A project aimed at understanding the complicated process of religious transformation in one of the centres of the early Muslim world.

The MA Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University is a one-year, full-time programme taught entirely in English. With over four centuries of expertise in Middle Eastern scholarship, this programme offers you cutting-edge insights into the region’s history, politics, religion, languages, and culture…

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo offers Dutch language courses for Egyptian adults on a regular basis. These courses aim to provide students with language skills in Dutch, which they can use in everyday life. Therefore you will spend most of your time practicing the language in order to…

The Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) is devoted to the study of places in the human world from antiquity to the present time in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective.

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Thousands of students and researchers from eight partner universities in the Netherlands and Flanders have been able to gain valuable experience in Egypt through the institute. Good reason for a celebrat…

This 25th volume in the series 'Islam in Africa', edited by Annachiara Raia, is a pioneering collection of poetry by the outstanding Kenyan poet, intellectual and imam Ustadh Mahmmoud Mau (born 1952) from Lamu island, once an Indian Ocean hub, now on the edge of the nation state.

From Crisis to Critique

LUCIS publishes two peer-reviewed book series, “Leiden Studies in Islam and Society” (Brill) and “Debates on Islam and Society” (Leiden University Press).

Asim Zubcevic defended his thesis on 11 November 2015

Assembling State, Space and Society on the Urban Margins in Morocco

The present monograph, spanning a wide range of world and local literatures represents a high academic standard of both literary criticism and philological analysis. By demonstrating her expertise as an Africanist conversant with the Arabic canon, Raia reveals how the narrative of Joseph has been re-narrated…

From the rise and fall of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, to Islamic State’s attempts to create its own currency, to the dramatic return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, this edited volume from two leading scholars of contemporary terrorism assembles an enviable array of international experts to explore these…

This book provides a grammatical sketch, glossed texts and a glossary of Tarifiyt Berber, which is the main heritage language of the Moroccan community in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

Wednesday 20 November 2024

Mr. Ade Jaya Suryani defended his thesis on 28 January 2021

While many European universities, Leiden included, have a proud tradition of research into Islamic studies, a topical and thematic focus on Shiʿi Islam in all its dispensation remains a desideratum.

Special Issue in: Visual Anthropology, Volume 29, Issue 3, 2016

LUCIS is directed by Nathal Dessing, who is advised by a steering committee.

Antonia Lamers, PhD at ICLON, researched how to create a TNE teaching and learning environment that is in line with the expectations of the British programmes offered to students in Oman.

The form and content of the course are determined by your answers on the intake form and, if necessary, an intake interview.

Political protest is often at least partially about the question of legitimacy. How can we distinguish whether a regime is legitimate, or merely purports to be so?

From 1967 to 1982, the United Nations undertook several peacekeeping operations in the Middle East. In his thesis from the Institute for History, Diego Salama examines how these operations were connected and their impact on the region.

Middle East Studies Lecture

How did people experience Islam on a day-to-day basis in the early centuries of Islam? That's where the papyri come in, says professor of Arabic Petra Sijpesteijn in the fourth video of the Leiden | Islam interview series.

The Israel-Palestine conflict regularly sparked intense debates in university lecturer Noa Schonmann's classes. She decided to start a podcast with journalist Rajaa Natour to teach her students to have deep and difficult conversations in a nuanced way.

On 21 September 2022 Arfiansyah successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The unique geographic and temporal breadth of research at Leiden allows us to stimulate a shift from the classical Weberian mode of scholarly production that views historical development and modernization as emanating from Europe and the West to a multi-polar perspective that allows for more nuanced,…

The authors delve into the varying degrees to which institutions across different nations connect foreign events to their respective country's domestic affairs.

This book is the first comparative study of estimative intelligence and strategic surprise in a European context, complementing and testing insights from previous studies centred on the United States. It does extensive empirical analysis of open-source material and interviews in relation to three cases…

Chaider Bamualim defended his thesis on 9 September 2015

How do crises produce changes in specific European Union foreign policy areas, and how should we conceptualise these policy changes?

Traces of a Colourful Past

Lecture

This film will be screened on Sunday, 15 February 2026 at 7:00 pm.

What inspires scholars who study the history, cultures, religions and languages of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia? LUCIS interviewed scholars about their work and research in the video project “Passion in Profession”. The videos are available online now.

In both the autumn and the spring semesters, full bachelor programmes worth 30 ECTS are offered. Besides these study programmes, NIMAR provides an honours track for bachelor students from various disciplinary backgrounds and contributes to study trips in Morocco.

The aim of this project is to study what makes an act or form of violence a specifically political reality.