Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Augustan Rome: Greek culture in the Roman world.

This book argues that the combined literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence supports the theory that early-imperial Italy had about six million inhabitants.

This book investigates how the rulers of the Habsburg world empire developed and implemented a central maritime policy for the Netherlands and appointed an admiral of the sea or admiral-general for that purpose.

The Effects of the 1881 Liquor Act on the Leiden Alcohol Trade

In the late 19th and early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of Chinese labor migrants crossed the seas to the Dutch East Indies. On the tobacco plantations of northeastern Sumatra and in the tin mines of Bangka and Belitung, they endured long hours and harsh conditions. Their journeys formed part…

How have British cities changed in the years since the Second World War? And what drove this transformation? This innovative new history traces the development of the post-war British city, from the 1940s era of reconstruction, through the rise and fall of modernist urban renewal, up to the present-day…

When we think of the history of Dutch slavery, the areas that spring to mind are primarily the Antilles and Suriname. However, until the end of the eighteenth century there were also Dutch plantation colonies in neighbouring Guyana. Bram Hoonhout’s book ‘Borderless Empire’ describes this forgotten h…

This book provides an overview of critical scholarly reflections on the history of Dutch slavery and colonization, as well as how this translates into critical cultural practices.

Multi-objective optimization is an effective technique for finding optimal solutions that balance several conflicting objectives. It has been applied in many fields of our world, because practical problems usually have more than one desired goal. For example, developing a new vehicle component might…

The second and final volume of this co-authored study has just been published by J.B. Metzler. This second monograph explores the history of the concept of barbarism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Are you curious about why people are the way they are - and how they change? At Leiden University, you’ll explore social behaviour, ideas and cultures, from the past to the present and from local to global. From major cities to world religions, from philosophical questions to education and upbringing…

Are you curious about why people are the way they are - and how they change? At Leiden University, you’ll explore social behaviour, ideas and cultures, from the past to the present and from local to global. From major cities to world religions, from philosophical questions to education and upbringing…

How can you learn about women’s history if they are under-represented in historical sources? Look at news coverage of crime, says Clare Wilkinson, PhD candidate in gender and history. ‘Historical crime reporting offers a glimpse into forgotten groups.’ The doctoral defence will take place on 23 Apri…

History lecturer Giles Scott-Smith is enthusiastic about the new pitch-to-peer programme (P2P), for which students have to make an original, creative assignment and evaluate one another’s work. This is part five in a series of articles about lecturers and innovation in teaching and learning.

This book on Alba is edited by Maurits Ebben, Margriet Lacy-Bruijn and Rolof van Hövell tot Westerflier. Each of its fifteen chapters are dedicated to developing a new understanding of a sometimes misunderstood figure in European history.

The Institute for History has a new academic director. Professor of Early Modern History Jeroen Duindam will take on this role from 1 September. ‘You can only do this job properly if you make time for it.’

The aim of this project is to foster a historiography that does justice both to the realization that scientific knowledge is constructed by local, contingent, and contextual processes, and the claims of science to objective validity.

A delegation from Leiden University will be visiting several Japanese universities and research institutions from 18 to 26 November to discuss research and teaching collaborations.

How did parties as political organizations emerge?

From mandrill teeth to the microstructure of bones: archaeology alumna Simone Lemmers (31) is determined to reveal the past by studying old remains. Her curiosity has led to a very international career, also in the UK, where she witnessed the Brexit referendum.

Combining approaches from intellectual history, philology and the study of Arabic manuscripts, this study places the Bornu scholar Muḥammad al-Wālī within his intellectual environment on the one hand, and it portrays him as someone who responded to the concerns of ordinary Muslims around him on the…

In Reframing the Diplomat Albertine Bloemendal offers a unique window onto the unofficial dimension of Cold War transatlantic relations by analyzing the diplomatic role of the Dutch Atlanticist Ernst van der Beugel as a government official and as a private diplomat.

