This year four research trainee projects were approved by the faculty to be carried out at the Institute for History this semester.

Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936) is known as an Islamologist, author of the book Mecca, administrator in the Dutch East Indies for the Dutch government and professor in Leiden. Wim van den Doel published a biography of Snouck Hurgronje in 2021. Recently, the translation of the biography in Bahasa…

Japanese newspapers, photo archives from the Dutch East Indies or information on gender and sexuality: all these can be found in the University Library's 621 humanities databases. A flyer campaign to raise awareness of them begins this week.

On Wednesday 16 November 2016 at 3 PM visual artist Hans Scholten will publicly defend his dissertation entitled The Urban Future Project.

Ali Al Tuma, PhD candidate at the Leiden University Institute for History, has won the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity for his play ‘Yusuf Melik Espanya’ (Yusuf King of Spain), that tells the story of a young Moroccan whose brothers conspire to send him off, against his will, to the Spanish Civil…

Cat Paw Tweet Goes Viral

Last July, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Minister of Education, Culture and Science and Annetje Ottow, President of Leiden University's Executive Board, opened the new front office of the Leiden University office in Jakarta. The office - located on the grounds of the Dutch embassy - has a dual role. Firstly, it…

The Van Vollenhoven Institute is organising a year-long public lecture series entitled 'Reconsidering the Socio-Legal Gaze'. The lecture series aims to spark critical debates about the visions of justice and positions of power that inform Law and Society scholarship at Leiden and beyond.

The aim of this project is to gain a better understanding of daily life, diet, mobility and health in late medieval Zeeland, as well as to test the potential of multi-isotopic analyses on a Dutch assemblage.

Promotor: W. Jiskoot, Co-promotor: H.A. Every

If Dutch cinema is examined in academic studies, the focus is usually on pre-war films or on documentaries, but the post-war fiction film has been sporadically addressed.

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.

Wednesday 18 January 2017, a university-wide meeting was organized on the upcoming alterations with regard to the role and tasks of Study Program Committees (Opleidingscommissies; OCs) within Leiden University.

If male budgerigars can successfully open a puzzle box with food, they become more attractive to females. Biologist Carel ten Cate and Chinese colleagues published experimental evidence for this in a paper in Science on 11 January. Various Dutch and international media wrote about the paper.

Interested in Area Studies? Then Leiden is the place to be! Join our Online Area Studies Week from 2-5 June to find out more. From Africa to Brasil and from Korea to Russia, Leiden covers all areas and fields, both in language, literature, history, politics and socio-economics. Join our live Q&As!

The ninth issue of the Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference has been published. This time the theme is ‘Reinventing Boundaries in Times of Crisis.’

For decades, the trade in pocketbooks prescribing how to be a good Muslim flourished in East Africa, but in recent years the number of books in circulation has been declining. University lecturer Annachiara Raia is the recipient of an Impact Explorer grant to revive this tradition, in cooperation with…

Native women are invisible in Mexican society. This is the conclusion Barbara Ortiz draws in her dissertation. PhD defence on 23 February.

Historical figures such as Columbus have returned to the centre of public debate. Much remains to be discovered about his legacy and current impact on our society. A new study shows the ecological footprint that the arrival of Europeans left in the Caribbean islands.

Professor Chinese Frank Pieke becomes research and general director of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Berlijn.

Essays in Honour of Olivier P. Nieuwenhuyse

Linguist Marian Klamer, associated with Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, is one of the 31 scientists to receive a NWO Vici-grant for her researchproject 'Language as a time machine'.

Ambassador Hyoung Chan Choe of South Korea paid his first visit to Leiden University Nov. 22, where he was received by President Annetje Ottow and Professor of Korea Studies Remco Breuker.

Professor Jan-Bart Gewald has been appointed as the new director of the African Studies Centre in Leiden with effect from 1 September 2017, for a period of five years. Professor Gewald will succeed Ton Dietz, who will be retiring in September.

A group of astronomers was actually examining the dust disc around the young double star CS Cha, when they saw a small dot on the edge of their images. It turned out to be a small planet of only a few million years young, which moves along with the double star. Whether it is a super-Jupiter in the making…

There seem to be genes that influence how our brains develop over time. A large international consortium has discovered this with an extensive study. The results of the study were recently published in Nature Neuroscience.

