The underwater world around present-day Indonesia has changed greatly in recent centuries as a result of human activity. University lecturer Johannes Müller has been awarded an NWO XS grant to map the history of the Indonesian ecosystems.

Lecture, 7th ENIUGH congress

At the Dies Natalis Willem Otterspeer, Professor Emeritus of University History, presented the fourth and final volume of Groepsportret met Dame, his series on the history of Leiden University. De 'Strategie van de Aanpassing' covers the period 1876-1975. Otterspeer talked about his book in a podcast…

On 17 August 1945, two days after the Japanese surrender that also brought an end to the Second World War in Asia, Indonesia declared its independence. The declaration was not recognized by the Netherlands, which resorted to force in its attempt to take control of the inevitable process of decolonization.…

The Institute for History of Leiden University seeks to expand its academic staff by appointment of a university lecturer with teaching and research expertise in the field of Medieval History. Deadline: 20 January.

How was the Scholarly Self cultivated in professorial families of the humanities, in German-speaking Europe between 1860 and 1930?

The Yearbook for Dutch Book History publishes Dutch and English-language articles on the book history of the Low Countries in all time periods. For the 31st edition of the Yearbook, to be published in 2024, we welcome in particular contributions concerning the theme ‘Controversy’. Deadline: 1 March…

Engagement between Asia and Europe is increasing. If these continents want to build a lasting relationship, they need to understand each other better in the economic, socio-cultural, historical and legal arena. Researchers from Leiden have already contributed to the body of knowledge on past and present…

Museums have long focused on power, wealth and a few famous figures. But that is changing, says Valika Smeulders, head of the history department at the Rijksmuseum. What this change comprises and how it has come about is the subject of her keynote speech at the D&I Symposium on 11 January.

Anthropologist Marja Spierenburg talks in the Dutch newspaper NRC about the neoliberal system and how it has to change in order to solve the energy crisis in South-Africa.

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

This month, the NISIS publication “Islamic Studies in the Twenty-first Century: Transformations and Continuities” was published by Amsterdam University Press. This volume brings together contributions of various speakers at past NISIS Autumn Schools, providing an overview of important issues in the…

Tiffany Bousard is a PhD-candidate at Leiden University Institute for History and examines Atlantic news which circulated in the Habsburg or Southern Netherlands during the period 1580-1680.

On 1 July – Keti Koti, in the year ahead, our university community will be able to reflect extensively on the history of slavery by engaging in research, education and many other activities.

Course, Workshop

Bernhard Rieger leaves University College in London to research European History after 1945 at Leiden University. He will start as professor of European History on January 15th 2018.

Fenneke Sysling has recently launched a podcast: Het Gemeten Zelf (in Dutch). This five-part podcast series explores the history of self-tracking.

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…

This project investigates the transposition of natural historical material, knowledge and vision, between different media (collection, scientific drawing, academic texts, the visual arts and/or literature) – a transmission that happens in the borderline between the traditional, emblematic worldview…

Francoise Baggeler started her PhD at the Institute for History on 1st of september 2011.

The University of Groningen is looking for an Assistant Professor in Medieval History. The deadline for applications is: 14 February 2021.

Cultural Anthropologist Erik de Maaker published, together with Monica Janoswki (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), Stories across Borders: Myths of Origin and Their Contestation in the Borderlands of South and Southeast Asia in Southeast Asian Studies (SEAS).

Conference, Workshop History and International Studies

Protestant missionaries have provided the earliest and most detailed sources regarding the ritual art of the Papuan peoples of the Geelvink Bay. Raymond Corbey brings these sources to bear on circa 300 ritual objects and their itineraries in the book KORWAR - Northwest New Guinea ritual art according…

What was the stringed instrument known in medieval and early Renaissance Italy as “cetra”?

This year the PhDs of the institute had their traditional day out (uitje) to The Hague. The last two years they had stayed in Leiden, so The Hague already seemed like quite the adventure. Indeed, it seems almost that as time progresses and more and more archives become digitized, history PhDs slowly…

On 4 and 5 November 2021 an ICOG-workshop will be held on the cognitive turn in history. It is possible to attend this workshop online. The participants of the workshop are cultural and intellectual historians of the pre-modern periods and/or of the historiography of academia from a long-term perspective,…

Very little is known about the relationship between religion and the digital future. Bart Barendregt, Professor by special appointment Anthropology of Digital Diversity, is about to change that. He receives a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros from the NWO for his research project 'One between the Zeros,…

African oral literatures, new media and technologies: challenges for research and documentation

In this project the already developed parcel based historical GIS (HISGIS) for the Dutch province of Friesland (Frisia) will be extended with a series of crucial datasets and map layers.

Due to an overwhelming amount of enthusiasm for Touching Treasures: The History of Photography, another workshop will be organised on 13 May 2019, from 15.00 to 17.00. There, the Beyond Content thematic program will continue in the Vossiusroom at the Leiden Univerisity Library (UBL). The workshop will…

Girija Joshi will be doing research for her doctoral dissertation at Leiden University. She will be examining the ways in which the different constraints upon and possibilities for movement that developed in South Asia along with the establishment of the colonial state transformed both the nature and…

This research aims to fully recall these lost sound aspects of the eighteenth century and is, therefore, a study that passionately advocates the diversity of musical experience in the context of historical performance practice.

During the period 500–1000 CE Egypt was successively part of the Byzantine, Persian and Islamic empires. All kinds of events, developments and processes occurred that would greatly affect its history and that of the eastern Mediterranean in general. This is the first volume to map Egypt's position in…

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…

Silk Road Virtual Museum - A virtual museum of the art and culture of the regions that lay on the trade routes between Europe and Asia, popularly known as the ‘Silk Road’.

Julie Svalastog is one of the four PhDs in Cátia Antunes’ ERC Research Project 'Fighting Monopolies'.

Erik Bähre has been elected to the board of the Society of Economic Anthropology of the American Anthropology Association. On top of this he has joined the scientific advisory board of the NIAS-Lorentz Program.

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

Volume 4 and 5 of the Leiden series 'Dutch Sources on South Asia' are now available, written by Markus Vink (vol.4) and Carolien Stolte (vol.5).

How did parties as political organizations emerge?

How do people living in a remote part of Northern Mongolia experience the post-socialist transition that occurred twenty years ago? Based on extensive fieldwork, cultural anthropologist Richard Fraser argues that this is not at all clear. In his PhD dissertation, he developed a new framework based on…