As a twelve-year-old girl, Nicky van de Beek became intrigued by the tomb chapels in Saqqara, Egypt. Now she is doing her PhD on them, just like another Leiden Egyptologist decades earlier. Herta Mohr persevered with her research during World War II. Now she is the namesake of the first Leiden building…

Debates about the ‘end’ of the Roman era, how, when, and even if it ended, are still very much alive and raging. However, what happened after the (long) late antique period is a lesser-known and lesser-studied subject. The post-Roman past needs, however, as much energetic investigation and discussion.…

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.

The LGI is pleased to annouce that seed money has been granted to Dr. Miguel John Versluys (Archaeology), Prof. Caroline van Eck (Art History) and Prof. Pieter ter Keurs (Anthropology) for their research on Globalisation, materiality and the transference of cultures.

North Korean workers designed and built numerous monuments, museums and other buildings in southern Africa. This is clear from research by history student Tycho van der Hoog for his master's thesis. These monuments can be an important source of income for a country that has become quite isolated on…

Archaeologists from Leiden University cast replicas of Bronze Age European swords and used them in simulated fights. They wanted to find out more about prehistoric combat. Article published in the Journal of Archaeological Science on 25 March.

Jemima Sint Nicolaas (22) is an East Asian Studies master's student. In addition to her studies, she is an intern at LeidenGlobal, a student assistant and has a job as a barista.

Few people would associate the name Anton de Kom with Leiden. Yet the Surinamese freedom fighter is the subject of an exhibition at Museum De Lakenhal.

In 2017 Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof defended her dissertation on Early Iron Age elite burials of the Low Countries at the Faculty of Archaeology. Out of 36 applications from ten different countries, her dissertation was awarded the Prix Européen D’Archéologie Joseph Déchelette on June 15th.

Museum De Lakenhal issued an open call for creative solutions to the problem of growth addiction. From over 500 submissions, they selected 15 artworks for the exhibition 'If things grow wrong'. These include the creations of Leiden researchers Peter van der Putten and Evert Jan van Leeuwen.

Great news! From Whit Monday at noon, the oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands will be open for visitors again. After twelve weeks of closure, visitors will be able to come and enjoy everything that grows and blossoms in the heart of Leiden's city center. In order to offer all visitors and staff…

From video glasses for the deaf to protecting endangered languages. The Taalmuseum's new exhibition in the hall of the University's former library demonstrates how language research contributes to societal issues such as health care and disappearing cultures. The exhibition is open from 14 September…

The end of January arrived together with welcome guests from Saxion University of Applied Sciences. As a part of their two-day-long visit to South Holland, almost 100 Saxion archaeology students visited our Faculty.

On Tuesday October 11th, ACPA’s PhD-candidate Frank Blokland will publicly defend his thesis “On the origin of patterning in movable Latin type: Renaissance standardisation, systematisation, and unitisation of textura and roman type”.

The research Early Pleistocene human occupation at the edge of the boreal zone in northwest Europe published 8th July 2010 in Nature is part of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project, in which the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University is involved.

Professor David Fontijn is fascinated by the question why people destroy objects that are dear to them. It is a phenomenon that you find everywhere in the world, gaining particular strength in the European Bronze Age. Fontijn wrote a book on this ‘economy of destruction’, published by Routledge.

Translating ancient texts, filling in missing parts of clay tablets: articles are popping up more and more often about the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence for researching documents in the oldest scripts. Are we better off leaving the deciphering of ancient texts to computers from now…

The Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society (VVI), in collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), will organize a two day conference on the continued importance of adat law in present day Indonesia on 22 and 23 May 2017.

The treasure houses of Leiden's University Library and Naturalis house wonderful historical collections with dried plants and botanical drawings. Professor by Special Appointment Tinde van Andel will be studying these collections. Inaugural lecture 6 January.

An impressive 1,300 international students from 84 different nations got to know each other at the University in Orientation Week Leiden. Where do they come from and why did they choose Leiden?

Leiden University is participating in a project to reassemble Roman vessels from between 80 - 200 AD. The 'Zwammerdam ships' are already world famous in the world of archaeology, and guest researcher Tom Hazenberg hopes to extend this fame beyond its academic boundaries.

A delegation from Leiden University will be visiting several Japanese universities and research institutions from 18 to 26 November to discuss research and teaching collaborations.

The Robben Island field school in January and February 2011 investigated and documented the tangible and intangible heritage of Robben Island, encompassing the remains associated with various political prisoners, the Muslim exiles, the lepers and lunatics, the WWII soldiers and Navy personnel, the prison…

This year the PhDs of the institute had their traditional day out (uitje) to The Hague. The last two years they had stayed in Leiden, so The Hague already seemed like quite the adventure. Indeed, it seems almost that as time progresses and more and more archives become digitized, history PhDs slowly…

Just start somewhere: whether it's videos, board games, theatre performances, or festivals. That was one of the key insights Sophie Wintermans gained during the Science Communication Summer School. In her view, the Summer School is a great step for any scientist interested in science communication.

