Of jars and gongs deals with the traditional ritual art of Ot Danum Dayak subsistence farmers from a stretch of tropical rainforest in the heart of Borneo. Together with the Ngaju, their neighbours to the south, they gloried in one of the most elaborate secondary mortuary rites in the world.

Recently, Dr Gül Aktürk Hauser took up the position as Assistant Professor at the department of Heritage and Society. Originally an architect, she got caught up in the study of historical vernacular buildings in northeastern Turkey. Now her focus lies on the impact of climate change on cultural heri…

The early modern and modern Europeanists at the Leiden Institute of History approach the past from comparative and transnational perspectives, frequently placing the history of our continent in global contexts. Our research covers the geographical and thematic breadth of Europe since ca. 1500, with…

How should we address our colonial heritage? And how digital and accessible are our collections? Outgoing State Secretary Fleur Gräper spoke with researchers and heritage specialists about this on 25 January.

Cultural and individual differences

Watch and talk along with today’s science of the past during weekly Let’s Plays of popular games and vodcasts on the livestream platform Twitch.

This project investigates the multilingual networks of Dutch lyrical texts, manuscripts and early prints, examining their transmission, dissemination, and reception during the 15th and 16th century.

The project investigates epistemicity: how the knowledge of the speaker and hearer can be expressed in the grammar. This shows us how speakers organise their knowledge, and whether this is influenced by the language they speak.

How did digital intermediality symbolise and facilitate the transfer of content from popular culture into policy statements and vice versa in the period between 1945 and the new millenium?

Research on the process and construction of news stories about human rights issues in Latin American newspapers.

Amy Strecker assesses the institutional framework for landscape protection, analyses the interplay between landscape and human rights, and links the etymology and theory of landscape with its articulation in law.

This PhD project investigates how nationalist ideas are expressed, shaped, and negotiated in Moroccan Malhun poetry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Centre for Digital Heritage undertakes collaborative international research in the field of Digital Heritage. It is an initiative of the University of York.

The project investigates how bilingual speakers navigate lexico-syntactic features, including grammatical gender, classifier systems, and the linear order of adjectives and nouns, across Spanish and Chinese in both unilingual and bilingual contexts.

How do we create an environment for scientists to flourish in, while facing the challenges of the 21st century?

How did local lifeways and crafting practices persist and develop in the diverse environments of the increasingly interconnected Gulf of Fonseca (AD 400-1521)?

Andrew Littlejohn composed a sonic ethnography with sounds recorded in Japan’s northeastern region. To understand the experience of being in the middle of a changing landscape, Littlejohn composed a sonic ethnography called Shizugawa, named after a district in Minamisanriku Town where he recorded.

With the launch of the Albabtain Leiden University Centre for Arabic Culture, Leiden University and the AbdulAziz Saud Al-Babtain Cultural Foundation will join hands in promoting the understanding of Arabic culture. Have a look at the centre's plans for the years ahead.

Call for proposals for a new Forum on Theorizing Culture in Global Relations in The Hague Journal of Diplomacy.

This week more than 400 international students are starting their study programme in Leiden or The Hague. Why did they choose to study here? And what is the advice from their mentors?

In 2016, Leiden University hosts the monthly meetings of the Music and Cultural Analysis reading group.

This project investigates properties of quantity expressions across languages from the perspective of how quantity is represented in the human brain.

A team of Leiden researchers has won the Ammodo Science Award for innovative humanities research on perceptions of cultural heritage.

Dr Gül Aktürk Hauser (Assistant Professor, Department of Heritage and Society, Faculty of Archaeology) and Dr Sophie Starrenburg (Assistant Professor, Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden Law School) organised a workshop titled ‘An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Heritage Reparations:…

A deliberate attack on a tangible element of a culture, such as a temple, is often also an attack on intangible elements: the religion or religious customs. Equally, the intangible can be attacked without the involvement of the tangible, for example the brutal curtailment of rights. How are these reflected…

How did people across Central and Eastern Europe imagine the future during the transitions of the 1980s and 1990s? The umbrella term ‘post-communism’ does not provide an answer to this question. This project explores how writers and cultural theorists saw the potential future of their societies during…

Online Open Days are increasingly gaining popularity. On 13 September 2017, Dr. Erik de Maaker, Jule Forth and Tarini Shipurkar from the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology presented a webinar on their Master programme. The recorded webinar can be watched online.

On Friday 20 September, the first Sector Plan Conference for the theme Cultural Heritage and Identity will be organised in Rotterdam. The conference is intended for all staff and national partners working in the field of Cultural Heritage and Identity. In particular, those involved in the Sector Plan…

How can we best protect cultural heritage in times of war? In an interview with LeidenGlobal, cultural heritage law specialist Evelien Campfens talks about her current research project on cultural heritage protection in Ukraine for the European Parliament (EP).

Wil je onderzoeksideeën en nieuwe publicaties in informele setting met vakgenoten bespreken? Meld je dan aan voor deze nieuwe seminar-reeks! Elke laatste woensdag van de maand komen we samen, afwisselend op locatie en online. De eerste bijeenkomst zal plaatsvinden op woensdag 26 oktober van 16:00 tot…

This volume edited by Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen aims to quantify and qualify cross-cultural global migrations and was published in the series 'Studies in Global Migration History'.

Marike Knoef has won an award on the 34th Award Ceremony of the World Cultural Council (WCC).

Andrea Giolai defended his thesis on 3 May 2017.

This project looks at the Ancient Greek language from the perspective of the ordinary writer. A large corpus of more than 60.000 Greek texts on papyrus, from private letters to petitions and contracts, offers an excellent opportunity to study the Greek language as written by non-literary writers in…

This project aims to study the Aesopian fable from 1500 to the present day in its complex relationship between text, illustration and education, adopting a broad, transnational perspective.

Skate legend Tony Hawk came to Antwerp. Belgium newspaper De Morgen published an article on the changing skate culture. Cultural Anthropologist Sander Hölsgens shines his light on this theme and talks about the democratisation of skate boarding, activism, public space and collective memory of skater…

Sybille Lammes is leaving Warwick University in Britain to research digital culture in daily life at Leiden University. She will start as professor New Media and Digital Culture on September 1st 2017

Digital edition of the correspondence between the philosopher Gerardus Johannes Petrus Josephus (Gerard) Bolland (1854-1922) and the philologist Pieter Jacob Cosijn (1840-1899), consisting of 46 letters covering the period 1879 to 1899.

On 8 December, Leiden University Press will present a new international series on Persian poetry and literature. The series will be edited by Asghar Seyed Gohrab (Middle Eastern Studies).

Writing a story from the perspective of a Rwandan girl set in Africa is not an easy task. Alumna Cultural Anthropology Ruth Erica did it. Her debut novel The tree with the bitter leaves, in which an important supporting role is played by a student of cultural anthropology, appeared in August 2020.

This ethnographic research is a joint project with the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, and KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies. It aims to understand the experiences of social inclusion and exclusion of female migrants…

Utrecht University has a vacancy for a professor Middle Dutch literature and culture. Deadline for applications: 6 November 2021.

On 1 September 2022 Afke van Ewijk successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

It is often claimed—in both scholarly and popular sources—that guide dogs for the blind are a modern innovation. But as this project demonstrates clearly, guide dogs also existed during the medieval period.

On 24 and 25 April 2025, the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam — home to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) — hosted an interdisciplinary workshop organized by dr. Rafal Matuszewski, an ancient historian at the Institute for History in Leiden.