On 19th August, we received the sad news that our dear colleague, Dr Johanna Stöger, has passed on. Hanna died, surrounded by family, at home in Southern Germany. She had battled her illness for some time, and for a while it looked as if treatment would be successful. Alas, Hanna’s recovery was to…

Recently, archaeologist Dr Wei Chu received a grant from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung for an excavation in the Carpathian Mountains. Originally planning for an excavation in Ukraine, his plans were disrupted by the war. ‘We had to change plans really quickly.’

Archaeologist Maikel Kuijpers participated in the development of the boardgame Epoch: Early Inventors. “This game is inspired by the major innovation that happened in prehistoric times. A topic that has my interest and that I teach here in Leiden.

In 2019, Federico Cappadona was one of the first students to enroll in the new master’s specialisation Applied Archaeology. He recently graduated and he is happy to share his experience.

On 2 November, more than 800 students visited Leiden's Humanities Faculty to explore their options during the Master's Open Day. Read some of their stories here!

From sponsored runs to festivals and from open days to concerts: Leiden University hosts lots of events each year. We are highlighting six of them for 2023.

Three new PhD candidates at the Faculty of Humanities will receive funding from the Programme Office Sustainable Humanities and NWO. The aim of the grant is to boost young talent within the humanities.

On Saturday 16 January 2016, the Faculty of Archaeology opened its doors to welcome over 100 archaeology and living archaeology enthusiasts from all over the Netherlands. They were participating in a full-day symposium organised by Céline den Engelsman and Casper van Dijk, BA3-students from the archaeology…

At the end of the 7th century something curious occurs in Northwestern Europe. Suddenly, people start burying the dead next to their dwellings instead of in communal cemeteries. Professor Frans Theuws recently published a book on this phenomenon. ‘We wanted to know if the study of these farmyard burials…

PhD students Alex Brandsen and Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart are both doing a project within the university’s Data Science research programme. The are introducing terms like ‘text mining’ and ‘advanced machine learning’ into archaeology. ‘These techniques will make archaeology more efficient and ch…

‘I was very happy and honoured that my thesis was recognised as a valuable contribution to the topic of landscape archaeology.’

We are very happy to announce that as of 1 March Marleen De Meyer is our new NVIC Director!

In 2020, the organizing committee of ICEHL-21 made the decision to host the conference in 2021 as an online conference. After careful consideration, and taking the feedback of participants into account, the organizing committee has made the following practical decisions:

In the last weeks of May 2017 a team of students, PhD’s and postdocs of Leiden University led by prof. Frans Theuws excavated a small but exclusive cemetery from the late 7th and early 8th century in the town of Veldhoven in the southern Netherlands. Leiden University cooperated with the Town of Veldhoven,…

Tax collection has become highly complex and the system is creaking at the seams. Is there an easier way to collect taxes? This is the question raised by Rex Arendsen, Professor of Tax Law, in his inaugural lecture on 16 September.

In Bronze Age Europe many bronze objects such as axes, swords and jewels were deliberately left at specific spots in the landscape. PhD research by Leiden archaeologist Marieke Visser shows that these practices were expressions of people’s relationship with the world around them. ‘It was a completely…

Studying Sumerian grammar in your free time: Bram Jagersma did it. He described centuries-old Sumerian using a modern method he devised himself. For this PhD research he was awarded the De La Court Award for Independent Research by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science (KNAW).

On 1 November, Stijn Bussels assumed his role as professor of Art History, especially before 1800 at Leiden University. The chair is located at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS).

Hwæt! You've heard of the adventures of the mighty Beowulf. You've heard of the brave folk standing beside him, and the awe-inspiring foes standing against him. But where their legend still lives, their tale ended long ago... Let us begin a new saga, let us find new heroes, weave a new story - by the…

Every year, the Leiden University Student Platform (LUS) chooses the best lecturer in the university. The prize is awarded during the Opening of the Academic Year, this year on 5 September.

Stijn Bussels will attend the two-day conference on The Tableau Vivant – Across Media, History, and Culture at the Colombia University of New York. He will deliver a paper on ‘‘Restored Behaviour’ and the Performance of the City Maiden in Joyous Entries into Antwerp’.

