Meet our team

A vibrant chronological narrative of ceramic manufacturing practices in the valley of Juigalpa, Chontales, Nicaragua (cal 300 CE - present)

Global Interactions is pleased to announce that we have awarded a GI Advanced Seminar grant to Dr. Mariana Francozo (Archaeology) for 'Historia Naturalis Brasiliae' and a Breed Grant for 'Global Earth Matters' to Dr. Sabine Luning (CA-DS) and Dr. Wayne Modest (RCMC)

This February Metje Postma will stop teaching and retire. But she is not done with the discipline yet: she will finish her PhD and there are still five films on the shelf that she plans to complete.

Maria Vasile's ethnographic fieldwork in Turin reveals that volunteering and citizen engagement may not empower residents or allow them to shape their cities. Her analysis of urban gardens, food markets, and food aid initiatives calls for a broader perspective on urban peripheral areas and a shift away…

The film MعLMIN made by Visual Ethnography alumna Loes Moree will be screened during the fourth Fieldrecordings event. Field Recordings is an annual event for visual anthropology, sound art and landscape film.

In the opinion article ‘Maak praten over de dood niet tot een morele plicht’ (Don’t turn talking about death into a moral obligation) Annemarie Samuels and Liesbeth van Vliet, argue together with Marike de Meij and Sander de Hosson that it is important to have conversations about death and dying but…

Dr. Andrew Littlejohn has been awarded a Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. The fellowship provides funds for early-career scholars to write and publish significant monographs that will impact the development of anthropology.

The research project 'when patients don't want to know everything: guide and training for culturally sensitive information in palliative care' investigates how healthcare providers can offer inclusive palliative care.

Luca Bruls is currently doing an internship at NVIC. Besides that she works on an ethnographic account of the museum of Islamic art in Cairo. Read more…

ACPA alumnus Budhaditya Chattopadhyay explores sound practices across South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America in his new publication 'Sound Practices in the Global South: Co-listening to Resounding Plurilogues'.

Francesco Ragazzi (Institute of Political Science), Julian Ross (Center for the Arts in Society) and Mark Westmoreland (Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology) set up the interdisciplinary research centre ReCNTR.

On a thursdaymorning our students were guided around a new exhibition in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. This exhibition displayed photographs and documents from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Western Arabian Peninsula.

Jasmijn Rana has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska Curie Global Fellowship for her research project “The Embodiment of Racialization: Running Muslim Women and the Sense of Non-Belonging”.

Listening and Looking with dr. Janneke Wesseling and dr. Marcel Cobussen

The article “Anticipating an unwanted future: euthanasia and dementia in the Netherlands” by Natashe Lemos Dekker is the winner of the first Interdem Academy Publication Award. Lemos Dekker is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC project ‘Globalizing Palliative Care’ at Leiden Leiden of Cultural Anthropology…

Episode 5 of BOLDcast, the podcast of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for BOLD Cities, discusses the evolution of libraries from simple lending points for books to places where people can come together and brush up on their digital skills. The guests in this episode are Frank Huysmans, associate professor…

More than 100 anthropologists work at Leiden University – not only at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (CA/DS) in the Faculty of Social Sciences, but also within other faculties, for example at Archaeology, Law, the Humanities, or the Leiden University Medical Centre…

One of the major stereotypes about Islam is that it is very male-dominant and women-oppressive, but is Islam really that patriarchal? Mahmood Kooriadathodi has been awarded a 250.000 euros Veni grant for his project ‘Matriarchal Islam: Gendering Sharia in the Indian Ocean World’.

Radhika Gupta has received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council to study how transnational Islamic charitable networks are entangled with Western humanitarianism and neoliberal welfare frameworks.

Two years ago, Amanda Henry joined the Faculty of Archaeology’s Archaeological Sciences department. She investigates diet and human evolution, with a specific focus on plant foods. ‘Most of the studies on the prehistoric diet focus on meat and hunting. This just didn’t make sense to me.’

How can initiatives aimed at environmental conservation and climate change mitigation in the eastern Himalayas proceed from the cultural expectations of its indigenous ethno-linguistic minorities? Enabled by an NWO Open L grant, the research project 'Futuring Heritage: Conservation, Community and Contestation…

As a student, university lecturer Berthe Jansen fell under the spell of the Van Manen collection: a collection full of Tibetan writings and objects. A €1.5 million grant now makes it possible to take a really close look at it. 'There is still so much to do and discover.'

