To truly understand complex regions such as the Middle East and Asia, you have to know their culture, history and local societies inside out. Driven by curiosity for other cultures, the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) provides an understanding and analysis of current and historical…

Your time at Leiden is about more than just studying. Some of your best experiences will stem from being a part of our lively and diverse student community, as well as from life in the beautiful city of Leiden.

The Master’s in Asian Studies at Leiden University is your opportunity to earn a specialised qualification from one of the leading centres for Asian studies in Europe.

Andrew Littlejohn composed a sonic ethnography with sounds recorded in Japan’s northeastern region. To understand the experience of being in the middle of a changing landscape, Littlejohn composed a sonic ethnography called Shizugawa, named after a district in Minamisanriku Town where he recorded.

This thesis reports on a study that examined the development of L1 teachers’ practical knowledge when they researched and implemented concept-context rich education in an action-research setting.

On February 10, 2026, emeritus Professor Dr. Takamitsu Muraoka (1938–2026) passed away, one day after celebrating his 88th birthday. From 1991 until his retirement in 2003, he held the chair of Hebrew Language and Culture, Israelite Antiquities, and Ugaritic at Leiden University.

On 7 October the beginners course Dutch has successfully started with a pizza kick-off.

The Academic Language Centre is part of the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) and provides language services to students and staff of Leiden University and the Leiden University Medical Centre.

PhD ceremonies in the Academy Building will be much easier for family, friends and other non-specialist audience members to follow after the summer. The Doctorate Board is pleased to have decided that as of 1 September, all Leiden PhD candidates will begin their PhD defence with a lay talk. ‘It can…

Call for proposals for a new Forum on Theorizing Culture in Global Relations in The Hague Journal of Diplomacy.

This week more than 400 international students are starting their study programme in Leiden or The Hague. Why did they choose to study here? And what is the advice from their mentors?

This book presents the first comprehensive description of Tafi, one of the fourteen Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages, spoken by approximately 4,400 people in the southeastern part of Ghana. The description consists of thirteen chapters and is based on a corpus gathered during two fieldwork periods…

This dissertation investigates the grammar of Makhuwa-Enahara, a Bantu language spoken in the north of Mozambique. The information structure is an influential factor in this language, determining the word order and the use of special conjugations known as conjoint and disjoint verb forms.

This study tests whether behavioural problems at a young age are related to early reading and mathematics development.

Conference

The fragmentary is everywhere: we encounter fragments in social media (Tiktok, Twitter), in personal memories from our childhood, and in traditions from our cultural heritage.

Along with your application, you will have to submit a variety of documents. This information only applies to students who need to submit an application for admission. If you have a diploma that grants you automatic admission to this bachelor’s programme, you won’t need to submit additional document…

This is special issue of the journal Language & Communication. The papers of this issue delve into the multifaceted realm of (non)belonging.

On the 4th of September, Elisabeth J. Kerr successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Elisabeth on this achievement!

An exploration across thirteen essays by critics, translators and creative writers on the modern-day afterlives of Old English, delving into how it has been transplanted and recreated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This project launches a research program into the theoretical status and the terminological basis of evidentiality systems.

Carlotta Rigotti, Postdoc researcher at eLaw, and Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, Associate Professor at eLaw, delivered a lecture on AI and non-discrimination, engaging students with the Debiaser demo.

What’s it like to study a certain programme within the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University? These prospective students found out during the Experience Day on Friday 6 April. They had a taste of the faculty’s atmosphere and discovered what study programmes are actually about.

Uniting an international consortium of scholars, the Skandapurāṇa Project comprises a team of researchers working in fields across the Humanities. We are creating a critical edition of a foundational work of purāṇic literature and, in doing so, tracing the dynamics of a textual tradition to better understand…

A deliberate attack on a tangible element of a culture, such as a temple, is often also an attack on intangible elements: the religion or religious customs. Equally, the intangible can be attacked without the involvement of the tangible, for example the brutal curtailment of rights. How are these reflected…

A team of Leiden researchers has won the Ammodo Science Award for innovative humanities research on perceptions of cultural heritage.

Dr Gül Aktürk Hauser (Assistant Professor, Department of Heritage and Society, Faculty of Archaeology) and Dr Sophie Starrenburg (Assistant Professor, Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden Law School) organised a workshop titled ‘An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Heritage Reparations:…

Online Open Days are increasingly gaining popularity. On 13 September 2017, Dr. Erik de Maaker, Jule Forth and Tarini Shipurkar from the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology presented a webinar on their Master programme. The recorded webinar can be watched online.

On Friday 20 September, the first Sector Plan Conference for the theme Cultural Heritage and Identity will be organised in Rotterdam. The conference is intended for all staff and national partners working in the field of Cultural Heritage and Identity. In particular, those involved in the Sector Plan…

How can we best protect cultural heritage in times of war? In an interview with LeidenGlobal, cultural heritage law specialist Evelien Campfens talks about her current research project on cultural heritage protection in Ukraine for the European Parliament (EP).

Knowledge of Muslim societies is essential to function in a globalised world and to fully understand our own Dutch society. Leiden researchers explore the languages, cultures, religions, legal systems and history of Muslim societies and in this way contribute to a centuries-old tradition.

On the 15th of July Sawako Takemura successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

On Thursday 7 November 2024 Vaudine England successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Four years of protracted negotiations and bitter warfare passed between the declaration of Indonesian independence on 17 August, 1945, and the official transfer of sovereignty on 27 December, 1949.

Several alumni, young alumni and students have been matched via the Leiden University Mentor Network.

LIAS faculty teach and carry out thesis supervision in many programs.

This study aims to examine how South Korea (hereafter, Korea) and Japan, two neighboring countries in Northeast Asia, have been responding to and mitigating the spread of COVID-19.

On Wednesday 3 September 2025 Yu Ai successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University’s Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs with Fukushima University.

Marike Knoef has won an award on the 34th Award Ceremony of the World Cultural Council (WCC).

Kohei Suzuki, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration recently received a large research project grant from the Swedish Research Council.

Welcome to 2024! I hope this message finds you doing well and reenergised following the holiday season. With that said, I can imagine that many of us are not quite ready to be back in the classroom (either as a student or a lecturer)! The good news is that we have plenty of activities to jump start…

Last year, the Art History program, led by lecturers Laura Bertens and Elizabeth den Hartog, started the course The Academic Art of Publishing, in which students work on editing and publishing an academic journal: 'Panoramic. The Leiden Art Review'.