From 1717 onwards, many Dutch textile workers emigrated to Spain, recruited in the Netherlands through Spanish intermediary agents and diplomatic staff. Bourbon Spain wanted to strengthen its economy by founding royal factories and was in desperate need for skilled foreign labour. This example of labour…

This volume, featuring sixteen contributions from leading Roman historians and archaeologists, sheds new light on approaches to the economic history of urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, with a particular emphasis on the imperial period.

This programme aims to make the digitized archival sources of the Kerala and Tamil Nadu Archives more accessible to Indian and international scholars and to the widest possible audience, in particular to the people of Kerala.

Mining the unusually rich diaries, memoirs, and poems written by Netherlandish Catholics, Judith Pollmann explores how Catholic believers experienced religious and political turmoil in the generations between Erasmus and Rubens.

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

This series of publications brings together new material on wellconsidered themes within the wide area of Early Modern Studies.

This project investigates how early print media covered distant but urgent geopolitical conflicts, using newspapers from the Low Countries, north and south.

Since my master's thesis on the landed property of the Frisian monasteries in the Middle Ages I am highly interested in the do ut des-aspects of the relation between religious houses and the lay world. Key words here are: property, power, patronage and the role of religious institutions in the 'salvation…

The thesis reconstructs Carl Schmitt's 1956 monography on 'Hamlet'. By scanning and unearthing books, essays, think-pieces, articles, personal diaries and private correspondence, this investigation fully addresses the unwritten philosophy of history -partially developed- in Schmitt's late thought. The…

The main question of this research project concerns the extent to which light verbs in West Germanic languages participate in processes of language change.

This special issue of Contemporary Levant critically explores, at a micro and macro level, the structural role and religious, cultural and political interactions of the Greek-Orthodox, Melkite and Syriac communities in late Ottoman and Mandate Syria and Palestine.

D.P. Kok defended his thesis on 10 October 2017

This project investigates language choice and language use among Swiss mercenaries in the VOC and in the Dutch Colonial Army.

Do you want to find solutions to environmental problems that make a real impact? Do you have a broad interest and want to learn from insights from the natural and social sciences when analysing complex sustainability challenges? Then Science for Sustainable Societies at Leiden University may be the…

Cultural anthropologist Annet Pauwelussen has been invited by the University of Washington to participate in an expert meeting on 'Global Measures of the Contribution of Small-Scale Fisheries to Sustainable Development'. 29 - 30 May 2018, Seattle.

The central aims of this project are to establish the shapes of the various urban hierarchies existing in the provinces of the Roman Empire and (especially) to use the quantitative properties of these hierarchies to shed new light on levels of economic integration.

This research cluster aims to analyse and interpret the formation and transmission of Graeco-Roman culture by exploring the relationships between cultural products (texts, objects, practices) and their societal and historical contexts.

Professor Herman Paul has been appointed Scientific Director of the Institute of History from 1 February 2025. ‘Especially in these times, transparency is essential.’

Professor of Dutch History prof.dr. H. (Henk) te Velde will become interim Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University for a two-year term with effect from 1 March 2025. He will succeed prof.dr. M.R. (Mark) Rutgers. Mark Rutgers’ second term of office expires on 1 March 2025; he will be professor…

Assistant professor Ancient History Rafal Matuszewski has been honored with the prestigious 2026 Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This distinguished award, accompanied by 60,000 € in funding, recognizes Matuszewski’s outstanding contributions to research…

What if seriously ill patients do not want to hear their diagnosis? Does a clinician always need to provide a patient with all available information? Communication researcher Liesbeth van Vliet, medical anthropologist Annemarie Samuels and research intern Fiona Brosig will put these questions on open…

The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration provides a complete exploration of the prominent themes, events, and theoretical underpinnings of the movements of human populations from prehistory to the present day.

This dissertation, Layered Loyalties: The Natuurkundige Commissie in the Netherlands Indies (1820-1850), studies the Natuurkundige Commissie.

Slavoj Žižek is one of the most prominent public intellectuals of the left. His central claim holds that “today, it is more crucial than ever to continue to question the very foundations of capitalism as a global system”.