The Museums, Collections & Society research programme is led by the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Archaeology and aims to promote collection-based research, stimulate Leiden education in this field, and raise ethical questions regarding the collections’ origins.

Research on the global field of museums, heritage, commemoration, consumption and material culture

A look into the political history of collecting and the collections of Andean mummies in Western European museums from 1830-1930 through archaeology and paleoimaging.

Nine museums in eight days, and an average of 25,000 steps a day? You must be talking about a trip with the Leiden Art History Association! In July, 20 students and a lecturer travelled to New York to take in all the art, architecture and other high points the city has to offer. We spoke to Joëlle Daems,…

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.

‘Without that Veni grant, I would never have been able to delve into my subject so deeply. During the first two months, I only read articles and other professional literature. A dream, I would skip home afterwards.’

The spectacular “density” of artworks and architecture in Florence, a designated UNESCO World Heritage site (1982, 2015), reflects a nucleus of some of the most important collecting histories and museums in the world, ranging from the unparalleled Renaissance acquisitions of the Medici dynasty to the…

The Sustainability Research Cluster fosters dialogue and collaboration among anthropologists and sociologists researching aspects of socio-cultural, ecological, and economic sustainability in and affiliated with the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology. It also seeks to stimulate…

This special issue of the International Forestry Review talks about how logging really affects society.

What does a 19th-century exhibition of traditional utensils from the province of Zeeland tell us about the current rise of populism? A lot, Ad Maas will say in his inaugural lecture.

The plan was to research the years surrounding the creation of the signature H.P. Berlage building of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, but due to the lockdown, University Lecturer Laurie Kalb Cosmo has hardly been able to visit museums. Yet she succeeds in continuing her research for the Museums, Collections…

Which plants are depicted, described or collected in these century-old objects? Who made these objects, where and for what purpose? What is their scientific and societal relevance today?

This study explores regional variation in the use of utterance-final particles by analyzing spoken Taiwan Mandarin data recorded from spontaneous conversations.

Museums have long focused on power, wealth and a few famous figures. But that is changing, says Valika Smeulders, head of the history department at the Rijksmuseum. What this change comprises and how it has come about is the subject of her keynote speech at the D&I Symposium on 11 January.

Natalia Grincheva (2020). Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-8153-6999-8, 164 pp., £27.99 (paperback).

On a thursdaymorning our students were guided around a new exhibition in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. This exhibition displayed photographs and documents from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Western Arabian Peninsula.

How to access the end-of-supply risk of spare pares using big data analytics

Biografi singkat Prof. Mr. Dr. R. M. Soeripto. Sarjana hukum kelahiran Ampel, Boyolali pada 25 Maret 1889 ini mengawali kariernya sebagai pegawai Department van Binnenlands Bestuur (Departemen Dalam Negeri) urusan agraria dan desentralisasi. Meskipun begitu, ia kemudian lebih dikenal sebagai seorang…

Modern receptions of Graeco-Roman Antiquity are important ideological markers of the ways we envisage our own twenty-first-century societies. An urgent topic of study is: what kinds of narratives – sometimes controversial – about Antiquity do people create for themselves at this moment in time, and…

From Caspar Reuvens to the royal grave in Oss, and from ancient images in the Hortus to a table from Naturalis. The National Museum of Antiquities is 200 years old, and throughout this whole period there have been close contacts between museum and university. Curator Annemarieke Willemsen explains this…

The following sources were consulted for this guide:

The main focus of this thesis is the behaviour of two-dimensional materials, namely (anti)-ferromagnetic materials in the first two chapters, which show topological phases, and energetic square ice in the third and fourth chapter.

Like many others, Ruurd Halbertsma has had a rollercoaster of a year. His museum, the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO), was closed for a long while because of the lockdown. Visitor numbers picked up again from September, but it the next few weeks will be tense now the hospitals are full again. Halbertsma:…

Jews and Christians in the Middle East

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 lack of success of new CNS drugs in clinical development is in part due to the complexity of the CNS, unexpected side effects, difficulties for drugs to penetrate the brain, but also by the lack of biomarkers.

Unravelling networks of human mobility and exchange of goods and ideas from a pre-colonial, pan-Caribbean perspective

Leiden Journal of Pottery Studies 21, 2005

The broad scope of the Astronomy and Instrumentation specialisation provides you with an MSc level training highly sought after by employers, not only in astronomical instrumentation, but also in other areas of high-tech instrumentation development.

With a master’s degree in Astronomy you are well prepared for jobs in research, industry and the public sector, including technological, financial and consultancy companies, research institutes, governments and science communication organizations.

After graduation you have a lot of opportunities: academics are highly sought after in Dutch secondary education or mbo teaching. You can also aim for a management position or work as a researcher within the field of Astronomy.

With an ever-increasing amount of data generated worldwide, industry, governments and academia highly welcome professionals with specific knowledge and skills to handle big data.

There are as good as no clear rules for the return of stolen art. This means that rather than in court, many cases are decided in the political arena instead. In her PhD research Evelien Campfens suggests how this could change. PhD defence on 11 November.

From the mid-19th century until the 1970’s, the Middle East witnessed the presence of various European missionaries who played a fundamental role in the birth and the development of humanitarianism. Since these Christian missionaries were well integrated in the local Middle Eastern societies via their…

Investigating the intercultural connections that shaped practices of knowledge production in colonial Dutch Brazil.

A moon rock from the Apollo 17 mission, antique globes and the cosmos according to Wassily Kandinsky. Ewine van Dishoeck, Professor of Molecular Astrophysics, has put together an impressive exhibition at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave.

An exploration across thirteen essays by critics, translators and creative writers on the modern-day afterlives of Old English, delving into how it has been transplanted and recreated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

With a master’s degree in Astronomy you are well prepared for jobs in research, industry and the public sector, including technological, financial and consultancy companies, research institutes, governments and science communication organizations.

With a master’s degree in Astronomy you are well prepared for jobs in research, industry and the public sector, including technological, financial and consultancy companies, research institutes, governments and science communication organizations.

Many students receive their first job offer during or right after their Business Studies internship. After graduating you can also aim for a career in Astronomy research.

Hidden behind the Academy Building on the Rapenburg lies the oldest botanical garden of the Netherlands and one of the oldest gardens in the world. Founded in 1590 and expanded in the following centuries, the Hortus is the green heart of Leiden.

Considering Mesoamerican Precolonial books as material objects

Update : March 2020 A.J. Mills

The following maps show institutional collaborations and with indigenous communities (scroll down).

PhD defence