Lecture, China Seminar

Overtone Singing, written by ACPA alumnus Mark van Tongeren, deals with the hidden harmonies of the human voice.

Dr Peter Siegel, Associate Professor in Anthropology from Montclair State University, New York, has obtained a Fulbright Scholarship to participate in research and teaching in the Caribbean Research Group for four months. Dr Siegel will be a visiting fellow in the faculty from February to May 2012.

Moldavia is going through a governmental crisis. Antoaneta Dimitrova was asked to clarify the events on the Dutch radio programme ‘Bureau Buitenland’. She commented on the current political relations but also issued a warning: ‘Panic is rising, there is a real danger of conflict in the country.’

Jorrit Kelder, Senior Research Grant Adviser at Luris with close associations with Faculty of Archeology Classical and Mediterranean research, has been invited to become Guest Scholar in a major research programme at the Getty Research Institute, exploring the relations between the Greek / Roman world…

Erik de Maaker, Sybille Lammes, Anke Klerkx, and Michiel van Groesen received a 10k€ KIEM grant for 'Networking Heritage at Leiden University' to boost heritage research.

Charisma K. Lepcha (PI, Sikkim University), Pradyut Guha (co-PI, Sikkim University), Rajib Sutradhar (co-PI, Christ University Bangalore) and Erik de Maaker (Leiden University) have been awarded a two-year grant of USD 18.000 to conduct research on the impact of ‘green farming’ on the sensitive mountain…

For the bachelor's course Past and Future, Archaeology students visited Castellum Hoge Woerd (Utrecht), a modern interpretation of the Roman fort that stood on that exact spot. It features an archaeological museum, the remains of a Roman river ship, a theater, and a restaurant. Students were tasked…

On January 17th 2023, Caterina Ghini, Ambassador of Greece to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, visited the Faculty of Archaeology. Her Excellency reached out to Leiden University with the purpose to collaborate and engage with us.

Until September 2016, Hannah Plug was Research Assistant for the Consolidating Empire Research Project under the direction of Dr. Bleda Düring. Now, she has just begun her new appointment at Liverpool University, UK. Here she tells all about it.

Dimiter Toshkov, Associate Professor at Leiden University, told CGTN Europe that the Dutch election outcome reflects growing support for pragmatic and pro-European politics. He highlights D66’s focus on education, climate policy and European cooperation as key to its strong performance.

Alwin Kloekhorst, working at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, has received a Vidi grant for his research on the break-up of the Indo-European language.

The Fourth Annual Leiden Austrian Studies Lecture “Was the Habsburg Empire an Empire?” was given by Professor John Connelly on Monday, March 20, 2023 at Leiden University’s Faculty Club.

On October 11, the Austria Centre Leiden teamed up with the Leiden Jewish Studies Association to welcome Dr. Lena Sadovski for a lunch time talk. Fifteen colleagues from across the university, including retirees and graduate students, attended Dr. Sadovski's fascinating lecture entitled “When religion…

The faculty has been investigating hundreds of ancient stone tombs in Jordan’s Black Desert.

On 6 September 2018 Jacqueline Vel of the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society organised a master class on ‘Access to Justice’ at the invitation of the Wira Wacana Christian University in Waingapu, Sumba, Indonesia.

Jorrit Rijpma was invited to teach at a number of summer schools this year. He lectured at the CLEER summer school on External Relations, the ICPMD summer school on migration and asylum and the Odysseus summer school.

Ustadh Mau Digital Archive project (UMADA) is among the UCLA Library 29 international cultural preservation projects supported by the Modern Endagered Archive Program (Cohort 3). From the 3rd up to the 5th of October, a digitization training workshop took place on Lamu island, on the so-called northern…

In line with tradition, at the opening of the academic year the LUS Teaching Prize will be presented to the University’s best teacher. Get to know the nominees. This week: Thijs Porck.

Alumnus Peter Burger – along with his colleague Alexander Pleijter – is the face of fact-checking in the Netherlands. ‘My degree led straight to this.’

Harriet Zurndorfer passed away on 18 March 2026 in Leiden.

We are living through an age in which social media platforms have given way to entirely new forms of politics and politicking. It is no exaggeration to say: there is a before and after social media.

Back in 2020, Dr Maikel Kuijpers started to write for The Correspondent. His articles offered readers a unique long-term insight into the materials that shape our world, from concrete to glass and plastics. His innovative approach piqued the interest of a literary agent, and he was invited to write…

Associate Professor Lettie Dorst has received a Vidi grant to research how machine translation programmes such as Google Translate and ChatGPT translate words and expressions used metaphorically. This still regularly goes wrong, resulting in far too literal, incorrect and sometimes incomprehensible…

Over the past year, twelve articles by Leiden humanities scholars have been published on The Conversation, an English-language platform that translates science-related news for a broad audience. Read their articles here!

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.’

