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.

In November, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) welcomed the first Lingling Wiyadharma Fellows in the Special Collections reading room. Fellows Chin Nyuk Tin, Evi Fuji Fauziyah and Arman AZ are all working on different research projects, yet their goals are the same: building bridges between Southeast…

Curators devote a lot of attention to their collections. How is Martijn Storms, curator of maps and atlases at Leiden University Libraries, managing to do this now he is working from home? And how is Silvia Vermetten digitising Eastern manuscripts from home?

In the past half a century, China has transformed from an underdeveloped and inward-looking country to a major player in world politics. The country asserts itself more boldly on the world stage; not only in relation to nearby countries and places such as Taiwan, Japan, and other countries that share…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has made more than 20.000 maps, atlases and topographical prints and drawings available in Digital Collections. With this, a significant part of one of the largest and most important collections of maps and atlases in the Netherlands has now been made digitally available…

Three cholera epidemics struck 19th-century Leiden. Today’s corona epidemic prompted Martijn Storms, curator of maps and atlases at the Leiden University Libraries, to scour the library for maps about these past epidemics.

The research suggestions below may be suitable for a bachelor's or master's thesis or can be used as additional source material in ongoing research.

Dutch troops, judges and politicians collectively condoned and concealed the systematic use of extreme violence during the Indonesian War of Independence. Historians have now shown how this could happen. ‘It was scandal management rather than prevention,’ says Leiden historian and research leader Gert…

The airspace had almost closed last year as Leiden students and staff rushed to leave the Netherlands Institute Morocco (NIMAR). How is this Leiden institute in Rabat doing over a year later? ‘Luckily we’d done a crisis exercise a few months before. Everyone managed leave the country in time.’

Overview of the Scaliger, Brill, Elsevier, Van de Sande, Juynboll, Drewes, Isaac Alfred Ailion, Arminius, Van Gulik and Lingling Wiyadharma Fellows who have conducted research in the Special Collections of the University Library.