PhD defence

Ron Sela, Associate Professor of Central Asian History in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University – Bloomington, will be the Central Asia Visiting Professor from 19 until 25 May 2017. Ron Sela will deliver a guest lecture and a master class within the Central Asia Initiative…

Nearly all students have faced many challenges this academic year. Students Nasreen Javanjoo (Religious Studies) and Marcos Cordova (Literary Studies) talk about their experiences of studying in the time of coronavirus.

The LUCAS Audience Award 2021 has been awarded to Nadine Akkerman. This is a prize for researchers who appeal to an audience wider than the academic community. The prize consists of 1000 euros, a trophy and eternal fame.

Ron Sela, Associate Professor of Central Asian History in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University – Bloomington, will be the Central Asia Visiting Professor from 19 until 25 May 2017. Ron Sela will deliver a guest lecture and a master class within the Central Asia Initiative…

Nadine Akkerman has deciphered the correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, and studied 17th-century spies. Her fascinating historiographies have now been recognised with membership of the Young Academy.

Dr Sara Brandellero, Assistant Professor in Brazilian Studies (LUCAS), was invited by the State University of São Paulo (UNESP/Araraquara) and the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCAR) as visiting professor for the week of 8-12 June 2015.

Alumna Jetske Breedeveld pursued both a Bachelor's in English Language and Culture and a Master's in Literary Studies at Leiden University. Her passion for film was a constant theme throughout her student life. Now working at the Leiden International Film Festival, she describes her job as 'really c…

The NWO just announced the results of the Vrije Competitie proposals. Paul Smith, professor at the French department is, as a member of LUCAS, one of three scholars within the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University who has been awarded this grant.

As of November 1st 2019, Professor Anthonya (Thony) Visser will become Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Groningen and will leave LUCAS.

Dr Nadine Akkerman, lecturer in Early Modern Literature and postdoctoral researcher in Leiden, has written a new book to accompany the exhibition on Elizabeth Stuart and Amalia von Solms at the Historical Museum of The Hague. ‘They were like goddesses, constantly trying to upstage one another,’ says…

Nadine Akkerman, associate professor of early modern English literature is receiving the Dr Hendrik Muller Prize 2021 for her work.

A Leiden literary scholar, paintings of the Winter King and Queen and a string of pearls brought together by an exhibition in the Hague. Dr Nadine Akkerman: ‘The Winter Queen was a highly political person who used every means – including pearls - to showcase her royal lineage.’

At the end of May, the Leiden English Language and Culture Programme, formerly known as the Department of English Language and Literature, celebrated its 75th anniversary (starting from the appointment of the first professor of English Studies). Over 220 alumni, staff present and past, and students…

The international World Cultural Council (WCC) has awarded Nadine Akkerman, Victoria Nyst and Alicia Schrikker with Special Recognition Awards given to young scientists at the university organising the award ceremony. Leiden University organises the 34th WCC award ceremony this year.

Leiden University Libraries has made a large number of unofficial poetry journals from China accessible online in its Digital Collections. This opens up thousands of pages from an internationally unique collection of unofficial Chinese poetry for teaching, research, and the general public, including…

‘Seated behind her desk, she initiated and influenced embassies, conventions, ambassadorial meetings, sieges, and skirmishes that had kept a war-torn early modern Europe in its grip.’ This is how Nadine Akkerman, researcher as the Leiden Institute for Cultural Disciplines and author of The Correspondence…

Alumnus Maarten Asscher (60) is mentor of the month. He studied Law in Leiden and has worked as a literary publisher, senior official at the Ministry of Education and director of Athenaeum Booksellers. Will he be your mentor?

The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University annually offers a limited number of Visiting Research Fellowships for scholars in the humanities or the social sciences worldwide, who wish to spend time in residence at Princeton pursuing independent research projects, free of teaching…

On 25 September, lights throughout Leiden will be turned off for the Seeing Stars event. What makes the urban night so special? We asked university lecturer Sara Brandellero, who researches cities, night and migration.

Yra van Dijk obtained a NWO 'Internationalisation in the Humanities' grant. Together with Ernst van Alphen she will collaborate with 8 European and Israelian partners in researching 'Digital Memory of the Holocaust'.

Since November 2019 Stephan Raaijmakers is Professor by special appointment of Communicative AI (Artificial Intelligence) at LUCL. Raaijmakers investigates how linguistics can help make Artificial Intelligence smarter.

While Old Germanic studies might seem dated and, regrettably, occupies a less than secure position in various academic institutions, exciting new research presented by young researchers shows that the field is still vibrant and may have a bright future. On Thursday, the 7th of April, the ‘Junius Symposium…

In the 1970s and 1980s, Argentina faced a severe dictatorship. The regime did not shy away from using brute force and torture. People who showed their dissatisfaction also regularly disappeared. For her PhD, Ana Saab researched how the memory of these disappeared people was kept alive anyway.