On Friday, the 24th of April 2015, the Junius Symposium voor Jonge Oudgermanisten, a symposium for junior researchers in the field of language, culture and history of the (early) medieval Germanic tribes, was organized by Peter Alexander Kerkhof (LUCL) and Thijs Porck (LUCAS).

Who will win this year's Teaching Prize of the Faculty of Humanities? On Thursday September 12th, we will find out during the faculty party in the Stadsgehoorzaal. Prior to the award ceremony you can come and listen to a mini lecture/HUM Talk of the four nominees in which they will give a sneak peek…

An anatomical model of a heart, a mechanical digger or photos of mother and grandmother. Research interests and personal motivations have been given a place in the thirteen new portraits of women now on display in the Senate Chamber. ‘That cat isn't just a cute lap cat.'

On Monday 27 September 2010 Spinoza prize winners Naomi Ellemers, Ineke Sluiter, Marijn Franx (Leiden) and Piet Gros (Utrecht) announced their plans for their €2.5 million prize money. This was during the official ceremony in The Hague, at which the outgoing Secretary of State for Education, Culture…

Besides being the author of such a classic work of literature as The Hobbit, Tolkien was also Professor of English Language and Literature in Oxford. How did he incorporate his research in his fiction? An international conference on the subject is being held in Leiden on 18 June.

Amid the many traditions of Leiden’s 3 October Festival, a relative newcomer is beginning to take hold: the Science Market. At market stalls, the people of Leiden could explore or even participate in Leiden’s research – performing an ‘operation’ in the street, for example.

Korrie Korevaart, a former director and lecturer in Dutch language and culture at Leiden University, has been made a member of the Order of Orange-Nassau. Korevaart, who has retired but is still a guest member of staff at the university, has received the honour for her work at the Faculty of Humanities…

Exam, paper, exam, paper. A familiar, though sometimes little unexciting, routine for students. That is why Film and Literary students Sietske de Haan and Wouter Dijkman decided to write a blog post for the course Interculturality. Their impressive achievement was rewarded with a publication on science…

The earlier you introduce children to a language, the sooner they can be captivated by it and see that there is more than just Dutch and English. That is the basis for the language lessons for primary education that Alisa van de Haar, university lecturer of French, collaborated on. ‘Deans from different…

How do you engage students in times of corona? Sara Brandellero, co-chair of the study programmes for Latin American studies, created assignments that require a wide-ranging set of skills. And the results were beautiful.

For the next five years, thanks to a highly competitive European grant, Nadine Akkerman will be able to focus on voices from the past that might otherwise never have been heard. This is because in the 16th and 17th centuries what we now call a ghostwriter already existed. As Akkerman explains, ‘a lot…

‘The whole of society benefits if it is accessible for people with a disability.' This is what Pauline Gransier, student of Film and Literary Studies at Leiden University, has to say. She has been nominated for the Top 100 Enabled.

In a world first, an international team of researchers has read an unopened letter from Renaissance Europe – without breaking its seal or damaging it in any way. Nadine Akkerman, Reader in early modern English literature at Leiden University, is co-author of the article that appeared on 2 March in Nature…

Six researchers from Leiden University have been awarded NWO Open Competition funding.

Who was professionally involved in language between 1550 and 1650? And what were the financial returns of this language sector? Assistant Professor Alisa van de Haar has received an ERC Starting Grant to map out the situation in Northwest Europe between 1550 and 1650.

Presentations, city tours, themed cafés and information fairs − there was plenty to discover on the Bachelor’s Open Day last Saturday. Around 6,000 prospective students and 4,000 parents visited faculties in Leiden and The Hague to soak up the atmosphere and imagine how it would be to study at Leiden…

In the Netherlands, people probably grew up with De Fabeltjeskrant (a children’s show, ed.), but in France an introduction to fables plays a much more important role in a child's upbringing. PhD candidate Céline Zaepffel studied the role of fables in French education and teaching methods. It turns out…

How can I get students to collaborate more and increase their engagement? That was the question that teacher, and winner of the 2022 Faculty Teaching Award, Astrid Van Weyenberg asked herself two years ago. Her solution? A method in which the use of podcasts ensures that students actively engage with…

In the research for her upcoming book, Elizabeth Stuart: Queen of Hearts, author and academic Nadine Akkerman stumbled upon a little-known portrait of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia and grandmother of King George I, which she believes would have been considered treasonous at the time it was pain…

Sara Polak, PhD researcher and lecturer at LUCAS, has won a Fulbright scholarship to work on her research on Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yale University from September 2014 till February 2015.

Graduate students at Central European University and the University of Vienna invite abstracts from MA and PhD students in the fields of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies for a graduate conference with the theme 'Receiving Byzantium, Byzantium Receiving' (16-17 May 2025, Vienna).

The Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University is delighted to host the Wallace Johnson Program for First Book Authors, a program designed to provide support and mentorship to scholars working towards the publication of their first book on the law and legal culture of the early middle ages. In…