Students, staff and alumni of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences joint forces to interact, debate, pitch, and speed date together at the Connecting Social Sciences science festival on Friday 22 November, 2019. After the opening speeches and panel discussion on science and societal impact,…

“Temminck’s Order” is the scientific biography of Coenraad Jacob Temminck (1778–1850), a Dutch naturalist and the first director of ’s Rijks Museum van Natuurlijke Historie in Leiden.

A new chair has been added to the partnership between Leiden University and the Royal Conservatoire The Hague. Richard Barrett has been appointed Professor of Research in Creative Music (ACPA) as of 1 December 2020. 'For me it is important that music and academia are not placed in an ivory tower.'

Like spoken languages, sign languages evolve organically and do not always have the same origin. This produces different ways of communication and annotation. Manolis Fragkiadakis wrote his PhD thesis on this.

The Digital Society research agenda was presented by the Dutch universities during the VSNU Impact festival on 23 November.

Rising geopolitical tensions are causing states and national elites to innovate their use of the past for present-day political ends. This is certainly true for the People’s Republic of China, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2024 amid mounting superpower rivalry, ideological tensions with the…

Lecture

Conference

Arts and culture

Colleagues from the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences work on a variety of topics that contribute to a healthy society. Erik Bähre, Tessa Minter and Natashe Lemos Dekker presented their work during the Healthy Society Event on 9 June 2022.

The International Reynard Society studies the role of animals in the European literature of the Middle Ages and its afterlife. It focuses especially on beast epics, fables, and fabliaux. The 24th international colloquium of the Society – Of Foxes and Fish: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Medieval Animal…

The Graduation Ceremony 2022 of the master's Law & Society took place on 7 September 2022 in the Telders Room of the Academy Building in Leiden.

Facts, Fears and the Future of Islamic Rules on Family Relation in the West

Policymakers and Academics Speaking with Each Other

On the 15th of July Sawako Takemura successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Friday 4 November marked the 65th anniversary of the founding of Leiden’s P.C. Hooft Historical Debating Society. Although new members have not been accepted for several decades, the society is still alive and kicking. A retrospective with former presidents Jos Hooghuis and Saskia Leupen.

Is there a place for machine translation engines like Google Translate within the Faculty of Humanities? Associate professor Lettie Dorst’s new educational website aims to help students and teachers find an answer to this question. ‘The use of AI tools, such as Bing and ChatGPT, shouldn’t be seen as…

Pandemics, terrorist attacks, environmental disasters... These are real threats, which we cannot ignore. In fact: we need to prepare better for the large-scale crises of the future. Preferably in a way that suits our lifestyle and respects our social values. Over the next ten years, an interdisciplinary…

Children find that both dinosaur fossils and replicas belong in a museum, but they appreciate the real objects more. This is shown by research from Leiden University and Naturalis Biodiversity Center. 'Children look beyond superficial looks and attach great value to less obvious characteristics, such…

Colonial Soldiers in Europe, 1914-1945:

Spirited narratives of purpose and progress: church-society engagement alongside the (Company-) state

Embracing the Provinces is a collection of essays focused on people and their daily lives living in the Roman provinces, c. 27 BC-AD 476. It offers an overview of current research on Roman provinces and frontiers, deconstructing some long-held preconceptions and providing refreshing insights into unexplored…

Book by Soledad Valdivia Rivera

In this conversation-analytic study, the authors analyze conversations between researchers from different disciplines and community members to examine relationship building in real life. This is an open access article under the Creative Commons By license.

Lecture, Conversation

Latest technological developments in data mining and profiling.

PhD defence

Lecture

An X-ray scanner, some small metal balls, and a newly developed algorithm. That is all you need to make a 3D model that enables you to look inside art objects without dismantling them. Thanks to the research of Francien Bossema (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica and Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer…

docARTES is a doctoral programme for performers and composers. It offers a unique environment for critical reflection on musical practice.

The specialisation Museum Studies focuses on the art museum and places it in an artistic, cultural, social and political context. Our courses, taught by art historians and museum experts, reflect on the latest academic debates and the latest insights from the working field.

The specialisations Art History and Museum Studies both engage in critical perspectives and in current practices and the development of a professional network. The specialisation Art History puts emphasis on the analysis of art works within a museal and curatorial context. Our courses, taught by art…

Together with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and creative partner Big Orange, Laura Bertens, Sara Polak, Yra van Dijk, and Thony Visser will investigate possible uses of the voice in cultural memory.

'Academics who share their knowledge with the outside world on social media are often insulted or even threatened. Especially female academics and academics of colour seem to regularly be the victim of sexist and racist comments.' This is what Ineke Sluiter, Professor of Greek Language and Literature…

On Monday-Wednesday 10-12 June 2019, Jeroen Wolbers, Wout Broekema and Sanneke Kuipers represented the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) at the fourth edition of the Northern European Conference on Emergency and Disaster Studies (NEEDS).