Roderick Geerts, a PhD candidate of the Faculty of Archaeology in Leiden, takes us on a short journey through the rich history of the Red Sea port of Berenike in Egypt.

On November 8, the annual Medieval Studies Day will take place, organized by the Flemish Medievalist Association, in cooperation with the Henri Pirenne Institute Ghent. This year’s theme is Pe(s)ts to Parchment: Multidisciplinary Research on Animals in the Middle Ages. On the evening of 7 November,…

In a remote cave on the Indonesian island of Borneo, a series of rock art paintings have been discovered. The oldest painting might be the oldest-known example of figurative cave art. Wil Roebroeks, not himself involved in this project, reflects on the findings in several media.

This Panel at the Historians of Netherlandish Art Conference (Amsterdam, 2-5 June 2021) aims to explore how early modern individuals and groups branded themselves through their heraldic presentation on contemporary social media and materials. Although this call for papers focuses on the period 1500-1800,…

On 13 June, Professor Christa Tobler spoke about indirect discrimination at the Vilnius Gediminas Technical University in Lithuania.

The VICI research project Citizenship Discourses in the Early Middle Ages, led by Els Rose (Universiteit Utrecht), published a new book: Els Rose, Robert Flierman en Merel de Bruin-van de Beek, red., City, Citizen, Citizenship, 400–1500. A Comparative Approach (Londen: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2024). It…

On the 17th and 18th of September 2018, the workshop Egyptian Riverine Harbours took place for the second time. The workshop is organized by the French, Austrian and Netherlands-Flemish institutes in Cairo and the Leuven Egyptologists. Harco Willems held his lecture on the relation between the antique…

In light of the 700th anniversary of the Treaty of Paris of 1323, Project 1323, organized by the Royal Zeeland Society of Sciences and University College Roosevelt, will focus on the scientific and public-historical events highlighting the development of the Scheldt region in the Middle Ages. Following…

LUCIS is offering its members student assistance to help organize their remote teaching.

In a letter initiated by Wil Roebroeks, among others, serious concerns were raised about three research papers claiming evidence for one of the earliest human occupations of Europe.

With Ad Putter, Sjoerd Levelt and Anne-Louise Avery. Based on William Caxton’s bestselling 1481 English translation of the Middle Dutch, but expanded with new interpretations, innovative language and characterisation, this edition is an imaginative retelling of the Reynard story. With its themes…

British and Australian researchers have analysed the DNA in the dental tartar of several Spanish Neanderthals. One of the conclusions was that the Neanderthals had a mostly vegetarian diet.

Dutch households, especially those on middle and high incomes, pay billions of euros more in tax than promised in election manifestos. Companies, on the other hand, generally pay less tax than initially announced. These are the conclusions reached by Wilmar Bolhuis, PhD student at Leiden University.…

A team of researchers has dated a prehistoric painting in Indonesia to at least 51.200 years ago, they have proposed in a study that this painting is the oldest known example of “figurative” art.

Researchers from Leiden and Groningen have found a fossilised paw of one of the last Dutch brown bears. They made their discovery in the water supply system in the dunes near to Noordwijk.

Ann Bessemans, who received her PhD degree from the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts Leiden University in 2012, has set a world record for the biggest number of words on a postage stamp.

The construction work on the South Cluster is going ahead throughout the summer. See the photo's and the video below!

On 25 and 26 October 2024, the first biennial symposium Environmental History in the Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries, is scheduled to take place at Leiden University.

300 hundred man went down with Dutch VOC vessel ‘de Rooswijk’ on January 9 1740 for the coast of Deal in the UK.

Friendships play a crucial role in our lives. For children, these relationships really start to blossom during middle school, when they begin to understand the give and take of friendships,

The Hortus Talks is a podcast series as well as a botanical college tour, recorded in the greenhouse in the middle of the Hortus Amsterdam. The theme of the podcast was plant migration. In this context Anastasia explained the importance of understanding how hunter-gatherers impacted past landscapes…

Emeritus professor Willem Otterspeer received a royal honour from mayor Henri Lenferink on Tuesday 20 September. The university historian was appointed Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau.

A large group of researchers from Leiden University will convene a panel or present a paper at the 10th European Conference on African Studies (ECAS), which will take place from 25 to 28 June in Prague.

