This book focuses on the element of thresholds – makeshift gates, makeshift structures and house doors – as concepts of liminality in ancient Near Eastern magical rituals, and the idea of transformation they reflect.

The writings of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) are famously and purposely marked by fragmentariness. Paradoxically, a central aim of his work was to connect: all his life he sought to further the integration of scholarship in the humanities which, he believed, had too long suffered from the prevalence…

On 30 January 2024 Jurre van der Meer successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

On 21 and 22 March 2019 the workshop 'Criptic Identities. Historicizing the identity formation of persons with disabilities across the globe' takes place at the Leiden Institute for History.

Persian stories with beautiful miniatures, letters on papyrus from Egyptian traders and medicinal manuscripts translated from Greek and edited in Arabic. Studium Generale organizes a lecture series on the world-famous manuscripts from the Middle East collection of Leiden University Libraries (UBL).…

The postwar Liberal International Order faces grave challenges today mostly in the form of geopolitical competitions among great powers and exclusionary identity politics unfolding across different countries.

Four lecturers from Leiden University will receive a 50,000-euro Comenius Teaching Fellow grant. This will enable them and their team to realise an educational innovation within their own teaching.

A look into the political history of collecting and the collections of Andean mummies in Western European museums from 1830-1930 through archaeology and paleoimaging.

To be eligible for Global Political Economy at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

To be eligible for Global Order in Historical Perspective at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

Unravelling networks of human mobility and exchange of goods and ideas from a pre-colonial, pan-Caribbean perspective

To be eligible for Global Conflict in the Modern Era at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

To be eligible for Culture and Politics at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

You can find an overview of events organized by the Platform for Post-Colonial Readings below.

Nineteen researchers who have recently been awarded their PhD are to receive a Veni grant of up to 250,000 euros. Science funding agency NWO has awarded a total of 158 Venis in this round; Leiden University's share of the awards is 12 percent.

El pueblo Kamëntšá en la encrucijada del patrimonio cultural

American anthropologist Rosemary Joyce will be awarded an honorary doctorate from Leiden University on its Dies Natalis on 8 February. Joyce has delivered important new insights into the ancient Mayan cultures of Central America.

If you missed the annual LUCDH Winter School Week of Digital Humanities workshops and Pilot Project Symposium (27 – 31 January 2025) this time around, you’ll have a chance to take part next year. Save the dates for the last week of January 2026!

The Mexican embassy, represented by the cultural attaché, Mr. José Manuel Springer, donated to the Faculty of Archaeology a voluminous publication of detailed maps of the historical and contemporary distribution of the indigenous languages of Mexico: “Catálogo de Lenguas Indígenas Mexicanas, Cartografía…

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.'

But how do you do it? At the annual Education Showcase, lecturers at the Faculty of Humanities could talk to their colleagues about teaching methods and teaching. Plenty of tips were exchanged during the information fair, workshops and drinks. Five participants talk about they learned.

Het zichtbaar maken van ongeschreven verhalen van inheemse culturen en volken van de Cariben. Dat doet de tentoonstelling ‘Caribbean Ties’ in de Oude UB.

Fostering multi-polar perspectives that engage more connected, nuanced and pluralistic understandings of the world. Global Interactions encourages and supports research that provides significant new insights on these global processes across time and space.

The central theme of LUC's programme is on Global Challenges, and consists of four core components which are spread out over three years of study.

Lecture, UMW Research Seminar

Who will win this year’s Teaching Prize in the Faculty of Humanities? Who will the students honour with this coveted token of their appreciation? Read on to get to know four passionate teachers – about minds working at top speed, experimental teaching styles and that satisfying moment when the penny…

From the Spanish Flu during WWI to COVID-19: the role of the American government in these Pandemics. Professor Giles Scott-Smith, who together with Dario Fazzi and Gaetano Di Tommaso completed the book project Public Health and the American State, discusses a century of American responses to health…

In 2020, Leiden University launched its stimulated interdisciplinary programs, including one focused on regenerative medicine.

Lecture, VVIK lecture

Ambroise Paré, Thomas Sydenham and Herman Boerhaave: all were great medical innovators in their time. We know far less about the 19th-century Russian physician and scientist Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov. PhD candidate Inge Hendriks researched him in Dutch and Russian archives and collections. She discovered…

Caribbean archaeological heritage is threatened by natural impacts but also increasingly by economic developments, often resulting from the tourist industry. The continuous construction of specific projects for tourists, accompanied by illegal practices such as looting and sand mining, have major impacts…

Advanced biotechnology allows us to select or alter the genetic makeup of human embryos. What limits do we impose on biotechnological intervention in nature and the human body? And whose call is that?

ACPA offers students from both the Leiden University and the University of the Arts The Hague elective courses in visual art and music.

Find out how to apply for the MA Ancient History at Leiden University by following our step-by step guide.

Starting this semester, Urban Studies students will be able to work on the urban development of the municipality of The Hague. A LUF incentive grant will enable them to put their knowledge into practice even more effectively. At the same time, a study will be started on the optimal use of urban spac…

Considering Mesoamerican Precolonial books as material objects

This PhD subproject concentrates on 16th-century ichthyology and takes Gessner’s Historia piscium (1558) (further HP) as its point of departure and focus.

Lecture, China Seminar

The shocking murder of MP Jo Cox has brought it home to the British public that the referendum debate is in disarray. How has the campaign been handled and what would be the consequences of a Brexit? Jan Rood, Professor by special appointment of European Integration, and political scientist Hans Vollaard…

Reasserting America in the 1970s brings together two areas of burgeoning scholarly interest.

Open up a world of opportunities with your master's degree in Archaeology from Leiden University!

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Vidi grants to Leiden researchers.

Alex West’s dissertation,

Last year, the Art History program, led by lecturers Laura Bertens and Elizabeth den Hartog, started the course The Academic Art of Publishing, in which students work on editing and publishing an academic journal: 'Panoramic. The Leiden Art Review'.

Explore the contemporary dilemmas of archaeological heritage management, or focus on museum practices from an archaeological perspective.

The project 'Crossing Boundaries: Ethnographic Approaches in Research on Migration and Diversity' has been awarded funding through the LDE Governance of Migration and Diversity (GMD) Seed Fund 2025–2026.

Conference

Lecture

The Rabobank has awarded Leiden University 50,000 euro for a ‘study-related' purpose. The gift is to be used to allow two African students to follow the research master’s programme in African Studies in Leiden.