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Studium Generale is organising a series of discussions about what universities are and what they ought to be. The first debate was on 4 April in the Academy Building. 'The numbers fetish has even penetrated the humanities.'

Karmaşık Avcı-Toplayıcılardan Erken Kentsel Toplumlara

A special find has been made in the Alkmaar Regional Archive: a number of 17th-century book bindings contained pieces of parchment from a manuscript from the 11th century. The original manuscript may have belonged to a princess who fled England after the Norman Conquest.

Jessica Roitman accepted for the prestigious Huntington-Clark Summer Institute.

Sixteen researchers at Leiden University have received a Veni award from the Netherlands Organisation for Academic Research (NWO). This award offers promising young researchers the opportunity to further develop their ideas for a period of three years.

On the28th of September Didi van Trijp successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Not passed your Dutch exam? Then there’s no HAVO (Higher General Secondary) or VWO (pre-university) diploma for you, says the Inspectorate of Education's Inspector General. This comment fuels a discussion on an exam that is already under fire. The final exam for Dutch is said to be uninspiring, too…

This book published by Oxford University Press discusses religion and trade in world history.

We do it every day but barely give it a thought: chewing our food. But the ‘simple’ process of masticating food may have played a crucial role in the evolution of our jaws, facial muscles and teeth.

History is being taught at Leiden University since the days of Justus Lipsius [1547-1606]. In 1860, following the appointment of Robert Fruin as Leiden professor of Dutch History, modern historical investigation started in the Netherlands.

Maps play a crucial role in our view of the past, yet few historians are sufficiently skilled in cartography to genuinely integrate maps into their research. This project breaks down the long-standing barriers between history and cartography by inviting emerging scholars (ResMA) to reflect on maps as…

Lecture, Book Roundtable

Lecture

Conference, Leiden University Nationalism Network

How did the Dutch Empire compare with other imperial enterprises? And how was it experienced by the indigenous peoples who became part of this colonial power?

In the project ‘Coin production in the Low Countries: 1334-1789’, Leiden University, the International Institute of Social History, and Het Nederlands Economisch-Historisch Archief, team up to create a website that provides access to five centuries of coin production figures.

Conferences, Workshops and Lectures showcasing research and tools in Digital Humanities.

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!

Frederique Visser is Research Master student and Student Assistent to the Foundation for Austrian Studies. She writes about her experiences on her research trip to Austria.

This Spring School will pay attention to a wide range of performances in history, from political gatherings, religious rituals, and courtroom proceedings to theatre, concerts, and dance. It combines a focus on the medieval and early modern period with an interdisciplinary perspective, attending to the…

In a closed room in the Van Steenis building, hundreds of boxes are waiting under fluorescent lights for someone to come and see them. The jumble of handwritten and printed labels unveils how often the collection has been reorganized, moved and rearranged. Boxes full of potsherds and pottery, human…

Lecture

Historian Joost Welten has written a book entitled 'De vergeten prinsessen van Thorn' (The forgotten princesses of Thorn). For his book, he analysed thousands of handwritten letters from the eighteenth century, mainly written in German and French. His personal mission is to visualize the daily lives…

Leiden University offers ambitious students a world-class environment in which to reach their full potential.

Leiden University offers ambitious students a world-class environment in which to reach their full potential.

Robbert Striekwold started his PhD project at LUCAS and Naturalis Biodiversity Center in March 2016. His PhD project is part of ‘A New History of Fishes; a long-term approach to fishes in science and culture, 1550-1880’, a project directed by Paul Smith.

Nearly all documents from the 16th and 17th centuries were written by more than one person but attributed to only one author. Professor Nadine Akkerman wants to rectify this oversight in her research on scribes.

In the nationalist nineteenth century, people developed an interest in medieval language and literature. The study of medieval material in one’s own vernacular was thought to reveal a great national past. But why, then, was Old English studied by Germans, Danes, Italians and many other nationalities…

When it comes to literature, people mostly talk about what characters see or hear. Rarely is it about what they smell. That’s a shame, thinks university lecturer Jan van Dijkhuizen. He has been awarded an Open Competition grant from NWO to expand academic knowledge about scent in literature, and to…

GIFs, memes and videos: anyone who opens a social media platform can be in no doubt that today we live in a visual culture. But the role of images in social communications isn’t new, says Associate Professor Marika Keblusek. She has been awarded a Dutch Research Council (NWO) Open Competition (Large)…

Bird, butterfly, fish: when you look through a children’s book, you usually don’t think about the fact that humans divided these animals, depicted in bright colours, into categories. Yet, this division has been discussed for centuries. In her PhD dissertation, Didi van Trijp shows how natural scientists…

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.

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.

Assistant Professor Anna Dlabacova has been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council. She will use this grant of around 1.5 million euros to conduct research on the Dutch vernacular ‘book of hours’.

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.

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…

Joost van den Vondel is considered to be the greatest Dutch poet and playwright of his time, but he certainly wasn’t the most popular. The 17th- and 18th-century public preferred to watch ‘Spanish theatre’. University lecturer Olga van Marion has written a book about this, together with Frans Blom (University…

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…

Matthew Broad elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

After the new government announced its plans to cut expenditure on academic education, the Faculty of Humanities launched the flash campaign ‘Stop the Catastrophic Cuts to Universities!’. Now academics across the university have been explaining why their discipline is needed.

Bones hold a wealth of information about a person’s life, revealing details about where they came from, how old they were when they died and what diseases they may have had. Scientists can use this data to piece together aspects of an individual's life, offering valuable insights that can help address…

Study all aspects of human life in the past and take on a broad, historic perspective.

Mexico will be electing a new president on 1 July. No matter who wins, there will be little change in the deep political crisis affecting the country. This is the message given by José Carlos G. Aguiar, university lecturer in Latin American studies.

On January 25th, artist Jonas Staal will defend his dissertation which explores the development of propaganda art from the 20th to the 21st century.

As a doctor, coming to a decision together with a patient: how do you do that in the best possible way? Researchers Geert Warnar and Roosmaryn Pilgram, who jointly teach a course within the MA in Dutch Studies, are entering into a virtual collaboration with the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa to find the…

The newly established Leiden Jewish Studies Association aims to bring together Leiden scholars working on Judaism. The first annual conference will take place in Leiden on 6 and 7 December. Leiden professors and co-organisers of the LJSA Sarah Cramsey and Jürgen Zangenberg talk about their plans.

The Institute for History announces vacancies for three PhD positions on Rethinking Disability: the Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in Historical Perspective and one PhD position to conduct research on the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

Leiden’s Institute for History has an exceptionally strong expertise in premodern European history in its global context, with specialists whose interests cover virtually the whole continent. We have a strong track record in leading larger research teams and work together with colleagues across Europe…

Five research projects of the Institute for History have been selected for the Research Traineeship Programme 2016-2017. The programme was initiated by The Faculty of Humanities to offer motivated students the opportunity to develop themselves in academic research. In December the research trainees,…