‘In recent publications about the slave trade the same rhetorical weapons are used as two centuries ago in the battle for the abolition of the British slave trade. It is a topic fraught with emotions, but that should not prevent historians from being as careful and impartial as possible in their research,’…

Are maps objective or do they convey hidden messages that you would miss at first glance? A map is always a simplification of reality. Mapmakers reduce, distort and select. This allows the reader to be guided literally and figuratively. Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Museum Volkenkunde jointly…

Four videos tell the story of the history of Leiden University. The films were premiered on 2 November during the Leiden Film Festival.

War and terrorism overshadow interest in the pre-Islamic heritage of the Arabic peninsula. The new Leiden Centre for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to make the general public more aware of the ancient history of this region.

The daisy has been crowned the Netherlands’ national flower. Rogier van Vugt, Head of Horticulture at the Hortus botanicus, explains why the daisy merits its elevation to national symbol.

The transatlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries represents one of the most traumatic chapters in history and is now widely recognised as a crime against humanity. EUROTAST is a new European-funded research network that will bring together an unprecedented range of researchers to examine…

Thursday was World Hearing Day. During one of the Leiden2022 activities, visitors to Corpus Museum could learn all about ears and test whether theirs worked properly. How exactly does an ear work? What solutions are there for deaf people and what is a bionic ear?

Charles Darwin received an Honorary Doctorate from Leiden University on 9 February 1875. What traces did he leave behind in Leiden?

A consortium, led by Erik de Maaker (CADS, Leiden), has under the NWA scheme (Dutch National Science agenda) been awarded 98k€ for Localizing Global Garment Biographies, a two-year project to research the different ways by which users and producers attach value to garments.

On 14 September, the Leiden Essay Film Festival will kick off. This three-day festival, organised by the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, marks a first for the Netherlands. Never before has there been a public event entirely dedicated to the exceptional genre of the essay film. The festival…

A series of upcoming activities by docARTES researchers Niels Berentsen, Bobby Mitchell, Shaya Feldman, and PhDArts researchers Jonas Staal, Riccardo Giacconi, Yota Ioannidou, and Brigitte Kovacs

On January 12 the Steering Committee Science4Arts awarded the application of Prof.dr. Maarten Jansen entitled:

Staff and students from the Faculty of Archaeology are just back from a newly started Field School in the inland of Portugal.

Matilda Siebrecht has found the perfect combination of her interests, namely experimental archaeology, and journalism. She was asked by EXARC, a foundation that aims at connecting experimental archaeology professionals, to host a monthly podcast on this topic. ‘It is called Finally Friday, airing every…

This year on June 8-12, the Annual Convention of the Austrian and Central European Centres was organised in Leiden. At this convention, directors and (PhD) students from all over the world come together to meet, have presentations by the students on their topics of expertise, and to get the know the…

The documentary Einstein’s Light by director Nickolas Barris shows in a dazzling manner what scientific breakthroughs resulted from the special friendship between Albert Einstein and the Leiden physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. The documentary premiered at the Leiden International Film Festival on 2…

The European Research Council has awarded an Advanced Grant to Prof. dr. Maarten E.R.G.N. Jansen for the research project

Local perceptions, attachments and knowledge are often not considered in the methodology of archaeology when researching a site, argues PhD-candidate Tomomi Fushiya. She proposes a broader integration of local perceptions in an archaeological narrative. PhD-defence on December 2.

On an excavation site in Oegstgeest Leiden University archaeologists discovered a very rare silver bowl from the first half of the seventh century. The bowl is decorated with gold-plated representations of animals and plants and inlaid with semi-precious stones. The discovery suggests the existence…

Activities of Magda Dourado Pucci, Dick de Graaf, Henri Bok, Catalina Vicens, Patrizia Bovi, k.g. Guttman, Andrea Stultiens, and Lilo Nein

News from Food Citizens? Winter School alumnae

November marks exactly 100 years since the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. To celebrate this special discovery, the Faculty of Humanities, together with various parties, is organising the 'Month of Tutankhamun': a month full of activities around Egypt's most legendary pharaoh.

It is the fifth 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. Dean Jan Kolen is pleased with this news: 'In recent years, the Faculty…

In the past, the Dutch community living in Cairo made an annual visit to the then Leiden-only mission to Saqqara. They would come out and have a nice picnic together with the excavation team and visit the monumental New Kingdom tombs. The current Leiden-Turin expedition would very much like to revive…

Are you looking for some listening material for the upcoming long weekend? Staff members and alumni of the Faculty of Humanities have been creating various podcasts over the last few months. A selection is shown here: