This open access book investigates the transnationally connected history of Arab Christian communities in Palestine during the British Mandate (1918-1948) through the lens of the birth of cultural diplomacy.

In this thesis,

In October 2015, Director of the Master Course on Integrated Microfinance Management (M.IMM) of the Faculty of Economics & Business of Universitas Padjadjaran in Bandung, Indonesia came to visit the LEAD Programme in Leiden

Law firms play a dubious role in important land disputes in Indonesia. They act as fixers and settle conflicts to the advantage of large companies. PhD candidate Santy Kouwagam studied their modus operandi. PhD defence on 23 June.

This PhD project investigates how language models can be used to extract structured knowledge from text in a way that is accurate, robust, and applicable to real-world use cases.

What do ten-year-old children and chatbots have in common? PhD researcher Bram van Dijk studied language development in both children and AI language models. ‘It’s actually quite practical that we attribute human traits to a chatbot.’

We are pleased to invite abstracts for a conference on ‘Advancing Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights in a Polarised, Digitalised, and Unequal World’ to be held at Leiden University on 4 and 5 September 2025, in collaboration with Netherlands Network for Human Rights Researh (NNHRR).

From student exchanges and a joint laboratory to heritage research and a knowledge consortium, the Indonesian Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) is in various respects an important partner for Leiden University.

On 6 September 2018 Jacqueline Vel of the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society organised a master class on ‘Access to Justice’ at the invitation of the Wira Wacana Christian University in Waingapu, Sumba, Indonesia.

In this dissertation, Dutch secondary school teachers’ attitudes, knowledge, noticing skills and reasoned practices regarding culturally responsive teaching in a multicultural classroom context, were examined.

Conference

If you had something important to write down in ancient times, you would usually write in Greek in the eastern Mediterranean. University lecturer Joanne Stolk has been awarded an ERC grant to explore the kinds of spelling mistakes that were made in these scripts. And, more importantly, what improvements…

Whereas most outgoing professors are offered a congress, Nico Kaptein's former students and PhD students took a bigger approach. They treated him not only to a farewell congress, but also to a two-week tour of Indonesia, filled with lectures, and trips.

On May 15th, from 15.15 to 17.00 in the Vossiusroom, Leiden University Libraries will host a program on web-archiving and digital archives of Chinese communities in the Netherlands and Indonesia.

At the beginning of the Academic Year in September 2015, the Dean of the Faculty of Science of Universitas Padjadjaran in Bandung, Indonesia, Mrs. Prof.Dr. Budi Nurani visited the LEAD Programme in Leiden.

What is the role of technology and cyberculture in Korean social structures and in the potential formation of a new collective subjectivity? How do we reorient disoriented souls?

Dlshad Marf defended his thesis on 4 July 2016

This book explores intercultural management challenges in sub-Saharan Africa through a case study of Vasco Silva, a Portuguese businessman in Luanda, Angola.

How are night spaces imagined, produced, experienced and narrated by migrant communities in Europe? This research project considers this question in eight European cities: Aarhus, Amsterdam, Berlin, Cork, Galway, Lisbon, London, Rotterdam. Authorities have historically wrestled with the issue of night-time…

This thesis discusses the constructions relevant to Object Shift from the intonational perspective, by presenting experimental data from all the Scandinavian languages.

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…

Professor Henk Schulte Nordholt was made a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion on Friday 6 September 2019 for his services to the study of Indonesia. Mayor of Leiden, Henri Lenferink, presented him with his medal. This was at the end of a valedictory symposium for and a valedictory speech by…

Intensive 5-day programme on the world-famous Antwerp-based printing and publishing house founded by Christopher Plantin in 1555. International experts will discuss how it developed the production and distribution of religious books and related illustrations and prints in the following centuries.

Leiden University offers ambitious students a world-class environment in which to reach their full potential.

Leiden’s Faculty of Humanities is one of the broadest of its kind, offering courses in no fewer than 80 different languages and a very broad spectrum of academic disciplines.

On 28 and 29 May, Carlotta Rigotti, postdoctoral researcher at eLaw, held a workshop on fairness and diversity bias in AI-driven recruitment at the annual symposium of the Japanese Society on Artificial Intelligence (JSAI) in Hamamatsu, Japan. The workshop was organised as part of the BIAS project in…

Large numbers of Indonesians were active members of the resistance during the Second World War. One of them was Irawan Soejono, a student at Leiden University. He was shot dead on Boommarkt, during a raid on 13 January 1945. Seventy-five years later he was remembered in a small ceremony in the very…

This project combines and reconsiders all the available evidence of the Scheurrak SO1, and use new archival databases and modern archaeological techniques to shed new light on the material culture of the Baltic grain trade and the Holland shipbuilding industry at the turn of the sixteenth century.

This book celebrates Maarten Mous, professor of African Linguistics at Leiden University.

Leiden Asia Departments

Carsten Stahn has just published Confronting Colonial Objects: Histories, Legalities and Access to Culture. The book is part of the OUP Cultural Heritage Law and Policy Series.

Nietzsche says

Huda Abi-Fares defended her thesis on 10 January 2017.

As from 1 February Adriaan Bedner is the new KITLV professor (bij special appointment) of Law and Society in Indonesia at the Van Vollenhoven Institute (VVI), Leiden University.

Three Dutch universities: Leiden, Groningen and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam have joined forces this year to organize a first ever Pre-doctoral programme in Indonesia for future and potential Indonesian PhD candidates at Dutch universities.

The coming two years the Van Vollenhoven Institute (VVI, Leiden University) and ICEL (the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law) will collaborate to improve environmental regulation in Indonesia.

Lecture, LUCL Colloquium series

Fokelien Kootstra defended her thesis on 23 April 2019

The use-wear analysis of domestic implements provided new insights of the Single Grave Culture population in the Netherlands.

The expansion of European powers overseas brought Europeans into contact and conflict with the inhabitants of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Historians of colonialism and post-colonial scholars have long argued that this encounter was crucial for the formation of European identity, which originated…