…

The first results of the “Policing European Metropolises project” (PEMP) that associate Professor Elke Devroe and Professor P. Ponsaers launched in April 2013 are now published. Having been the referent for The Netherlands and Belgium in the Urbis project (Leonardo programme), the project focuses on…

In January 2014, the research project The Promise of Organization hosted a fruitful three-day conference:

A call to join an exploration into new ways of publishing

On 27 November 2019, David de Boer defended his PhD dissertation 'Religious Persecution and Transnational Compassion in the Dutch Vernacular Press 1655-1745'. For his research, he analysed several hundred pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals published primarily in the seventeenth-century Netherlands,…

The Research Network of the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency (FRANET) commissioned Aleydis Nissen and Rik Raedschelders to write the 2022 report on Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Belgium.

The Faculty of Humanities is known for its diversity of research fields which all engage in innovative and high-profile research. In the new edition of Perspectives on the World: Education and research within the Faculty of Humanities, students and academics elaborate on their academic prowess.

For a long time it was thought that there were few or no female spies in history. However, nothing could be further from the truth. In her book Invisible Agents, Nadine Akkerman reconstructs the stories of the many British women spies in the 17th century.

How did local lifeways and crafting practices persist and develop in the diverse environments of the increasingly interconnected Gulf of Fonseca (AD 400-1521)?

The English edition of Rijpkema’s Weerbare democratie is published in Routledge’s Extremism and Democracy series, one of the leading series in the field, edited by Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin.