On Thursday 21 November 2024 Jake Benson successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

In this dissertation, the life account is constructed of of the founder of Bon Religion, Shenrab Miwo.

Playing a musical instrument is generally considered to be a complex human behaviour involving the integration and coordination of a broad range of human functions such as perception, imagination, memory, information processing, emotion, communication, and dexterity.

Victorian Fairy Tales

What can languages spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands today tell us about the histories of its various population groups?

In the last two decades, there have been heated public and scholarly debates in France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands on the violent end of empire. Nevertheless, the broader comparative investigations into colonial counterinsurgency tend to leave atrocities such as torture, execution, and…

The Dutch police face complex challenges, from organised crime and polarisation to digitalisation and new forms of crime. To deal with this effectively, they need innovation and intensive collaboration, says Professor by Special Appointment of Police Studies, Monica den Boer, in her inaugural lectur…

This project will construct an inventory of possible conceptions of the resistance of the world to scientists’ claims and theories.

The Vici project Through the Hands of Signers invites everyone to participate in its kick-off symposium on the History of Sign Language Emergence, Transmission, and Change on July 10 2026.

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…

It is one of the most famous moments in Dutch TV history: the twenty-three hour long marathon broadcast of Open het Dorp. But what happened to the commune for people with disabilities after that? Monika Baár and Paul van Trigt received a NWO grant of 750,000 euros to map the development of Het Dorp.

How did colonial law work to turn people into property? This project argues that colonial ideas about households and domestic authority were critical to legal processes of enslavement in the early modern Dutch empire. Using colonial court records from Dutch Brazil, Suriname, and the Moluccas, the project…

Historian Dario Fazzi is the new professor by special appointment at the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS), a strategic partner of the Faculty of Humanities. He starts on 1 September and will combine his new position with his current teaching duties at the Institute for History.

Managing Diversity: Supervising Functions in Managing Colonial Workplaces

Alumni who live and work in Brussels met on 18 February at the annual Leiden Alumni in Brussels Event. As well as celebrating Leiden University’s 450th anniversary, they also looked at the challenges Europe faces.

Joris van den Tol spent three months doing archival research in Albany in the USA. Read on how he experienced his stay.

Victoria Nyst's love for sign language was sparked when she accidentally ended up at a deaf school while studying African linguistics. The university lecturer has since been awarded a Vici grant to research the history of these languages.

As a student, Thijs Brocades Zaalberg was primarily interested in diplomacy surrounding conflicts. Through research on peace operations and subsequently the fight against guerrillas, he became increasingly involved with the most violent aspects of colonial warfare. Per 1 September 2024 he is appointed…

How many cities were there actually in the Roman Empire? And why did some regions only have a few cities, while others consisted of a tight urban network? Luuk de Ligt, Professor of Ancient History, wants to know the answer to all these questions. With the ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million awarded to…

Lecture, Ancient History Research Seminar

In August it was announced that Jeff Fynn-Paul was named co-recipient of a 15,000 EUR grant given by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO).

This project investigates the full ecosystem of Middle Dutch prayerbooks in order to answer questions about their role in – and impact on – religion, culture, and society in the late medieval Low Countries.

This collection brings into conversation several kinds of scholarship on medieval authorship which have tended to remain separate over the last two to three decades, a period of steadily increasing scholarly interest in this topic.

Bordering Up: Regulating Mobility Through Passes, Walls and Guards

Warja Tolstoj, alumna Art History, has been awarded the 2021 edition of the Ted Meijerprijs. Named after the former director of the KNIR (Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome), the prize is awarded yearly to the best MA/ReMa thesis or PhD in the Humanities.

Women confined to the kitchen? Not in Scheveningen around 1900. There, some women ran entire shipping companies. This is according to new research by history student Sjors Stuurman. He compiled the results in a book he wrote for Muzee Scheveningen.

Showing your face at dinners and parties at court: it was the way to get noticed by the king in William I's time. Joost Welten's latest book reveals how, during the reign of William I, the elite danced around his throne both literally and figuratively.

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

Depictions of Rembrandt, Michelangelo and many other artists are given a new dimension in an exhibition in the hall of the Oude UB at Leiden University. The exhibition - 'Multiple Images' - opens officially on 15 February. Artist Rudi Struik has given the slides of Leiden art historian Henri van de…

What was the environmental impact of the industrial mining revolution that transformed southern Africa? Specifically, what was the impact of industrial mining when viewed from a more than human multi-species perspective?

The 260 year old prize of the Legatum Stolpianum has been awarded in 2014 to two well written historical studies of high quality and with current significance. Leiden classicist Tazuko van Berkel is one of the two prizewinners.

This dissertation the role of the English dissenting minister Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) as a grammarian is studied.

Descolonización, continuidad cultural y re-apropiación de los códices mixtecos en el Pueblo de la Lluvia

Investigating the contribution of interpreters, informants, hunters and guides in the making of colonial scientific knowledge.

In Poland the commemoration of acts of resistance is being misused to distort the history of the Holocaust. That is what Cleveringa Professor Jan Grabowski said in his inaugural lecture on 26 November. In her lecture, the second Cleveringa Professor, Barbara Engelking, pointed to the often indifferent…

Prof. J. (Jos) Schaeken, Professor of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Cultural History, will be the interim Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 1 March 2025. He will succeed the present Vice-Dean, Mirjam de Baar, who will complete her second term on that date.