The master’s programme in Archaeology at Leiden University is the most diverse in the Netherlands. There are several regional and thematic focus areas and research is incorporated in the education programme. Join our international classroom: half of the students come from outside The Netherlands, as…

Kuba funerary art from the Congo River Basin

The Historia Naturalis Brasiliae Reconsidered

During the early modern period, many medieval manuscripts were cut up into strips of parchment which were reused to reinforce the bindings of newly printed books. Until recently, these reused pieces of medieval manuscripts only came to light when the early modern book binding was damaged and/or subjected…

From Apartheid in South-Africa to 9/11 in the United States: there is not a single culture that is not shaped by the memory of war or conflict. The minor Cultural Memory of War and Conflict focuses on how such memory cultures influence and shape societies today.

Unlike the predominant and excessive focus on the problems of food production and food insecurity in Africa, this project views African culinary tradition as a vibrant and rich cultural heritage, intertwined with language use.

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections between a variety of artistic and cultural expressions and their role in society from 1800 onwards.

The living plant collections form the heart of the Hortus botanicus Leiden and serve as a vital resource for scientific research. By studying these collections, researchers can explore biodiversity in a unique way and conduct experiments on living material.

In the Spanish town of Guadalajara, there is a street named ‘Burgemeester Fluiterstraat’, named after a descendant of Leiden migrants who had done well in the South. He was not the only Guadalajara resident with Leiden roots: at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a stream of Dutch textile workers…

Lecture

This one-year master's programme explores the political and cultural evolution of the world from a long-term, and broad comparative perspective. This creates a better understanding of the entangled nature of today's society.

Global Interactions sponsors a number of research projects of Leiden University researchers.

The Jordan Times has interviewed Peter Akkermans about the damage done to the Early Islamic archaeological site of Khirbet Al Umari, Jordan.

The general aim of the project is a description and analysis of the Leiden anatomical collections from a humanities perspective. The project investigates how historical and cultural practices and concerns have shaped anatomical preparations and how exhibitions of the anatomical body have informed cultural…

Arts and culture, Talk + Gaming Workshop

In early modern England, courts of law were working overtime. University lecturer Lotte Fikkers delved into the records of centuries-old court cases involving women. In Early Modern Women's Life-Writing and English Law, she reconstructs how the story they told in court differs from the one they wrote…

On 2 December, the Municipality of Leiden will apologise for the role previous administrations played in colonialism and slavery. A further study will be carried out.

Researchers have used AI to reconstruct the rules of a board game carved into a stone found in the Dutch city of Heerlen. The team concludes that this type of game was played several centuries earlier than previously assumed.

The Executive Board of Leiden University has appointed Dr Alicia Schrikker as Professor History of The Netherlands in the world, effective 1 January 2026. The chair is based at the Institute for History at the Faculty of Humanities.

Leiden University is a centre of migration research, bringing together historians, economists, lawyers, political scientists and anthropologists. They conduct research on who migrates and why, and the impact on societies. They analyse government policy, the role of media and how societies respond to…

AI has huge societal and economic potential and is widely used. But it also brings challenges: how do we combine human values with AI, how do we make AI more transparent and understandable, and what can AI and human cognition learn from each other, for example about language learning?

The LUCDH foster the development of new digital research by awarding a number of Small Grants each year. COIn Grants support Infrastructure development. We congratulate our four successful awardees for 2026.

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.

World history, connectivity and material culture, edited by Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys. From Cambridge University Press.

The Laboratory for Human Osteoarchaeology specialises in the macroscopic and microscopic analysis of human remains. We use cutting edge scientific approaches to address archaeological, historical, and anthropological research questions. In addition to paleopathological, histological, and 3D scanning…

Perception of material culture, design and digital knowledge applications

This thesis surveys the intersection of computed tomography (CT) and machine learning (ML), treating CT as an ill-posed inverse problem shaped by object properties, imaging physics, and data limitations.

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 unique geographic and temporal breadth of research at Leiden allows us to stimulate a shift from the classical Weberian mode of scholarly production that views historical development and modernization as emanating from Europe and the West to a multi-polar perspective that allows for more nuanced,…

The excavation of three Bronze Age barrows and surrounding landscape at Apeldoorn-Wieselseweg

Archives were a common target during the Second World War, and hundreds suffered damages. Among these archival losses, the losses to medieval manuscript collections stand out.

Essays dedicated to Frans Wiggermann

This research examines how right-wing extremist parents perceive and discuss their role in the ideological socialisation of their children.

The research aims to understand how did Cuban and Dominican landscape encapsulate historical conceptual transformations about human –nature spiritual interaction after the Spanish conquest? More specifically, what are the present day cultural associations with Cuban and Dominican natural landscape?…

Maps play a crucial role in our view of the past, yet few historians are sufficiently skilled in cartography to genuinely integrate maps into their research. This project breaks down the long-standing barriers between history and cartography by inviting emerging scholars (ResMA) to reflect on maps as…

Examine and experience the material features and characteristic appearances of medieval manuscripts, annotated books, prints, drawings, photographic albums and much more, in various settings.

The research provides insight into disease behavior in both rural and semi-urban areas in Serengeti in Tanzania.