Experiencing what it is like to attend a lecture, asking professors questions and even trying your hand at homework: Experience Days help prospective students learn more about all the programmes offered by the Faculty of Humanities.

A perfect world, who doesn't want that? But what is perfect is debatable. What is great for one person is disastrous for another. PhD student Zeynep Anli took a closer look at dreams for the future by looking at gender-separated utopias.

Mattias Brand’s dissertation, The Manichaeans of Kellis: Religion, Community, and Everyday Life (Leiden, 2019) has been selected for one of the five prestigious Praemium Erasmianum Dissertation Awards 2021.

Bredero (1585-1618) was known for his farces and comedies, but he also wrote one tragedy. According to Olga van Marion and Tim Vergeer, the play's main protagonists Rodd’rick and Alphonsus were not competing for the love of a lady, but were in love with one another.

Recently, Evert Jan van Leeuwen was able to identify an “unknown” manuscript leaf in the William Godwin Papers of the Abinger Collection at the Bodleian Library (Oxford), while sitting at his desk in Van Eyckhof 4 (Leiden).

New PhD opportunities in Medieval and Neo-Latin Studies, a collaboration between the Institute of Greek and Latin Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, and the Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences. Deadline for application: 31 March 2025.

In his VIDI project “Turning Over a New Leaf: Manuscript Innovation in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance” (2010-2015) Erik Kwakkel and his team studied how books and reading developed under influence of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, a period in which Europe went through a variety of cultural and intellectual…

Prof. dr. Iain Gardner (University of Sydney) will be a visiting scholar at Leiden University Centre for the study of Religion (LUCSoR) in September-November 2015

On 8 December, on the occasion of her 65th birthday, Cisca Hoogendijk was surprised with a festive bundle of 56 text editions by friends and colleagues, edited by her former students Dr Joanne Vera Stolk and Guus A.J.C. van Loon, MA.

Concrete Islands in Alphaville A Photo Gallery of Responses to two Seminal Artistic Explorations of Urban Technocracy and its Monstrous Highways

Thijs Porck, teacher at English Language and Culture, has won the faculty teaching prize. He was lauded for his enthousiasm, his creative ways of teaching, and his commitment to his students.

NOSTER, the research school for Theology and Religious Studies, organizes a Coptic Course in the fall of 2023. Students can enroll until October 1.

Researchers from more than 30 countries have been discussing the changes in reading through digitization in the European research network E-READ. Adriaan van der Weel, Senior University Lecturer, spoke about the network’s achievements in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

What can a doodle tell us about the person who drew it? Erik Kwakkel is a Dutch book historian at Leiden University who searches for the secret meanings of doodles and scribbles in medieval manuscripts. He talks to BBC World Service about his passion for books.

During the spring of 2021, a group of eight biology students from Leiden set out into the dunes in search of amphibians. Using DNA, they determined the geographic origin of the animals. And guess what? In many cases they discovered exotic populations of animals that do not naturally belong in The Netherlands.…

For nearly twenty years the Lorentz Center has been a unique venue where researchers from all over the world work in intense collaboration. In an inspiring academic climate, researchers are free to organise specialised workshops within and across disciplines, be it humanities, social sciences or sci…

The launch meeting of the Leiden Islam Academy on 7 December in the Academy Building drew just the right audience: a diverse group of people who were all in some way engaged with Islam. This was just what the directors of the Academy, Maurits Berger and Fatiha Azzarhouni, were hoping for.

How did the Arabs manage to maintain an empire based on Islamic principles for three hundred years? Arab expert Petra Sijpesteijn and her team will be examining this question over the coming five years, focusing on the correspondence of ordinary people. The research is being funded by an ERC Consolidator…

Conference, Workshop

On this page you will find more information about the selected projects of the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Fund for 2023.

In your first year at LUC you gain the basic knowledge and lay the foundation and skills for your specialization in year two and three.

This article explores an emerging “cultural turn” in intelligence studies, which, if fully realized, could entail the expansion of the discipline to include new methodologies and theories, and a more integrative understanding of historical causality that locates intelligence agencies within the widersocio-cultural…

PhD Research Projects at LUCDH and Affiliated Faculties

Graduates of this programme work in diverse fields such as publishing, journalism, public relations, education, cultural policy, and translation. Roles include editor, content manager, policy advisor, project manager, and PhD researcher. The programme also prepares you for academic careers, with many…

English Language and Culture is a multi-faceted programme in which you’ll study the language in all its variaties, from Old English to the many different pronunciations currently in use. You’ll also be shown British, American and Canadian literature in their cultural-historical context.

From Great-Britain to the United States and from Australia to South Africa: people around the whole world speak and write English. In Leiden you will broaden your knowledge of the English language and the rich Literature and culture of the global English world on academic level.