This project investigates the globalization and cultural mediation of palliative care practices, policies and discourses.

Natashe Lemos Dekker addresses the experiences of family members of people with dementia as they expressed their sense of gradually losing the person with dementia in the article 'Anticipatory Grief in Dementia: An Ethnographic Study of Loss and Connection' published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychi…

How do educational philosophies, discourses and practices spread around the globe, and how are they transformed and adapted locally?

Smart digital infrastructures predicated on myriads of sensors distributed in the environment are often rendered as key to contemporary urban security governance to detect risky or suspicious entities before or during a criminal event takes place. At the same time, they often involve surveillance of…

Museum Temporalities analyzes how museums relate to time. It explores the hidden temporal assumptions and practices that define museums. How might these assumptions help us to better understand and address museums’ often problematic and painful relationship to the colonial past?

The article 'Standardising care of the dying: An ethnographic analysis of the Liverpool Care Pathway in England and the Netherlands' by Erica Borgstrom and Natashe Lemos Dekker is published in Sociology of Health & Illness.

PhD defence

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A Comparative Anthropology of Commercial Insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

On Friday the 5th of November, members of the CADS Institute engaged in a lively roundtable lunch discussion on navigating boundaries in ethnographic fieldwork. The roundtable was intended to share experiences and open up questions about navigating proximity and distance when engaging in research relationships.…

Luca Bruls has received a Catharina Halkes Fonds fellowship grant to finalize her fieldwork in Chad and Senegal and to complete her first ethnographic film.

The project 'Crossing Boundaries: Ethnographic Approaches in Research on Migration and Diversity' has been awarded funding through the LDE Governance of Migration and Diversity (GMD) Seed Fund 2025–2026.

Authentication Processes in Ethnographic Museums

Learn how to conduct policy-oriented research, join one of our field schools and gain relevant working experience.

In the master's specialisation Global Ethnography, will follow several courses that aim to make your research project as successful as possible. From writing an academic research proposal to the complex task of writing up data once you return from the field. Each student also receives individual supervision…

Join the Master's in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University. Specialise in ethnographic research and gain valuable skills.

Do you want to carry out your own three-month research project? Then Global Ethnography is the path for you! This Master's specialisation allows you to conduct a customised three-month ethnographic field research, learn how to study global issues at the local level, and develop excellent social scientific…

The field and the classroom invites ethnographers to engage with critical and engaged pedagogies. Breaking down the barriers between fieldsite and lecture hall, this research cluster aims to interrogate the structures and values that shape anthropological and sociological education today.

Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology

Investigating the relations between Tupi Indigenous Knowledge, Museum Collections and the Dutch Colonization of Brazil

Do you want to do your minor in Morocco? Then choose the minor Culture and Society in Morocco! You’ll learn about Moroccan culture, society and languages, and receive solid training in ethnographic research methods.

The ERC Consolidator project Food Citizens? Collective food procurement in European cities: solidarity and diversity, skills and scale (2017-2022) organizes Conference Friday 4 February and Winter School 24 January to 4 February 2022.

The master's specialisation in Visual Ethnography enables you to combine technical mastery of audiovisual production with ethnographic research skills. Your experience ranges from project design to field studies, to scholarly output.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami caused immense destruction and over 170,000 deaths in the Indonesian province of Aceh. The disaster spurred large-scale social and political changes in Aceh, including the intensified implementation of shari‘a law and an end to the long separatist conflict. After the Tsunami…

Visual Ethnography combines anthropological theory and hands-on audiovisual practice.

'Skill, craft, and poiesis-intensive innovation' is written by Cristina Grasseni and is published in FormAkademisk.

The process of doing ethnographic research enables you to develop the capacity to engage, analyse and report from a social science perspective.

Are you eager to explore traditional and experimental audiovisual methods for ethnographic research? Do you consider translating your research findings into a documentary? Are you highly motivated, committed and hard working? Then Visual Ethnography is the right specialisation for you! Visual Ethnography…

Short introduction

ASLU 27 Sjoerd van der Linde (2012)

Reconfigurations of Practice, Community and Authority in Contemporary Aceh

Prehistory of Amazonia seen from the kitchen

OceanVisions is a project funded by a Marie-Curie Individual Fellowship to Dr. Francesco Colona and it explores how different research infrastructures in marine science (ranging from ocean-going research vessels to scientific diving operations) and their funding scheme influence the research process:…

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…

How do borderland dwellers living along militarised frontiers negotiate regimes of state security and their geopolitical location in everyday life? What might 'freedom' mean to those who do not resist captivity engendered by borders? Focusing on the predicaments of a double-minority, Radhika Gupta examines…

The master's specialisation in Global Ethnography is all about your three-month ethnographic research project. Experienced scholars teach you in extensive courses and by individual supervision how to get to most of your research.

Diversity and inclusion are core values of Leiden University. Leiden University has committed itself to a policy that aims to become an inclusive community which enables all students and staff to feel valued and respected, and to develop their full potential. The Diversity & Inclusion Expertise Office…

The main research question of this PhD project focus on how educational policies and practices can contribute to the promotion and understanding of archaeological indigenous heritage among teachers and students in the Caribbean?

What categories exist in the languages of pastoralists? Do these semantic concepts reflect universal or languagespecific tendencies? What (environment? culture?) governs the similarities (or the differences) attested crosslinguistically in cattle colour systems?

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.

This project investigates ethnographically how patients, their relatives, and healthcare professionals in the Netherlands make decisions about end-of-life care. We study the new dilemmas around what constitutes

How do government officials and humanitarian organisations in Malawi anticipate and speculate on future disasters?

A dental anthropological approach to foodways, health and disease, and crafting in the pre-Columbian Caribbean.

Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology is a social science. Anthropologists investigate the ways in which people give meaning to different aspects of their life and the way they interact with each other.

Of jars and gongs deals with the traditional ritual art of Ot Danum Dayak subsistence farmers from a stretch of tropical rainforest in the heart of Borneo. Together with the Ngaju, their neighbours to the south, they gloried in one of the most elaborate secondary mortuary rites in the world.

The neolithization of the southern Netherlands in an antropological and geographical perspective

Research reveals how boys respond to harassment awareness training and why they often fail to see street harassment as 'their' problem.