It is crucial that Leiden University reflects on its colonial history. These were the words of Cleveringa Professor Gert Oostindie in his inaugural lecture on 24 November. ‘As a university community, we must dare to hold up a mirror to ourselves and, where possible and necessary, also take concrete…

De lichtheid van literatuur: Engagement in de multiculturele samenleving (The Lightness of Literature: Engagement in the Multicultural Society) is a plea for the social relevance of literature. The book delves into an age-old debate about literature and social engagement, which has recently been reinvigorated…

The nineteenth-century writer Nicolaas Beets and his son Dirk were thoroughly colonial, Nicholas without ever having been to the Dutch Indies, or any other colony for that matter. But they didn’t realise it. The new Scaliger Professor, Rick Honings, shows that writers’ archives are a treasure trove…

Cosmopolis seeks to explore the transnational and cultural dimensions of intra-Eurasian encounters through Dutch sources.

Colonial art and artefacts were not necessarily looted. Pieter ter Keurs, Professor of Museums, Collections and Society, calls for more nuance in the debate on art and collectors’ items from a loaded past. Inaugural speech on 2 December.

This programme aims to make the digitized archival sources of the Kerala and Tamil Nadu Archives more accessible to Indian and international scholars and to the widest possible audience, in particular to the people of Kerala.

In this article, the authors summarise the literature on the effects of multilevel governance on governments’ policy responses to Covid-19.

Indonesian translation of the book Recollecting Resonances from authors Bart Barendregt and Els Bogaerts.

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…

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…

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…

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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…

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

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’

Representing Japanese Colonial 'Heritage' in Taiwan

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.

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 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…

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.

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…