What motivated past human societies to repeatedly invest labour, generation after generation, in constructing, maintaining, and enhancing monumental structures in an environment prone to frequent and unpredictable natural disasters? Moreover, how did societal resilience and periods of heightened or…

Engineering an efficient microbial enzymatic polyethylene degradation pathway via an innovative combination of biochemistry and computational biology tools for enzyme discovery and characterization.

Classical statistical methods, such as p-values, are difficult for researchers to apply correctly. They for example do not allow drawing conclusions from a study early, or for extending a study with extra research groups that want to make their data available later.

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.

This project aims to improve transparency in the distribution of research funding in the world, with a focus on global inequalities. Through an analysis of funding flows, the project will identify inequalities and opportunities for more appropriate and fairer allocation, highlighting patterns that perpetuate…

Submitted manuscripts will be subject to blind peer review.

Leiden University offers students a rich environment in which to reach their potential.

Leiden University offers ambitious students a world-class environment in which to reach their full potential.

The research involves the application and combination of archaeological and archaeometrical methodologies. Petrographic analysis and isotopic provenance studies of raw materials and exotics, and the study of the distribution patterns of these materials are used to gain insight into the exchange of goods…

In his lecture, Professor Platt discussed some of the main arguments from his latest book entitled “Beyond these Walls: Rethinking Crime and Punishment in the United States”

North, Middle and South America together constitute the single largest area in World Archaeology that is taught as a single focus. It is also the only major world area that saw societies develop from hunter-gatherers to early empires entirely independent from developments in Eurasia & Africa. It is,…

This is the 2017 paperback release of William Michael Schmidli's The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere, which won the 2013 Foreign Affairs Magazine Best Book of the Year.

In my research I am concerned with the possibility of a politics of sexuality without reverting to identitarian conceptions of sexuality. In a reading of the work of the American author James Purdy, I propose to move towards a politicizing of the concept of narrative identity as developed by the French…

The pre-master's is a bridging programme for students who have applied for the MA Latin American Studies but who, according to the Board of Admissions, still have deficiencies in their educational background. Once you have completed the pre-master’s programme, you will be admitted to the Master’s pr…

Climate change, depletion of natural resources, loss of natural and cultural landscapes, and many other (ecological) sustainability challenges urge us to (re)evaluate human interaction with the natural world. This renewed environmental consciousness has invigorated not only scientists working on effects…

Book launch

The Battle of Heiligerlee, on 23 May 450 years ago, is famous as an epic battle in Dutch history. But was it really so momentous? Professor of Early Modern History Judith Pollmann unravels the myths about ‘Heiligerlee’ and the Eighty Years' War.

The aim of this project is to foster a historiography that does justice both to the realization that scientific knowledge is constructed by local, contingent, and contextual processes, and the claims of science to objective validity.

Honduras recently severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan after 82 years. In doing so, the country is following the trend of other Central American countries that have turned their backs on the Asian island in recent years. Why are these countries making this choice now and what does it mean for Taiwan's…

How old is the phenomenon of states attempting to control migrations on external borders? What were the motives and outcomes of these policies? In his dissertation, Jovan Pešalj examines how migration control on the southern Habsburg border emerged, how they functioned, and what impact they had on migrations.…

With the red flag flying proudly on the Academy Building (Leiden University was on strike for the first time in its history!), the farewell event for former dean Mark Rutgers was held in the Telders Auditorium. After eight years, he has passed the baton to the interim dean, Henk te Velde.

This project applies a social-historical approach to examine and contrast various groups of African-American slave refugees who sought freedom within North America between 1800 and 1860. It innovatively distinguishes between different “spaces of freedom” for runaway slaves, namely sites of formal, semi-formal,…

This article studies the securitization of immigration in the United States of America (U.S.), through the analysis of the National Security Strategies (NSS) published between 2002 and 2017, using a two-layered analytical framework that combines securitization theory and agenda setting theory.

Perfect for use at advanced undergraduate and graduate level, this is the first text to offer students a unified narrative regarding the place of the body in Western thinking. The book investigates the ways in which the fact of human embodiment makes the notion of ambiguity central to all major areas…

EU foreign policy has become increasingly politicised over the past years, amongst others as a consequence of the succession of crises. Crises may engender processes of crisis framing and contestation. This article focuses on how the policy demands being voiced in these processes of contestation are…

A warm welcome to the Graduate School of FGGA at Leiden University.

Prior to the 2020 presidential election, historians considered the disputed 1876 contest—which pitted Republican Rutherford B. Hayes against Democrat Samuel J. Tilden—the most controversial in American history.

If you have a question, there are various ways to get in touch with us.

Written by a select international group of leading privacy scholars, Social Dimensions of Privacy endorses and develops an innovative approach to privacy.

During times of domestic turmoil, the use of force abroad becomes an appealing strategy to US presidents in hopes of diverting attention away from internal conditions and toward a foreign policy success.

Scientific research is the main focus of our program. We expect new students to understand what it is and how it works.

Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) and the Leiden University Institute for History (LUIH) are looking for a PhD in the History and Culture of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity.

LeidenGlobal Annual event

Ruling Overseas: Connected Practices of Governance of Law

Regulating Relations: Controlling Sex and Marriage

President Trump believes that Iran’s economy is collapsing, and that this will leave Iranians no choice but to surrender to the demands of the United States. But these expectations might not come true, says Arash Pourebrahimi at the website of the Harvard Kennedy School.

Indonesian Law and Reality in the Mahakam Delta

On Tuesday 30 April 2024 Jonny Russell successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This dissertation examines how Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Fécamp designed, produced, and read books over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

In this book, the authors provide an overview of the history of civil service education and training by analysing cases in Europe, the US and Australia.

The physical features of twelfth-century manuscripts from the Flemish abbey of Ter Duinen – such as script, page layout, and reading aids – show how their readers organized, interpreted, and transmitted knowledge.

From memorials to the armed forces to memory stones for individual victims. It was only later that the Holocaust took a central role in Western remembrance culture, Cleveringa Professor Frank van Vree notes. ‘Nationalists and human rights activists both invoke the experience of the Holocaust.’

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…