Princess Beatrix was a guest at the opening of the conference on ‘Chinese Buddhism and the Scholarship of Erik Zürcher’ in Leiden on 12 February. Buddhism researchers from all parts of the world came together to reflect on the work of Leiden sinologist Erik Zürcher.

De Faculteit Archeologie bestaat dit jaar 25 jaar. Ter ere van dit jubileum opende de faculteit op 1 maart zijn deuren voor het brede publiek.

Would you like to organise a session during the biggest multidisciplinary event in Europe - the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) conference - to be held in Leiden from 13 to 16 July 2022? If so, send us your proposal! Archaeologist Corinne Hofman is one of the driving forces behind the conference and…

We know more together than alone. To increase our university’s impact on the region, we have to be open to the world outside. This is how we strengthen our ties and create new opportunities for teaching and research.

How can we view societal challenges from a different perspective? At the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF), Robert Zwijnenberg, Emeritus Professor of Art and Science Interactions, will call for more collaboration between artists and scientists.

A mix of data research, artificial intelligence and archaeology led to lively discussions on 31 January. On that day the unique event 'AI & Data Science @ Archaeology' took place in which the Data Science Research Programme (DSRP), SAILS and the Faculty of Archaeology joined forces.

‘Universities are only the trustees of a complex intellectual heritage that they themselves did not create,’ said Stefan Collini, professor in Cambridge, at the opening of the academic year of Leiden University. He was addressing the question: Who does the university belong to?

The notion of North Koreans as brainwashed and unable to think critically about their heritage and what it means to be North Korean is pervasive. More so, it is untrue, argues Christopher Green: ‘North Koreans, like any other people are diverse in their opinions and self-understanding.’ PhD defence…

Art historian Elizabeth den Hartog has been studying medieval sculpture at Leiden University for 32 years. Like a detective, she searches buildings, books and archives in the hunt for the cultural meaning of unique sculptures.

Film and Photographic Studies master’s students Vanessa and Deirdre created a film programme about the Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon for the Jewish Cultural Quarter. Due to the pandemic, they could no longer hold a physical screening and they decided to move their project online.

Two thousand years ago, the Middle East found itself caught between the rise of the Roman Empire in the west and the Parthian Empire in the east. PhD candidate Nolke Tasma has been awarded an NWO grant to investigate how local inhabitants experienced these changes.

According to a new study by an international team of researchers from the Caribbean, Europe and North America, the Caribbean was settled by several successive population dispersals that originated on the American mainland.

During the summer, staff of the Faculty of Archaeology travel to all parts of the world, initiating or joining fieldwork projects. Read some of their stories here!

Taking a Bachelor’s in Security Studies while starting and running two businesses: student Mohamed Sulaiman never stops. But he wouldn’t have it any other way. PLNT The Hague entrepreneurs’ hub is a source of help and inspiration.

Anne Marieke van der Wal-Rémy, assistant professor of African History and International Studies, has received a Comenius Teaching Fellow grant of 50,000 euros. She intends to use the grant to set up an online archive of digital primary sources, together with her students. Van der Wal-Rémy: ‘ “Once on…

The past two years, Laura van der Knaap and Professor Karsten Lambers worked on creating open teaching materials on agent-based modeling, funded by Erasmus+ and in collaboration with Danish, Irish and Dutch partners. Programming is an important skill involved in this, which is often seen as intimidating…

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…

During the Faculty Staff Meeting of August 28th, Corinne Hofman spoke about her time on the Faculty Board. “I look back on a rich decade in which I have seen the Faculty, and the University as a whole, change at a rapid pace.”

Our university recently joined the European university alliance Una Europa. Staff from the 11 affiliated universities met in Leiden last week to discuss our collaboration.

Research Master’s students in Archaeology Rosa Seepma and Aida Tadesse received an Incentive Prize from the Dutch Association for Physical Anthropology (NVFA). They were awarded this honor for their ongoing study on the human osteology collection at the Allard Pierson Museum.

Krista Murchison, University Lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, received a Veni grant of 250.000 euros. Her Veni-project will explore the ‘immaterial archive’ and its social and historical significance by digitally recreating manuscripts that were destroyed during World…

Several years ago, two amateur archaeologists from Brabant discovered over a hundred Roman coins near to Berlicum in the north of the province. After years of research, it now appears that the location, close to a ford in the river, was a site for offerings. Another interesting fact is that the coins…

With the departure of Tesse Stek to the Royal Dutch Institute in Rome for three years, Andrzej Antczak will take over the role of Departmental Head for World Archaeology in September 2018. We spoke with him to learn more about his background, ideas, and plans for the future.

Following the retirement of Roswitha Manning, a vacancy arose at Faculty of Archaeology for the role of Research Policy Advisor. We found one in the person of Jimmy Mans, a well known face for longer-serving Faculty staff. In this interview we reconnect with Jimmy, who calls himself ‘a homegrown Leiden…

Leiden archaeologists have been conducting research with students and local archaeologists in Oss (in the province of Brabant) for 50 years. An exhibition at Leiden University shows how these finds tell the region’s story.

From a powerful documentary to a heartwarming classic: four Leiden alumni have chosen their favourite films and will introduce them at Leiden International Film Festival.

