On Thursday, December 12, 2024, historian and terrorism expert Beatrice de Graaf will deliver the 53rd Huizinga Lecture at the Stadsgehoorzaal in Leiden. Under the title

Rural cult places were of central importance in the non-urbanised areas of ancient Samnium, in central southern Italy. Their development, roles and functions in ancient society, however, remain important research questions. New excavations at one of these sanctuaries, the rural temple of S. Giovanni…

Matthew Broad elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Cat Paw Tweet Goes Viral

At the conference Surrealism and Scotland on 23 and 24 March, Janice McNab will share the paper ‘Surrealism and the making of Mother’.

Louie Buana, a PhD candidate at the Institute for History, has been awarded the 5th Philippus Corts Fund grant, together with Wengki Ariando and Adrian Perkasa, for their joint book project 'Whose Nusantara? New narratives on decolonizing Indonesian knowledge and archipelagic futures'. The goal of the…

Jeroen Touwen has been appointed Vice-Dean and portfolio holder for bachelor’s programmes at the Faculty of Humanities with effect from 1 January 2020. Over the coming three years he will contribute to faculty policy and will steer the BA programmes from his position in the Faculty Board.

Two of the 38 scrutinised programmes offered by the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University have been assessed as unsatisfactory by NVAO. The Faculty is already working on improvement plans. Graduates of Humanities have no reason to be concerned about their diplomas; these are and will remain fully…

You’ve been accepted! Leiden University looks forward to welcoming you as a new student. Your next step is to prepare for your studies. Below you can find some tips to help you get a head start as you embark on your studies at Leiden University.

You’ve been accepted! Leiden University looks forward to welcoming you as a new student. Your next step is to prepare for your studies. Below you can find some tips to help you get a head start as you embark on your studies at Leiden University.

Professor Nira Wickramasinghe has won the American Historical Association John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History for her book Slave in a Palanquin. Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka' (Columbia University Press: New York 2020).

The Executive Boards of Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam have appointed Professor Wim van den Doel as leader of the LDE alliance as of 1 February 2020. He was previously on the Executive Board of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and Dean of the Faculty…

For the past 25 years, we’ve been making a difference in The Hague. We proudly shared and celebrated this through the photo exhibition Researchers of the City, held in the Atrium of The Hague City Hall.

On 7 March 2019, Maria de Jong-de Kruijf defended her thesis 'Legitimiteit en rechtswaarborgen bij gesloten plaatsing van kinderen'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. mr. M.R. Bruning en Prof. mr. T. Liefaard.

What was the name, the appearance, development and the playing technique of the cello in the Low Countries between 1600 and 1800 and what music was composed for it?

Research into our history of colonialism and slavery, heart-to-heart conversations at a Keti Koti table, exhibitions, lectures and podcasts that establish the link between present and past. Staff and students participated in the national Slavery Memorial Year in many different ways. What have we learned…

Metaphysics as Praxis: Rereading Dogen's Metaphysics Through Deleuzian Pragmatism and Pratimutpada

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.

Article by Ana Dragojlovic and Annemarie Samuels in the Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology.

Ranti Tjan has been appointed director of the Royal Academy of Art as of 1 June 2022. He succeeds Henk van der Meulen, who will stay on as director of the Royal Conservatoire and Chairman of the Executive Board.

Jeroen Touwen officially joined the Campus The Hague Board on 28 November.

Knowledge and culture subproject 3:

The legal relationship between Switzerland and the EU dates back to the 1950s and 1960s, when Switzerland concluded its first agreements with the then European Communities. Since then, numerous other agreements have been concluded. In view of this long history of development, it is not surprising that…

The Municipality of Oss is a household name in the world of Dutch archaeology. For fifty years, Leiden archaeologists, in collaboration with residents of Oss, have been uncovering the history of the municipality. 2024 is the archaeological year of Oss! In a series of interviews we look back on fifty…

In this chapter, Kohei Suzuki aims to provide a brief overview of Japan’s local government system.

If you have a plan that could improve the education or the learning environment of the Faculty of Humanities in terms of diversity or inclusion, you can apply for a grant from the faculty’s JEDI Fund. This year, Nasreen has been helping to develop a new syllabus for the first-year Ancient History co…

An interesting Ottoman History podcast that deals with the slave trade and the African Diaspora in Ottoman Izmir.

This study explores the role of linguistic data in the reconstruction of Dolgan (pre)history by analyzing contact-induced changes and using them to infer information about the nature of the contact settings in which they occurred.

Trajectories of social life in the yucayeque (community) of El Cabo, Higüey, Dominican Republic, AD 800 to 1504

What was the function of the Dutch Protestant Church in Sri Lankan society? Why did people relate to the Church and how did conversion influence their life course?

A multiple isotope approach to human-animal dynamics in the Lesser Antilles across the historical divide

The significance of indigenous Amerindian knowledge has been marginalised in the history of the colonisation of the Americas. Wrongly, according to research by Leiden archaeologists. Indigenous knowledge and infrastructure were essential for the 'success' of the Spanish colonisers. Publication in the…

On December 12th, Andreas Krogull succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Andreas on this great result.

The Lakenhal depot houses three nineteenth-century sample books in which the cotton company De Heyder & Co kept precise records of who placed which orders. History student Marit Scheepsma used them to find out more about the company's colonial contacts.

Karwan Fatah-Black of Leiden University, an expert in the area of Dutch colonial history, wrote the text for a slavery remembrance memorial that was unveiled on 1 July in Hoofddorp. The official abolition of slavery was proclaimed 155 years ago on 1 July 1863. On Sunday 1 July 2018 the national remembrance…

Commagene in its Local, Regional and Global Hellenistic Context

Recently, the so-called refugee crisis has been framed as a threat for well-developed welfare states in Europe by the president of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem. According to him, external borders have to be guarded, because otherwise ‘loads of people will come to demand support and they blow up…

What better place to look back at 444 years of Leiden University than at the faculty where we actually study our history? To celebrate this special year, a physical timeline about 444 years of Humanities has been crafted in the Lipsius building.

On the 24th of May, Brenda Assendelft successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Brenda on this achievement!

That corn was highly important in the Maya culture is something that Genner Llanes Ortiz, himself a Maya from the Mexican province of Yucatan, has always known, right from his childhood. But just how important the role of corn is in the collective memory of his people, is one of the subjects of his…

Impressions by Dr. Lilian Ruhe

How does the evolution of the archaeological landscape at Son Sard reveal rural settlement patterns on Mallorca, serving as a pars pro toto for Balearic rural archaeology?

LUCIS’ research on Islam and society is guided by three overarching themes, which are fundamental to our research programmes.

Lecture | Leiden Lectures on Arabic Language & Culture

Was Nabatean also a spoken language? And if so, for how long? These are just two questions that historical linguist Benjamin Suchard will address in his new research project. Suchard is one of three LUCL researchers to receive a coveted Veni grant of 250.000 euros from the Dutch Research Council (NW…

Students of the Research Master Classical, Medieval and Early Modern Studies (CMEMS) of the University of Groningen kindly invite you to the annual CMEMS conference. This year we will explore the processes that structure physical and symbolic borders and boundaries in different contexts and histories.…

On the 12th of November, Xander Vertegaal successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Xander on this achievement!

The Khoesan were the first people in Africa to undergo the full rigours of European colonisation. By the early nineteenth century, they had largely been brought under colonial rule, dispossessed of their land and stock, and forced to work as labourers for farmers of European descent.

Vestiges of the Three Kingdoms of Ancient Korea (Samguk yusa) is the first annotated English translation of one of the most important premodern Korean historical texts.