Exchanges between different cultures and institutions of learning have taken place for centuries, but it was only in the twentieth century that such efforts evolved into formal programs that received focused attention from nation-states, empires and international organizations.

My ERC Starting Grant, funded with €1.5 million for 5 years as part of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, is focused on building the early warning system WARN-D to reliably forecast depression in young adults before it occurs. Why depression, and why prediction?

In June, the international conference "Practices of Copying and Imitation in Early Modern Architecture (1400-1700)" will take place at Ghent University. This conference seeks to direct attention to verifiable practices and material documentation of copying and imitation in the workshop and on the building…

Human AI is where artificial intelligence and machine learning meet philosophy, cognitive science, and the creative arts. Examples of research questions in this domain are: 'Can an algorithm be creative by human standards?', 'Can creative processes, such as composing music or writing poetry, be modelled?',…

There is considerable need for improved skin models to develop safe and efficient drugs for skin delivery as well as for cosmetic and chemical product testing on the skin.

Children who lost their fathers in early modern England ran the risk of being sold to the highest bidder. Although Shakespeare wrote about it in his plays, the practice disappeared from collective memory for a long time. University lecturer Lotte Fikkers is bringing it back to light in a new Vidi research…

Southern Crossings: Indian activists and the Afro-Asian movement in the early Cold War era

To what extent are, can, and should, human trafficking and human smuggling be(ing) seen as interlinked phenomena? What are the consequences of seeing the phenomena as either distinct or interlinked for the way in which migrants crossing intra-Schengen borders are treated.

This project studies the roles of prehistoric foragers in past ecosystems to establish the character of past “natural” landscapes and enhance the management of current ones.

Did early farmers deliberately use animal manure on their fields?

On Tuesday, September 16, 2025, Professor Elisheva Baumgarten (Hebrew University) delivered a Keynote Lecture at the Leiden Jewish Studies Network Conference “Care and the Jewish Experience".

SEECR-CONGO aims to strengthen the doctoral education ecosystem in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in order to foster a new generation of highly skilled researchers who can contribute to academia and the wider labour market.

A Twenty-First Century Guide

How might viola and string quartet playing in the performer-centered, moment-to-moment and communicative style heard on early recordings be brought about today?

AI has huge societal and economic potential and is widely used. But it also brings challenges: how do we combine human values with AI, how do we make AI more transparent and understandable, and what can AI and human cognition learn from each other, for example about language learning?

Study of human cultures using computational approaches

Recently, Ingrid Leijten’s book Core Socio-Economic Rights and the European Court of Human Rights was published with Cambridge University Press. The monograph was published in the series Cambridge Studies in European Law and Policy (edited by Laurence Gormley and Jo Shaw) and deals with the protection…

My current research focuses on criminality and gender interactions in nineteenth-century Europe. This project uses a comparative methodology to explain gender constructions in a criminal and in a court setting.

Arabic Humanities Blog

The Humanities Hub is a central location in Huizinga designed to strengthen the collaboration, connection and exchange of ideas in teaching and research on humanities in the digital world.

This case study-based textbook in multivariate analysis for advanced students in the humanities emphasizes descriptive, exploratory analyses of various types of data sets from a wide range of sub-disciplines, promoting the use of multivariate analysis and illustrating its wide applicability. Fields…

As a contribution to the changing legislation and evolving societal attitudes concerning environmental issues, this project aims to enhance and manipulate the plants’ own natural defense mechanisms against western flower thrips (WFT).

Brian Shaev

Alumni event

Welcome to the Graduate School of the Faculty of Humanities.

How did nineteenth century scholars evaluate each other and each other’s work through more or less informal practices of peer review?

The Leiden Human Evolution Collective (LHEC) is a network of researchers from Leiden University, LUMC, and Naturalis with an interest in human evolution. The collective brings together existing expertise in Leiden to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in research, teaching, and public outreach.

Studies in Human Evolution is a series of the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University and The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig.

The expertise at the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University ranges from languages, cultures, area studies to history, philosophy, arts, and religious studies.

China wordt steeds assertiever in zijn relaties met andere landen, maar achter dit beeld gaat een opmerkelijk diverse maatschappij en politieke realiteit schuil die tal van aanknopingspunten biedt voor samenwerking en verdere integratie van China in de wereld. In China een gids voor de 21e eeuw past…

Leiden University is a unique international centre for the advanced study of languages, cultures, arts, and societies worldwide, in their historical contexts from prehistory to the present.

The Faculty of Humanities consist of various academic fields. What is the common ground of all these different academics and students? They tell their story and why it matters in today’s world in 'We are Humanities'.

It is well-known that humans have significantly transformed ecosystems since their adoption of agriculture. However, in a deeper past, prehistoric hunter-gatherers may already have altered and modified their niche in ways that had major impacts on ecosystems.

The LUMC iPSC Hotel offers the generation of research grade human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from different tissue sources using state of the art reprogramming techniques.

Metastasis is responsible for over 90% of cancer-related deaths and arises from the ability of a small subset of tumor cells to detach from the primary tumor, overcome multiple biochemical and mechanical barriers, disseminate through the body, and colonize distant organs.

This book explores how physicists, astronomers, chemists, and historians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries employed ‘epistemic virtues’ such as accuracy, objectivity, and intellectual courage. In doing so, it takes the first step in providing an integrated history of the sciences…

Correctly interpreting the patterns of fire evidence in the archaeological record will illuminate the origin of human fire use.

Humanities are needed to make sense of social issues. Watch or listen to the stories of our experts who tell about their research and the impact on society. Get to know the world at Humanities!

How did caretakers rooted in families, communities and societies nurture very young children across historical time? And, how have care practices changed across different peoples, states and political economies in the dynamic 20th century?

What does the excavated material tell us about the continuation and/or change of urban life during the transitional phrases from Antiquity to the Middle Ages on Crete and in the eastern Mediterranean more generally?

The Faculty of Humanities is committed to creating an inclusive and diverse community, where all students and staff are supported, respected, and empowered to do their best work, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, age, religion, or socio-economic background.

Disciplinary History and Epistemology

Conference, Symposium