How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

This year four research trainee projects were approved by the faculty to be carried out at the Institute for History this semester.

Krista Murchison, University Lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, received a Veni grant of 250.000 euros. Her Veni-project will explore the ‘immaterial archive’ and its social and historical significance by digitally recreating manuscripts that were destroyed during World…

The hypothesis of this research is that the municipality used the impressive the Town Hall to enforce its rule and represent its political ideas and make use of sources such as biographies, poems, pamphlets, sermons and governmental documents.

The Persian Empire (539-330 BCE) was the first world empire in history. At its height, it united a territory stretching from present-day India to Libya - and it would take 2,000 years before significantly larger empires emerged in early modern Eurasia. This territorial sweep is both a source of fascination…

For every period, it is a challenge to unearth the details of political trafficking; yet the effort needs to include all relevant persons, groups, and institutions – not only those wielding formal responsibilities. We hope to reinvigorate this effort by inviting specialists to present their research…

The d12n Research Cluster provides a space for inquiry and intervention into the ongoing digit(al)isation of culture, society, and scholarship. The research cluster aims to link CADS Institute researchers to each other as well as to experts and praticioners from around the world as we combine thinking…

Huda Abi-Fares defended her thesis on 10 January 2017.

Recently Cambridge University Press published dr. Jan Osters monograph “Media Freedom as a Fundamental Right”.

The book reinterprets the role of the UN during the Congo crisis from 1960 to 1964, presenting a multidimensional view of the organisation.

Bernini and Pallavicino, the artist and the Jesuit cardinal, are closely related figures at the papal courts of Urban VIII and Alexander VII, at which Bernini was the principal artist. The analysis of Pallavicino's writings offers a new perspective on Bernini's art and artistry and allow us to understand…

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.

Drawing on a broad array of sources, this project examines modern retrievals of Bacon’s idols, thereby testing Justus von Liebig’s intriguing observation, back in 1863, that Bacon’s name lived on mainly in mottos or stereotypical phrases. More importantly, it examines the rhetorical purposes served…

This project analyzes to what extent hodegetical textbooks relied on each other in warning their readers against vicious habits, how much continuity their catalogs of vice displayed, and to what extent vices that persisted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries were associated with easy-to-remember…

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.

In recent years, the public discourse on immigration in Europe and in the United States has often focused on efforts to increase security and restrict traffic on external borders. How old is this phenomenon of states attempting to control migrations on external borders? What were the motives and the…

Peter Pels, affiliated with the Institute of Cultural Anthropology of Leiden University, is one of the researchers. Together with Birgit Meyer (UU), he will lead the work package 'Heritage and the Question of Conversion'.

The MA Arts and Culture at Leiden University offers two specialisations: Art History and Museum Studies.

Nearly eight decades after the liberation of Auschwitz, we continue to learn more about how the Holocaust “happened” in central and eastern Europe. In Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey’s History MA Research Seminar “New Approaches to the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe,” a dozen Leiden students read what…

Explore how stakeholders in Gabon's Makokou region interact with forest resources in logging, agriculture, and mining, and their impacts on social and environmental changes.

Gold Matters: Sustainability Transformations in Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining: A Multi-Actor and Trans-Regional Perspective.This project explores whether a transformative approach towards sustainability can arise in Artisanal and Smallscale Gold Mining (ASGM).

Pressing Matter: Ownership, Value and the Question of Colonial Heritage in Museums is a large-scale research project funded through the Dutch National Research Agenda, and led by Wayne Modest and Susan Legêne (Vrije Universiteit). Work Package 3 on “Value” phrases its main research question as follows:…

CADS researchers give methodology their own unique signature through two parallel engagements: (a) teaching and researching the full range of social science methods, from audio-visual engagements, through global ethnography, to statistical analysis; and (b) interrogating these multiple modalities employing…

The ERC Consolidator project Food Citizens? Collective food procurement in European cities: solidarity and diversity, skills and scale (2017-2022) organizes Conference Friday 4 February and Winter School 24 January to 4 February 2022.

This project investigates diversifying and democratizing heritage through practices of “home-making”. We propose to research ‘home-making’ as a non-binary practice of combining memories of roots and routes, dwelling in the present, and desires for the future.

During the Tackling Heritage sessions, we bring together people at different stages of their academic trajectory, primarily from Leiden University's Cultural Anthropology department but also beyond. Through collective reading, discussion, and collaborative experiments, we take an anthropological approach…

To address major societal challenges, research needs to go beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplines. We believe this starts with education. By exposing students to people from different scientific fields, they learn to deal with diverse perspectives and can broaden their horizons. Professors…

If idioms employed in codes of conduct could be as idiosyncratic as examples suggest, then to what extent did early modern language of vice, too, persist in this genre?

How did the medieval manuscript develop as a physical object during the Twelfth Century Renaissance and what do these changes tell us about the intellectual culture of the period?

A female body equals a woman. Nonsense, says Professor by Special Appointment to the Socrates Chair Annemie Halsema. She argues that our sense of identity and social environment also determine our identity. ‘We should stop assigning people’s sex at birth.’

In January 2014, the research project The Promise of Organization hosted a fruitful three-day conference:

The new blog Afro-Asian Visions showcases new and ongoing research on Afro-Asian interactions through networks of artists, intellectuals, technical experts, and activists. It is designed as an online magazine.

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…

Commagene in its Local, Regional and Global Hellenistic Context

The purpose of LENS – to foster, coordinate and support research in the area of the visual arts and visual media of photography, film, video and digital media – is connected to the objectives of the Master program Film and Photographic Studies.

Take a journey through the history and future of life on planet Earth.

Your theoretical knowledge and hands-on research experience fit very well with current labour market demands.

How did “free agents” (entrepreneurs operating outside of the myriad of interests of the centralized, state-sponsored monopolies) in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire react to the creation of colonial monopolies (royal monopolies and chartered companies) by the central states in the Early Modern…

Dutch-Caribbean research will get a boost. Gert Oostindie, working at the Institute of History and KITLV, has received a grant from NWO, consisting of 750,000 euros, for his research project 'Confronting Caribbean challenges: hybrid identities and governance in small-scale island jurisdictions'.

It is the sixth year in a row that the Faculty of Archaeology is placed in the top ten of archaeological institutes worldwide. The QS World University Rankings by Subject looks at criteria like academic reputation and citation ratios.

The Institute CADS adheres to and teaches an approach to research ethics and integrity that emphasizes the processual nature of informed consent, situational ethics, and the indispensability of continually updating the ethical tradition in international anthropology in all the work of its researchers…