The first of the two volumes of this co-authored study has just been published by Metzler. The study explores the history of the concept ‘barbarism’ from the 18th century to the present and illuminates its foundational role in modern European and Western identity.

When we think of unethical medical experiments, we tend to think first of Nazi Germany. What is less well known is that experiments were also carried out in colonised areas without the explicit consent of the test subject. University lecturer Fenneke Sysling has received a European grant to research…

OpinioJuris, one of the world’s leading international law blogs, has hosted an interdisciplinary online symposium on Professor Carsten Stahn’s new book entitled ‘Confronting Colonial Objects’.

In the late 19th century, the Dutch government introduced a tax system in the Dutch East Indies, with the intention of transforming the colony into a modern state. PhD student Maarten Manse wrote his thesis on this development and discovered how grandiloquent colonial ideals became bogged down in daily…

Gert Oostindie, Emeritus Professor of Colonial and Postcolonial History, is this year’s Cleveringa Professor at Leiden University. He was appointed by the University on 4 October. In his inaugural lecture on 24 November, entitled Courage and Disregard, he will talk about (academic) freedom in relation…

The modern-day Caribbean is a stunningly diverse but also intricately interconnected geo-cultural region, resulting partly from the islands’ shared colonial histories and an increasingly globalizing economy.

What is the difference between a minister saying that something is possible or that it is not impossible ?

This volume is pubished in the IMISCOE-AUP Series and edited by Marlou Schrover and Deirdre M. Moloney.

Since the emergence of humankind people have maintained social contacts and traveled widely, establishing interaction networks in which goods are traded and ideas are transmitted, increasingly on a global scale.

The linguistic project constitutes the connection between the two other subprojects. It consists of two parts.

How did science relate to politics and colonialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Assistant Professor Lauren Lauret has been awarded an NWO XS grant to map the colonial and political activities of nineteenth-century scientists.

This month, the volume Reading Russian Literature, 1980-2024, edited by Otto Boele and Dorine Schellens, was published at Palgrave Macmillan.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pressing question is how this global health emergency impacted the research agendas of the field of crisis and disaster science. This article reviewed contributions in ten important crisis and disaster journals in the two and a half years following the COVID-19…

In the late 19th and early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of Chinese labor migrants crossed the seas to the Dutch East Indies. On the tobacco plantations of northeastern Sumatra and in the tin mines of Bangka and Belitung, they endured long hours and harsh conditions. Their journeys formed part…

New publication reviews Dutch colonial sources on the Indigenous Brazilian Tapuia people: ‘For them the Dutch were another piece on the political chess board’

The expansion of European powers overseas brought Europeans into contact and conflict with the inhabitants of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Historians of colonialism and post-colonial scholars have long argued that this encounter was crucial for the formation of European identity, which originated…

Leiden University and the Dutch Royal Family maintain ties that go back to 1575, when William of Orange founded the University. Many members of the Royal Family have studied in Leiden and several have received an honorary doctorate.

Representing Japanese Colonial 'Heritage' in Taiwan

What does it mean to perceive smell? This question fascinated poets and playwrights of the early modern period (ca. 1500–1700): their work abounds in references to and evocations of smell sensation and of specific scents. POEM maps the ways in which early modern writers put the language of smell – or…

How is the instructional practice of teachers connected to the mastery of reading skills of students in kindergarten (group 2) to the third grade (group 5) of primary education in Curaçao?

This book reveals how one publishing firm's editorial strategy helped to legitimate European colonialism in the early modern era.

What development pathways support teaching faculty members in research-intensive universities in becoming informal educational leaders?

Using enslaved people as servants, becoming an administrator in the Dutch West India Company or making uniforms for the colonial army. Many people from Leiden played a role in colonialism and slavery. Historians are conducting preliminary research and finding striking examples.

Researchers Esther Captain, Gert Oostindie and Valika Smeulders have won the Die Haghe Prize 2024. They were awarded the prize for their book The colonial and slavery past of Hofstad The Hague.

This article provides a list of the concepts and key elements that should be considered when creating effective communication messages.

Subproject of

This article aims to provide a coherent foundation for empirical studies of interpersonal discussion on risk.

After a lobby lasting many years, the Dutch government has decided to finance an independent study of the war of decolonisation (1945-1950) in the former Dutch East Indies. This is partly due to the work of Professor of Colonial and Post-Colonial History, Gert Oostindie, Director of the KITLV. ‘The…

This research hopes to contribute to social awareness of the consequences of colonialism for Indigenous Peoples, to the deconstruction of still existing colonial and discriminatory notions and to a better appreciation of Indigenous art and thought.

Historian Karwan Fatah-Black researches the Dutch colonial past, and regularly joins in the public debate about this. He has been admitted to The Young Academy for his dedication to academia and society.

This project analyzes to what extent hodegetical textbooks relied on each other in warning their readers against vicious habits, how much continuity their catalogs of vice displayed, and to what extent vices that persisted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries were associated with easy-to-remember…

You can find an overview of events organized by the Platform for Post-Colonial Readings below.

In the logic and aesthetics of a republican baroque the existing world is the result of a moment in which for a split second two or more realities are equally real and after which only a singular one becomes actualized.

The research focuses on the understanding of symbolic stratigraphy of the land (through time) from the worldview of the People of the Rain (one of the Indigenous Peoples of southern Mexico), by studying contemporary cultural heritage in communities of the Mixtec Highlands.

When we think of the history of Dutch slavery, the areas that spring to mind are primarily the Antilles and Suriname. However, until the end of the eighteenth century there were also Dutch plantation colonies in neighbouring Guyana. Bram Hoonhout’s book ‘Borderless Empire’ describes this forgotten h…

In this publication, May Tamimova and Tahir Abbas researched the existing literature about violence and hatred against places of worship.