Cornald Maas was able to ‘pioneer’ in Leiden. This Dutch Studies graduate, presenter, programme maker and publicist combined an active student life with studying hard.

Excursions to Leiden museums, a flown-in American professor and a collaboration with PhD students from Cambridge: Leiden PhD candidates in early modern art were in luck this summer. An award from the Camino Laurent van Vugt Fund allowed the LUCAS research institute to organise a special summer school…

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.

Successful innovation requires more than technological progress alone. Every new concept must first be firmly anchored into an existing context. At least this is the hypothesis of Dutch classicists, working together in the National Research School in Classical Studies OIKOS. They intend to test this…

Conference, L*CeSAR Masterclass

Please note this event will be in Dutch. This festive book presentation highlights Prof. em. Henk Versnel’s important position in the study of religion in the ancient world. Prof. Miguel John Versluys (Leiden University) will introduce three speakers who will each share a personal reflection on Henk…

This activity is organized as part of the Ancient Worlds Network Lecture Series, by Miriam Müller and Caroline Waerzeggers (supported by LIAS). Raimo Hakola is the co-director of excavations at Horvat Kur and senior lecturer of New Testament Studies at the University Helsinki. He will…

Lecture, Ancient History Research Seminar

Lecture, Ancient History Research Seminar

Conference, Penn-Leiden Colloquium on Ancient Values XIII

Various researchers from Leiden University have been awarded NWO (Dutch Research Council) Open Competition funding. Nine social sciences and humanities projects will receive the funding.

Five research projects of the Institute for History have been selected for the Research Traineeship Programme 2016-2017. The programme was initiated by The Faculty of Humanities to offer motivated students the opportunity to develop themselves in academic research. In December the research trainees,…

With: Koen Klein (MA student): How Money Reaches People: Valorising the Classical Research Agenda Anchoring Innovation through Coinage. 'How do we present our research in Ancient History to a larger public? I present two research 'stories' that aim to be both academic but also relatable and interesting…

Speaker: Dr Jens Fischer (University of Potsdam) Title:

The LUCDH foster the development of new digital research by awarding a number of Small Grants each year. These are our past awardees.

Abstract In this talk I aim to enhance our understanding of attitudes to slavery in the ancient Greek world by tracing the views of one critic who has been hiding in plain sight: Diogenes of Sinope, the Cynic philosopher. The most robust ancient philosophical account of slavery was, as is well known,…

Pastoralist Societies, Rock Art and Literacy in Jordan’s Black Desert (200 BC to 800 AD)

The Historical Sociolinguistics Network (HiSoN) and the University of Murcia will organise the annual HiSoN Summer School from 14 to 21 July 2024 in the town of Cartagena (Murcia, Spain), in collaboration with the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). The summer schools organised by the Historical…

It was more than two years in the making, but despite the delays, giving up was not an option. In May, eighteen staff members of LUCAS and the Faculty of Archaeology visited NIMAR.

Accreditations. All study programmes have to deal with them and once every six years they cause a good amount of tension. How do you survive the assessment panel? And how does an accreditation proceed in times of corona? Chair of education Kim Beerden recently coordinated the accreditation for the research…

December 2020 saw the crowning publication of the Landscapes of Survival project by Professor Peter Akkermans. Its main topic is human habitation in marginal environments like the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. ‘The people living here built their own society, and they would not have viewed it as…

Faculty of Archaeology opened its doors to welcome over 100 archaeology and living archaeology enthusiasts from all over the Netherlands

Dr Cátia Antunes, lecturer in economic and social history, Leiden University Institute for History, and Dr Stijn Bussels, who will come to Leiden in 2012-2013 to join the Leiden University Institute for Cultural Disciplines, have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant for their excellent proposals. The…

In the very first Korean class that teacher Eun-ju Kim taught, there were already students with dyslexia. With a background in special education and clinical developmental psychology, she developed a new method to help them, partly based on teaching methods from Dutch first language education.

Berber languages have long been banned from public life in North Africa, but the situation has changed drastically. Linguistic research is generating new insights on the distant past and on present-day Dutch Moroccans. This is the finding of Maarten Kossmann, the only professor of Berber Studies in…