The new Erfgoed Gezocht/Heritage Quest website means you can play armchair detective and hunt for undiscovered burial mounds in the Veluwe. This will help stop them being destroyed by construction projects. The website is the initiative of the Leiden University Faculty of Archaeology in collaboration…

All manuscripts submitted to Inter-Section need to adhere to these guidelines. Since 01-08-2022 Inter-Section uses APA7 as a reference system. Inter-Section therefore now follows the new Faculty of Archaeology guidelines concerning referencing and bibliography.

Leiden is proud to announce that the city has been selected to host the 33rd Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA), scheduled for 25-28 August 2027.

Lecture

The archaeology of transregional exchange (1st millennia BCE-CE)

Join-in courses zijn MA-cursussen over middeleeuwse onderwerpen gegeven binnen vastgestelde MA-programma's van de zes deelnemende universiteiten van de Onderzoekschool. Op aanvraag zijn deze vakken toegankelijk voor studenten van andere (Nederlandse) universiteiten. De cursusbelasting en het aantal…

Svetlana Gorshenina, Associate Lecturer at Collège de France, Paris, will be the Central Asia Visiting Scholar from 17 February until 25 February 2018. Svetlana Gorshenina will deliver a guest lecture on Tuesday, 20 February and a masterclass on Friday, 23 February within the Central Asia Initiative…

Between 1993 and 2000 the Faculty of Archaeology had a formal cooperation with the Service Régional de l’Archéologie de la Guadeloupe, Direction Regional des Affaires Culturelles (DRAC) and the then director André Delpuech. During that period surveys and excavations were carried out at a number of s…

The Master’s Health, Ageing and Society stimulates interdisciplinary thought. Meaning that motivated students with a broad scale of Bachelor backgrounds will potentially be admitted to the programme.

The Leiden municipality wants to make the city centre climate-proof and combat heat stress by greening it. But they want to do this in a way that does justice to the city’s heritage. Researcher Fenna IJtsma delves into historical greenery to offer inspiration.

The strangest things come out at night. This is the motto of the Leiden Museum Night due to take place on 28 May. Leiden University is once again playing a key part.

Students were able to continue their studies in September 1945 after the University had been closed for several years during the Second World War. This moment was celebrated for four days, with the traditional cortège, commemorative services and a party in the Botanical Garden. Queen Wilhelmina was…

On November 12, dean prof. Willem J.H. Willems was elected as one of the twelve members of the European Union’s academic committee Joint Programming Initiative Cultural Heritage and Global Change.

Three projects affiliated with the university will receive grants from the Leids Mediafonds (Leiden Media Fund ed.). The money is to be spend on creating a journalistic production in collaboration with a local media partner.

Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam, together with Heritage Leiden and Region, are developing a map application of historical Leiden.

Dominique Brommers, Lilly Brouwer, Annemiek Buijze and Kyra van Meijgaarden were granted the Bachelor Speckmann Award for their report ‘Community of Healing: Pentecost Revival Church’ (supervisor: Nienke van der Heide). Alumna Louise Nisbet received the Master Speckmann Award for her thesis ‘‘Alright,…

With her debut album ‘Itaala’, the multicultural Shishani & The Namibian Tales are taking the Dutch music scene by storm. The album, which was crowned by Mixed World Music as the best Dutch World Music Release, merges different musical traditions to create an unprecedented new genre. Shishani Vranckx,…

Mirjam de Baar has been Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and portfolio holder for education of master’s and research master’s programmes since 2016. As a result of her reappointment, she will continue to fulfil this role for an additional four years. ‘Being asked by the Vice-Rector and the Dean…

Using enslaved people as servants, becoming an administrator in the Dutch West India Company or making uniforms for the colonial army. Many people from Leiden played a role in colonialism and slavery. Historians are conducting preliminary research and finding striking examples.

Career Services of the Faculties Governance and Global Affairs, Social Sciences, and Humanities joined forces to organise the ‘Meet the Employer’ Week held from 6 – 10 December 2021!

The Executive Board has appointed Pieter ter Keurs as professor of Museums, Collections, and Society as of 1 September 2019. The chair will be part of LUCAS (Faculty of Humanities) and is a collaborative effort of the Faculty of Archaeology and the Faculty of Humanities. Ter Keurs has his roots in…

Heritage Quest is a large-scale citizen science project in the field of archaeology that allows anyone to contribute to scientific research. It is the first large-scale archaeological citizen science project in The Netherlands and one of the few of its kind in the world. As part of the Cultural Heritage…

Neanderthals at Pech-de-l'Azé I in South Western France had a striking use for manganese dioxide 50,000 years ago.

Scientific research, heritage management and public outreach intertwined.

When you want to analyse big quantities of archaeological data, you run into the issue that searching through excavation reports is extremely time-consuming. If only there existed a search engine specifically focused on querying these reports… But wait, work on an archaeological search engine focused…

On 1 November 2018, Marieke Bloembergen was appointed Professor of Archival and Postcolonial Studies at the Institute for History.