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…

Dr. Nadine Akkerman, working at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS), is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Birmingham from May 27 till July 4. She will participate in an important public discussion on Challenges for Early Modern Women's History and she'll be the keynote…

Help us develop and expand the recently established Leiden Chinese Queer Collection (LCQC, 莱顿华语酷儿文献收藏) at Leiden University Libraries (UBL).

On 18 June, 2015, Erik Kwakkel was elected to the Comité International de Paléographie Latine (CIPL), a scholarly committee that specialises in the study of the medieval book.

Dr. Corey Williams (Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Global Christianity) has received a Collaborative International Research Grant from the American Academy of Religion. This initiative is intended to support generative research collaborations between and among scholars located in different…

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.

If you missed the annual LUCDH Winter School Week of Digital Humanities workshops and Pilot Project Symposium (27 – 31 January 2025) this time around, you’ll have a chance to take part next year. Save the dates for the last week of January 2026!

One of the tasks of Leiden University Libraries is to manage academic heritage, including letters and scholarly archives of leading researchers. Much of this material is nowadays created digitally and email is one of the main forms of communication. Hence, the UBL launched a pilot for acquiring and…

The short film El Último Consejo (The Last Council), directed by alumna Itandehui Jansen, has won the Emerging Talent Award at the ImagineNative Film & Media Arts Festival in Toronto.

The Dutch Association for the Study of Religion (NGG) has decided to award the Cornelis Tiele MA Thesis Award 2018 to LUCSoR alumnus Bas van Rijn for his thesis “The Mind Behind the Cards: Searching for the Source of Tarot Divination’s Popularity through a Cognitive Analysis” (supervised by dr. Markus…

University lecturer Astrid Van Weyenberg has won the Faculty of Humanities Teaching Prize. ‘Astrid is a lovely person who can teach well.'

Three lecturers have beennominated for the LUS Teaching prize: Florian Schneider, Thijs Porck and Christine Espin. The prize, an initiative of the Leiden University Student Platform (LUS), will be presented at the opening of the academic year.

Studium Digitale: An Introduction to Network Data, Analysis, and Visualization

On December 7th & 8th, visual artist Sophie Ernst will defend her thesis The Magic of Projection; Augmentation and Immersion in Media Art, to obtain her doctoral degree. The public defense takes place in two stages. On Wednesday 7 December 2016 at 4 PM Ernst will publicly elucidate the artistic work…

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) has appointed 26 new members. Three of them are Leiden professors: Luuk de Ligt, Lisa Cheng and Marc Koper. The new Academy professors will be installed on 8 June.

Thijs Porck, university lecturer of medieval English at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (RHS).

Children in the Netherlands develop prejudices based on ethnicity at an early age. Ymke de Bruijn (27) came to this conclusion in her dissertation ‘Child Interethnic Prejudice in the Netherlands: Social Learning from Parents and Picture Books’. For her PhD project she took a closer look at the behaviours…

In May and June of 2021, Bachelor 1 and 2 students of the Faculty of Archaeology joined in the excavation at Oss. After the fieldwork itself, a second post-excavations week started in Leiden where each of them participated in small groups conducting archaeological find processing and working on creative…

In the Faculty of Archaeology depots, many artefacts, accumulated after decades of fieldwork across the world are stored. The Leiden Inventory of the Depot (LID) project aims to unlock the door to this wealth of information. Elizabeth Hicks, a Research Master’s student at the Faculty, will be re-evaluating…

In late May 2019, the Food citizens? team traveled to Poland for a project meeting and team outing. This was made possible by the European Research Council’s support and facilitated networks and knowledge-generation.

The university bid farewell to its Rector Magnificus, Hester Bijl, on 13 January during the ‘Hester’s Highlights’ symposium.

The coronavirus outbreak raises fundamental questions about the politics and narratives of crisis, as well as about our “ordinary” everyday lives and sociality. Irene Moretti and Annemarie Samuels introduce a collection of blogposts of Leiden Anthropologists reflecting on the pandemic and offer a set…

The world is becoming increasingly digitised, and the information one has easy access to is often rather overwhelming. In particular, the accumulative nature of the archaeological practice has resulted in huge quantities of data being produced. But how to prevent these from becoming dust-collectors…

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.

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series