Academia and games. One is for serious people who only have time for research, the other is a pastime best avoided if you are or want to be one of these serious people, right? Not at all!

The Municipality of Oss is a household name in the world of Dutch archaeology. For fifty years, Leiden archaeologists, in collaboration with residents of Oss, have been uncovering the history of the municipality. 2024 is the archaeological year of Oss! In a series of interviews we look back on fifty…

De minister van BZK heeft op 17 oktober het onderzoeksrapport ”Openbaarmaking van overheidsinformatie. Een rechtsvergelijkend onderzoek naar wetgeving in Zweden, het Verenigd Koninkrijk, Duitsland, Frankrijk, Slovenië en Estland” aangeboden aan de Tweede en Eerste Kamer. Het rapport is geschreven door…

Forty archaeology students are holding a shovel somewhat awkwardly in the fields at Oss. This is their first day of fieldwork and they are going to use muscles they didn’t even know they had.

In the spring of 2024 the Faculty of Archaeology welcomed a new postdoc. Dita Auzina, originally from Latvia, works as a researcher in the project of Alex Geurds. ‘I have joined the project as a landscape archaeologist, but I also run my own fieldwork in Nicaragua.’

On September 5, at the festive opening of the Faculty Year, a range of new murals will be officially presented in the Van Steenis’ Reuvens Hall. The wall paintings reflect a variety of Dutch soil stratigraphies, from Oss to burial mounds. Aside from being a striking new addition to our Faculty building,…

Dear friends of the NVIC,

Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart is refining an artificial intelligence system that can detect and classify archaeological objects on digital images. Such a system is desperately needed because human archaeologists around the world are being flooded with data.

From 24-26 June 2020, the Leiden University Centre for Islam and Society (LUCIS) and Shiʿi Studies Unit of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London (IIS), will host a conference on the Shiʿi hadith corpora. The deadline for abstracts is 31 January 2020.

Chinees-Nederlandse kinderen krijgen via hun moeders en kinderboeken mee dat witte mensen de norm zijn, zo ontdekte promovendus Yiran Yang.

An international team of researchers, involving members from the ERC Synergy project NEXUS 1492 based at the Leiden University, the Universities of Oklahoma, Copenhagen and York reveal challenges when studying ancient microbiomes in a recent issue of Scientific Reports.

Chinese export paintings have a much greater cultural-historical and artistic value than was previously thought in the Netherlands, according to external PhD candidate Rosalien van der Poel. She advocates making these works accessible to the general public. PhD defence 30 November.

By means of a presentation, a panel discussion, and activities in the fresh air, the event themed ‘Environmental Humanities’, organised by the Honours College Humanities, managed to unite both people and disciplines. ‘There is a gap between humanities and sciences, but they are more alike than you might…

What will happen if the lights in a large part of the city are switched off? How many stars can you see without all that light pollution? This is what researchers, artists and the residents of Leiden are going to investigate during Seeing Stars Leiden on 25 September. ‘Leiden is the ideal place for…

No matter how hard Chinese communists tried to control the economy, they could not stop the free market from flourishing. This was the message given by historian Frank Dikötter on 7 February during a lecture on the Cultural Revolution. He will be awarded an Honorary Doctorate on 8 February.

In August 2022 we welcome our new colleague Dr Letty ten Harkel as Assistant Professor in Roman and Post-Roman Archaeology. For the past ten years she has built up an impressive track record in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. Read the interview about her background and research…

The Foundation for Austrian Studies and the Institute for History are very glad to announce that Monika Baár has been appointed as the holder of the Special Chair for Central European Studies.

The sixteenth Annual Convention of Austria Centers took place in Budapest, Hungary in June 2024. There, colleagues gathered from around the world, coming from Jerusalem, Olomouc, Vienna, Berkeley, Edmonton, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Budapest and, of course, Leiden.

The renovated National Museum of Antiquities will re-open for the public on 15 December. Conservator Ruurd Halbertsma, Leiden Professor of Archaeology, explains why the renovation was needed: 'More visible cohesion between cultures, more context and more artistic lighting.'

According to New York Magazine, the massive open online course (MOOC) ‘The Rooseveltian Century’ by Professor by Special Appointment Giles Scott-Smith is one of the best online courses. We asked him why you should take the course and how it came about.

A galaxy is already incredibly large, but it can get even bigger. Astronomer Reinout van Weeren investigates clusters of galaxies, one of the largest structures in the universe. For his research into the origins and evolution of these clusters, he obtained an ERC Starting Grant of 1.5 million euros.…

Victoria Nyst's love for sign language was sparked when she accidentally ended up at a deaf school while studying African linguistics. The university lecturer has since been awarded a Vici grant to research the history of these languages.

Drugs-related violence in Mexico is similar in terms of dynamics and strategy to the IS hybrid war in the West. This is the claim made by Teun Voeten. PhD defence 20 September.

Should we be growing rice and building materials instead of grass for cows? From invasive crayfish to cultural heritage and groundwater levels: ten graduating students explored the future of the Groene Hart, the rural region just outside the cities of Delft, Rotterdam and Leiden where they study.