Leiden biophysicist Stefano Coppola has received the prestigious AXA Research Fund postdoctoral fellowship. With this grant he can work for two years on a project to research the role of mechanical factors in the development of pancreatic cancer.

Two researchers at Leiden University who have recently received their doctorates have been awarded Rubicon grants to carry out research abroad. Both will be going to the US. one to conduct research on the spread of tumours and and the other to study nuclear fusion.

Researchers from Leiden University will develop a new approach to study the biomarkers of Alzeimer’s disease. This approach focusses on the molecular messengers of the cells. The project, led by Thomas Hankemeier and coordinated by Yuliya Shakalisava (Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research, LACDR),…

Provenance and distribution of raw materials

How did nineteenth-century non-Anglophone translators and authors creatively engage with the poem Beowulf?

History and Religious Studies in Leiden rank # 17 and #32 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. With this, History in Leiden ranks as the best in The Netherlands and Religious Studies ranks as second best.

Three Dutch research institutes - including the Leiden University’s KITLV - will conduct a follow-up study on the use of violence during the Dutch East Indies war of decolonisation (1945 – 1950). The government has designated 4.1 million Euros for this study.

The latest issue of NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion debates dr. Markus Altena Davidsen’s vision for the future of religious studies in the Netherlands. Comparison, theory formation, and valorization are among the elements that Davidsen urges scholars of religion to prioritize in order…

The Choose a Language Day was created to make high school students enthusiastic about choosing a linguistic profile and further education. Third-years were able to learn about different language studies at the Faculty of Humanities.

What role does the frontal lobe play in understanding sentences? Assistant professor Jurriaan Witteman has received a grant to replicate a leading study on this question. ‘As there is some doubt about the reliability of existing neuroimaging results, it’s important to replicate influential studies.’

Minims are letters that are made up of short, vertical pen strokes, such as 'm', 'i', 'n' and 'u'. In Gothic script, there is often little distinction between letters composed of minims. Assistant professor of medieval literature Krista Murchison has written an article in History Today on the hidden…

Prof. dr. Judi Mesman has been appointed professor of the interdisciplinary study of societal challenges, representing a shared chair between the Faculties Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA) and Social and Behavioral Sciences (FSW) at Leiden University.

Salvador Santino Regilme, Jr. Associate Professor of International Relations and Program Chair of MA in International Relations, has been honored with the Cecil B. Currey Book Award for 2023. The accolade, presented by the Association for Global South Studies (AGSS), recognizes Regilme’s exceptional…

The study ‘From Law to Practice: Towards a Roadmap to Strengthen Children’s Rights in the Era of Biomedicine’ written by experts from Leiden Law School and submitted to the Council of Europe’s Committee on Bioethics is now available online.

Nadine Akkerman and her co-applicant David van der Linden (University of Groningen) are thrilled that “Signed, Sealed, & Undelivered 2.0: Revealing Hidden Letters” was awarded an Internationalisation in the Humanities grant from NWO.

For two decades, language experts were certain that babies were able to learn language rules from as young as the age of seven months. However, recent research carried out by a consortium of four Dutch baby labs led by researchers from Leiden cast doubts on this certainty. We spoke to researchers Andreea…

The current and future board of F.D.L. Gibalaux, the study association of the French language and culture programme, talk about the association, the change of board, their experiences and plans.

As of February 1st, 2018, Sarah de Rijcke has been appointed as Professor of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, especially Science and Evaluation Studies, at Leiden University. The chair is located at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS).

This book explores the Indian tradition of liberalism through a critical intellectual biography of Valangaiman Sankaranarayana Srinivasa Sastri (1869–1946).

This special issue explores social meaning from the perspective of current theories in pragmatics.

During his bachelor's programme in International Studies, Tom de Groot became fascinated by the theme of peace and security. Now he designs and moderates training courses to help professionals develop further in this field.

Religious Studies at the University of Amsterdam organises a postgraduate seminar on current issues in religious studies and western esotericism. You can find the programme for the year 2023-2024 below.

Galaxies in the early universe contain more dust and hidden star formation than previously thought. That's what Ivana van Leeuwen concludes in her PhD research, where she combines data from various telescopes to create a more complete picture.

Doctoral research on recent developments in museological practices by “critical” curators, interventionist artists, and personnel initiatives, focusing on ‘queering’ as an entrance point to broader intersectional issues; resulting in a report on the ‘Queer Baseline’ (to be launched in 2020), a popular…