Alumnus Théo Pavlović received the Master's Speckmann award for his thesis: PAN RECORDS - A digital journey through the ethnic music niche that was supervised by Bart Barendregt. This price is awarded to the best fieldwork reports for ethnographic fieldwork. It includes a certificate and a prize of…

On Tuesday 26 May 2020 professor H.U.E. (Bonno) Thoden van Velzen passed away.

'Don’t Let the sunny weather fool you' a film made by Visual Ethnography alumna Guusje Meeuwissen has been selected for the RAI film festival in London this year. It's a short film about the everyday lives of a farmer and a fisherman in the Philippines, and their capacity to adapt to a changing natural…

CADS lecturer Sander Hölsgens is one of the initiators of the NWO Smart Culture Project Documenting Complexity (project number CISC.KC.212). This project investigates how and why engaged documentary filmmakers use new technologies in their work. One of the outputs of this project is the series ‘In Whose…

Cultural Anthropology graduate Tommie Lambregts conducted fieldwork in the Slaaghwijk neighbourhood in Leiden as part of a Policy in Practice research internship commissioned by the municipality. Leiden Science City nominated his research as one of four 'most impactful student projects'. Award ceremony…

Campaign initiated at Generosity to cover the cost of construction.

On February 1st 2016 the first Rabat semester at the Netherlands Institute in Morocco (NIMAR) has started. During the semester, organised for students of Arabic (Middle-Eastern Studies), participants will study Modern Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Moroccan culture and society, Berber languages and…

Team ReCNTR gives feedback on the Food Citizens? I-doc

The ERC consolidator project

The “Hello World!” series focuses on new encounters and new inspiration, inviting seven speakers with hugely varying backgrounds to give us their perspectives on what they see as currently important. The fourth speaker is Zane Kripe, antropologist, and Media Technology MSc programme alumna.

Bachelor's students Kirsten S. Barink, Milène van der Geest, Claire van den Helder and Pim L. Ruhe are granted the Speckmann award for their Fieldwork NL report 'If it would have been a colour it would be pitch-black', a report on people suffering from the phenomenon of 'Electrohypersensitivity'.

Colleagues from the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences work on a variety of topics that contribute to a healthy society. Erik Bähre, Tessa Minter and Natashe Lemos Dekker presented their work during the Healthy Society Event on 9 June 2022.

A political science perspective on our project’s comparative ethnography. I truly enjoyed the one-day conference on February 4th where the research results have been shared with the members of the Advisory Board. The work conducted so far is impressive, and the case studies are very useful in understanding…

In the context of Panama’s independence month, the Panamanian Embassy in the Kingdom of The Netherlands decided to recognize Natalia Donner’s contributions to the study of Panamanian history and culture, as well as her role in a massive repatriation project.

Shirley van der Maarel won the Thesis Award 2020 with her thesis 'Terra Incognita'. Van der Maarel graduated summa cum laude for the master's specialisation Visual Ethnography. She researched a group of refugees housed in an Italian village and wrote an interactive thesis and made a film. This resulted…

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has announced that Tanja Hendriks, along with 17 Leiden University researchers, will receive a Veni grant, embedded at the ASCL. With this grant, Hendriks will be able to develop the research project 'Taking a Risk on Disasters: speculative humanitarianism amidst a changing…

We welcome Susanne Dahlgren and Venla Lehtinen from the Finnish Institute in the Middle East (FIME) at NVIC for the coming months. Due to the escalation of the war in the Middle East, they evacuated their office in Beirut and decided to come to Cairo. NVIC is happy to be able to offer a base for them…

Highland Bhutan is facing unprecedented challenges from a combination of climate change, new economic opportunities, and changing cultural aspirations of its residents. Today, what does highland heritage constitute, to who, and how does it matter?

By working together with external social partners, the knowledge of our scientists finds its way into society.

After a long period of isolation under pandemic, the PhD candidates of the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology seized the opportunity to organize an in-person, on-site event: the CADS PhD Conference for 2021. With the theme

At the project closure on February 29, 2024.

Global Interactions sponsors a number of research projects of Leiden University researchers.

Carola Hein, Professor of History of Architecture and Urban Planning TU Delft, has been affiliated with the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden University since January 2022 as Professor Water, Ports, and Historic Cities. On the surface this may seem a strange combination,…

The starting point of human-induced landscape changes has been under permanent debate. It is widely accepted that the emergence of agriculture strongly increased human impact on their environments. However, foragers can and do actively transform land cover and ecosystems. Ethnographic observations,…

First inaugurated in 2018, the CADS PhD Conference aims to provide young anthropologists in Leiden University and beyond an opportunity to meet each other, present their work, and engage in meaningful discussion. This year, the CADS PhD Conference will be a platform for sharing ideas and insights about…