Terracotta pottery, precious ikat fabrics and the bazaars where these goods are sold: all these can be seen in a new Louvre film premiering on Friday 9 December. University lecturer Elena Paskaleva collaborated on the film Uzbekistan a timeless journey in Central Asia about Uzbek artefacts.

Archaeologist Quentin Bourgeois received an NWO Vidi grant to investigate the emergence of a pan-European culture in the third millennium BC. ‘We see ideas being shared across the entire continent in pre-literate societies. And not only that, for a thousand years, the same cultural ideas persist.’

The Dutch phrase ‘ijs en weder dienende’ (literally, ‘ice and weather serving’) is a good example of what is known as a participle clause and is perhaps one of the most unfathomable grammatical constructions in Dutch. For what (or who) is serving whom (or what)? It actually means ‘ice and weather permitting’.…

After one bachelor’s and two master's theses, Fenna IJtsma knew for sure: she wanted to do a PhD. Her thesis supervisor warned her about the high workload. In the 'Twijfeltraject' (PhD: to do or not to do) podcast, published by Mare, IJtsma explores with Mare editor Susan Wichgers whether a PhD track…

Research master's student in history Jesse Dijkshoorn collaborated on a transcription system for medieval texts. ‘It’s nice to make the Middle Ages accessible to people.’

Ten Leiden museums and heritage institutions have curated the online exhibition ‘Carel’s Universe’. They selected objects from their collections that symbolise retiring Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker and the research in Leiden. With direct references, playful associations and the odd nod and wink.

Two Leiden University science communication projects have been awarded a WECOM grant through the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA). One project is a study of the history of the deaf community in the Netherlands and the other is of a condition that causes people to lose their way.

Over the past year, historian Fenna IJtsma delved into 'four centuries of historical greenery'. As part of the Heritage Deal, with input from biologists at Naturalis and others, she looked for inspiration and examples from the past to contribute to a future climate-proof city centre.

The Master's programme in History at Leiden University is set to change. From September 2026, three of the five specialisations will be replaced by new subjects that are more closely aligned with the field of research and students’ interests. One of these new specialisations will also be taught entirely…

This page features an overview of relevant lectures, publications and conference papers.

‘It is a fantastic sum of money,’ enthuses classicist Professor Ineke Sluiter. ‘It gives me not just an award, but a task as well. And in all honesty, I prefer it that way.’ She is already brimming with ideas about what she will do with her Spinoza Prize.

Met groot plezier heeft de Universiteit Leiden van 1 tot 4 november het X Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Hispanistas del Benelux (AHBx) georganiseerd, met het thema Transhispanismos: contactos y contagios (Transhispanismes: contact en besmetting). De AHBx is een platform in de Benelux dat…

Study information

Historians and experts in American studies from Leiden University are holding an online international conference about the arrival of the Pilgrims in America and the consequences for the indigenous societies. We asked four questions to two of its organisers, American Studies expert Joke Kardux and historian…

We always need to find a new way to tell the story of 3 October, believes Ariadne Schmidt. The professor by special appointment of History of Urban Culture will be working with students to involve more people in the history of that day. ‘I’m too much of a historian to say: we can just let it be a “fun…

Two graves dating from the 7th century have been discovered during an archaeological excavation in Leiden. One of the graves was found by a student of Archaeology during the first-year fieldwork project that took place at the same time as the excavation. The well-preserved graves are interesting because…

Traces of the past remain hidden in rivers, lakes and seas. In his inaugural lecture Martijn Manders will explain why underwater archaeology is important to understanding our history.

Leiden archaeologists appealed for help from volunteers to search for archaeological remains on satellite images of Utrechtse Heuvelrug, a national park close to Utrecht. The outbreak of the corona virus made the project a resounding success: in a single month, all 300,971 maps had been examined. 'That's…

Professor Ariadne Schmidt and Associate Professor Arie van Steensel (University of Groningen) have produced A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Leiden, the first English-language history of Leiden. Mayor Peter Heijkoop received the first copy.

Professor Jan Kolen was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology on September 1, 2018. We sat down with him and interviewed him about his background, the challenges he sees, and the future of our Faculty.

Mayor Peter Heijkoop is busy getting to know his city better. On Monday 7 July, he visited the Faculty of Humanities. ‘A few hours and you can see how important this is.’

At the start of the new year, we celebrate the release of a new selection of collection items into the Public Domain. This year, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) is making approximately eight hundred items freely downloadable via Digital Collections.

Together with students and local residents, historians Ariadne Schmidt and Alicia Schrikker researched the Leiden Transvaal neighbourhood. They will present their findings on Thursday 20 October, at a specially organised mini-festival in the neighbourhood.

Onderzoekers van het Instituut Pedagogische Wetenschappen en de afdeling Jeugdrecht gaan samenwerken in 2 nieuwe onderzoeken: onderzoek naar het terugplaatsingen van kinderen na uithuisplaatsing en draagmoederschappen in Nederland.