We are delighted to welcome Elisabeth Faber as our new intern for the Fall semester 2022.

We are proud to announce that Amirardalan Emami has been awarded the Houtan Scholarship (3500€) to help fund his PhD project “Transformation in Ancient Iranian Religion: The Achaemenids as Agents of Long-Term Change”.

From the 3rd until the 8th of December, together with Dr Amr Ryad of Utrecht University our institute organized a workshop with students of the Faculty of Languages and Translation of the Azhar University. During this workshop, students had the opportunity to discuss their own research proposals with…

Charles Melville, Professor of Persian History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Pembroke College, will be the Central Asia Visiting Professor from 20 November until 28 November 2017. Charles Melville will deliver a guest lecture on Thursday, 23 November, co-organized with LUCIS, and a masterclass…

Judith Pollmann, Professor of Early Modern Dutch History and Academic Director of the Institute for History, has been elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). She will be inaugurated as a member on Monday 17 September.

In May 2024, ahead of the European elections, Professor Wolff spoke to 135 pupils from the European Primary School The Hague about Democracy, Europe and the European elections.

In its session of 15 April 2024, the Austrian Academy of Sciences elected professor Petra Sijpesteijn as one of its new Corresponding Members.

The organisers of ICEHL-21 would like to thank our sponsors (John Benjamins, Brill, and Edinburgh University Press) for their support of the conference. The sponsors have also made special offers for those attending ICEHL-21, see below:

Armin Cuyvers, Stefaan Van den Bogaert and Veronika Yefremova taught in the course on History, Principles and Institutions. The online course took place within the context of the 2025 Summer School in European law for Ukraine, organised by the Kyiv Institute for European Integration and Concordia Un…

On Tuesday, December 9 2025, Prof. Koen Ottenheyn delivered the last Austria Centre lunch talk of 2025. Prof. Ottenheyn serves as a professor of architectural history at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and the Academic Curatorium which advises…

On Easter Monday, the spring holiday that commemorates and celebrates returning life, A.G.H. Anbeek van der Meijden passed away. From 1982 to 2005 he was professor of Modern Dutch Literature at Leiden University. To everyone who knew him—whether personally, professionally, through his teaching, or through…

This article examines the effects of introducing proportional representation (PR) in Polish local elections on women’s political representation.

Lecture, Peace Histories Seminar Series

Lecture, Peace Histories Seminar Series

Lecture, Peace Histories Seminar Series

No two pandemics are ever the same. The current coronavirus crisis, for instance, is clearly very different from the deadly plague outbreaks in the 14th and 15th centuries. Can historians learn anything from the coronavirus crisis? And what can we learn at the moment from historians? These are questions…

Inaugural lecture

PhD defence

Lecture, Peace Histories Seminar Series | Movie Screening

Studium Generale is organising a series of discussions about what universities are and what they ought to be. The first debate was on 4 April in the Academy Building. 'The numbers fetish has even penetrated the humanities.'

The 2014 Village Law will likely cause a considerable change in the character of village governance and leadership in the coming years.

To what extent are there differences between countries in and outside the European Union and the Schengen area in the level of crimmigration, the merger between migration control and crime control, and to what extent can these differences be explained by the way in which state and non-state actors in…

Lecture, Peace Histories Seminar Series

Security in the broadest sense of the word was the key focus in the Interfaculty Conference on 4 April in Leiden. With almost 200 attendees and such well-known speakers as Dick Schoof, Pieter van Vollenhoven and Ad Verbrugge, the first conference was a success.

Lecture, Peace Histories Seminar Series

Lecture, Peace Histories Seminar Series

Baroque flautist Jed Wentz followed two years of dancing classes in order to develop the right feeling for the gestures required for the Baroque French opera genre ‘tragédie en musique’. In his dissertation, the links between gesture affect and rhythmic freedom in the performance of the tragédie en…

Research conducted in this group aims at furthering our understanding of how communities and individuals deal with social change, conflict and trauma through remembrance and commemoration as well as forgetting in the arts.

This article explores an emerging “cultural turn” in intelligence studies, which, if fully realized, could entail the expansion of the discipline to include new methodologies and theories, and a more integrative understanding of historical causality that locates intelligence agencies within the widersocio-cultural…

Astronomers want to understand the Universe, from the Big Bang to the present day, and what the future will hold. In Leiden they focus on two key questions: ‘How did stars and planets originate’ and ‘How were galaxies and black holes formed in the young Universe?’ A new generation of telescopes – just…

Student and staff societal engagement at Leiden University College (LUC) extends beyond The Hague, with projects addressing pressing issues such as climate change, fake news, and social inequality through field courses, partnerships, and advisory roles.

This project aims to answer the following questions: how did the landscape and geography of the local surroundings of Chalcis impact medieval to early modern productivity, habitation, mobility and interaction in a wider sense? And where are such changes and continuations still visible in the landsca…

Leiden University College offers Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees within a Liberal Arts & Sciences programme that focuses on Global Challenges; big challenges facing humanity and society, such as sustainability, peace, justice, prosperity and diversity. The programme’s environment is…

The specialisation Global Order in Historical Perspective of the master’s in International Relations at Leiden University focuses on examining the historical processes and practices in the making of global order.

Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim World

On October 31st, Margarita Gulian succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Margarita on this great result.

This book is the first comprehensive presentation of the archaeology of Syria from the end of the Paleolithic period to 300 BC.

Hekmat Dirbas defended his thesis on 14 February 2017

This thesis comprises four closely related interpretative studies and set out to answer the compound question: ‘How do teachers interpret their classroom interactions in terms of their pupils’ best interest?’

On the 19th of February, Mariana Martins successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Mariana on this achievement!

During the New Year’s Reception on 11 January 2022, the Pieter de la Court Medal was awarded to two students of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences: Orestes Kyrgiakis and Claire van den Helder. They tell us about the causes they fight for and what it means for the University to be better.…

Over the last 5-6 years Burkina Faso has become seriously implicated in the rapid and dramatic changes in the geopolitical situation in the Sahel. The country, once reputed for its stability and safety, has come under the spotlight for the number of violent attacks and of internally displaced people.…

Software development is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a sociologist. Three years ago, John Boy began developing his software package Textnets. Because of Corona, he was less able to concentrate on writing scientific research and also setting up the online courses…

Students who also want to develop their artistic talents can take a year-long art class – Practicum Artium – at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. ‘I can express my creativity and am learning to approach subjects in a visual way.’

It’s Saturday and electric minibuses ride back and forth bringing prospective students to Leiden University’s various faculties. They want to see for themselves whether that interesting-looking programme will suit them.

Economic anthropologist Erik Bähre does research on the morality of insurance. In his latest ethnography ‘Ironies of Solidarity’ Bähre explores how the South African insurance market expanded.

We asked our Winter School students to evaluate the effect and significance of this learning experience on their current research trajectories and future plans. Here are some reflections.