The significance of indigenous Amerindian knowledge has been marginalised in the history of the colonisation of the Americas. Wrongly, according to research by Leiden archaeologists. Indigenous knowledge and infrastructure were essential for the 'success' of the Spanish colonisers. Publication in the…

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!

People can be easily mislead with graphs. But they don’t necessarily stay misled, the research shows.

Governance of the internet is chaotic, says Professor Jan Aart Scholte. Can we learn from this relatively new form of governance?

‘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 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.'

Peter Webb is one of the four young Leiden Humanities researchers to receive a Veni grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Webb will use the funding for his project EPIC PASTS: PRE-ISLAM THROUGH MUSLIM EYES, to reevaluate the ways in which Muslims in early Islam remembered…

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…

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

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.

The archaeologists have been working from home three weeks now. Remotely, through Teams, we meet up with Miguel John Versluys’ research team, to see how they continue working in times of corona.

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…

The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (RMO) was due to open its doors to the small photography exhibit Frank Scholten: Archaeology and Tourism in the ‘Holy Land’ in April. Since the organisers, Leiden University and the RMO, have had to temporarily close, researchers Karène Sanchez and Sary Zananiri would like…

Seven researchers from Leiden University have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant. This will enable them to start their own project, build their research team and put their best ideas into action.

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,…

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.’

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.

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.

Leiden researchers have made an important contribution to the successful ‘Beyond the Nile’ exhibition in the American J. Paul Getty Museum. They also contributed to the exhibition volume that will be presented to Rector Magnificus Carel stolker on 5 September.

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.

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.

Five researchers from Leiden University have been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant of on average 1.5m euros enables researchers who show potential to start their own project, lead a research team and implement their best ideas.

Faculty of Archaeology opened its doors to welcome over 100 archaeology and living archaeology enthusiasts from all over the Netherlands

A research team of fifteen people – representing domains such as political economy, international relations, law, history and public administration - will work on the interdisciplinary programme Citizenship, Migration and Global Transformation. Leiden University has granted 3.5 million euro's to the…

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.…

Humans have influenced nature since as early as the Ice Age, and over the past century man’s impact has become even greater with our many new technologies and a growing world population. Leiden researchers study this impact and how we can keep it within reasonable limits so that nature can be preserved.…

Sanjar Golomov is a senior scholar at the Al-Biruni Institute in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In Leiden he will deliver two lectures and one masterclass for MA and PhD students as part of the Erasmus Mobility Plus project between Leiden University and the Al-Biruni Institute. The project is coordinated and…

It is late June, and on a windy meadow north of Leiden known as the Vrouw Vennepolder a group of archaeology students just hit the last ice age. Considering this involves manually pushing a ground core to a depth of 10 meters, this is no small feat. Even so, the taking of ground samples in this, at…

The Hortus Botanicus is celebrating its 425-year anniversary this year. It’s the oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands, but how did it come into existence and what kind of research takes place there?

From research on stellar winds to sign language: an impressive seven researchers from Leiden University will receive a prestigious Vici grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

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.

Leiden University archaeologists receive multiple awards for research on interaction between the Greek and Roman world and ‘The East’

In the depots of the Faculty of Archaeology, many artifacts, accumulated after decades of fieldwork across the world, are stored. A new project, the Leiden Inventory Depot (LID), aims to unlock this wealth of information to the outside world. Our Master’s students Sam Botan and Rishika Dhumal are currently…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been able to acquire an extraordinary Chinese manuscript at auction in Hong Kong. It concerns an Imperial Edict (dated 1582) from the Ming dynasty period, at one time part of the former collection of well-known sinologist and author of detective-novels Robert van…

For decades, the trade in pocketbooks prescribing how to be a good Muslim flourished in East Africa, but in recent years the number of books in circulation has been declining. University lecturer Annachiara Raia is the recipient of an Impact Explorer grant to revive this tradition, in cooperation with…

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.

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!

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…

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.

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.

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.

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…

In the eighteenth century, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) housed its enslaved people on ‘Slave Island’ in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. Today ‘Slave Island’ is under serious threat from property developers. Senior lecturer Alicia Schrikker, together with her Sri Lankan colleagues Iromi Perera…

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.

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.

Together with students and local residents, historians Ariadne Schmidt and Alicia Schrikker researched the Leiden Transvaal neighbourhood. They will present their findings on Thursday 20 October, at a specially organised mini-festival in the neighbourhood.