Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500 provides a comprehensive survey of this complex and varied formative period of European history, covering themes as diverse as barbarian migrations, the impact of Christianisation, the formation of nations and states, the emergence of an expansionist commercial…

The Department of Child Law focuses in its education on the legal position of the child in national and international law.

To reach a larger audience beyond the academy, a number of activities in the cultural realm have been programmed over the years.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

What is the iconography of propaganda specifically as it relates to the historical development of political ideologies in modern Egypt and how was/is this propaganda disseminated among creative fields such as cinema, art, monuments, architecture, and literature?

From colonial times through to the present day, large numbers of Javanese have left their homes to settle in other parts of Indonesia or much further afield. Frequently this dispersion was forced, often with traumatic results.

This is the first reference work to describe the history of embroidery throughout Central Asia, the Iranian Plateau and the Indian Subcontinent from the medieval period through to the present. It offers an authoritative guide to all the major embroidery traditions of the region and a detailed examination…

This volume, featuring sixteen contributions from leading Roman historians and archaeologists, sheds new light on approaches to the economic history of urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, with a particular emphasis on the imperial period.

On December 5th, Matthias Pache succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Matthias on this great result.

The Leiden Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to promote research on the ancient languages and cultures of Arabia, and to disseminate this knowledge to the broader public.

The unique geographic and temporal breadth of research at Leiden allows us to stimulate a shift from the classical Weberian mode of scholarly production that views historical development and modernization as emanating from Europe and the West to a multi-polar perspective that allows for more nuanced,…

This programma, an initiative of the Institute for History in partnership with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta. Aims to study more than 20 kilometers of Dutch archival materials in The Netherlands, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and South Africa.

Are you interested in studying South and South East Asian Studies at Leiden University? To have an impression of the student life, see the overview of a typical day out of the life of Yaska Sahara, first-year student.

On young Muslims seeking to understand their place and make their way in a transformed world.

How does global change across time and space lead to convergence and loss of variation or increasing diversity and conflict?

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'.

The Great Rift Valley in Africa is a real treasure trove for discovering early human fossils. The fossils found in this part of Africa have determined our view of human evolution. But was the Great Rift Valley really the place where evolution took place or just a place where fossils are well preserved…

Mathilde Mechling defended her thesis on 28 january 2020.

Dating back more than 400 years, Leiden University has the oldest continuous chair of Arabic outside the Arabic-speaking world. Today the MENA region is studied at Leiden from before the coming of Islam up to today from a wide array of disciplines. And Arabic is studied within the diverse linguistic,…

Mr. J. Sun defended his thesis on 21 March 2018.

Leiden University has long had a special interest in and relationship with China.

Jeffrey Kotyk defended his thesis on 7 September 2017

On the 16th of February 2022 Mr. Yunus Sulistyono successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Piecing together the urnfield mortuary process in the Lower-Rhine-Basin, ca. 1300 - 400 BC

Nichiran kankei-shi o yomitoku [Revisiting the History of Dutch-Japanese Relations] is a new, two-volume Japanese publication with a chapter written by Wulan Remmelink. Both volumes offer a new look on the historical relations between Japan and The Netherlands during the Edo period by examining various…

Leiden University has student exchange and scholarships agreements with various Chinese Universities, varying from long-term exchange programmes to two-week Summer Courses.

LUCSoR has chairs in Comparative Religion, Islam in the West, Christianity, and Judaism. Main areas of expertise include ancient Mesopotamian religions, the Enlightenment, Islam in the West, and new spiritual movements.

This book explores chronologically, for the first time, the representation and redefinition of Indonesia’s regional cultures through recording media, from the introduction of the gramophone record through the current video compact disc (VCD) era, taking as case study the Minangkabau ethnic group.

For hundreds of years, the island of Sri Lanka was a crucial stopover for people and goods in the Indian Ocean. For the Dutch East India Company, it was also a crossroads in the Indian Ocean slave trade. Slavery was present in multiple forms in Sri Lanka—then Ceylon—when the British conquered the island…

The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.

Tijmen Baarda defended his PhD thesis on 8 January 2020

Contact details for the Leiden University Graduate School of Humanities. The Humanities PhD Admissions Office is situated at the Student Information Desk in the Lipsius building.

On Thursday 21 November 2024 Jake Benson successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Nowadays, most Europeans speak a language belonging to the Indo-European language family. However, very different languages were spoken on our continent before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. The EUROLITHIC project tries to find answers to the question which languages these were and where they came…

This study offers a comprehensive but balanced grammatical analysis of Ik (Icetod), Northeast Uganda’s last thriving Kuliak language.

Besides the Hortus being a beautiful place where visitors can relax and learn more about plants, we also facilitate botanical research. Thousands of plants are cultivated for research purposes in our greenhouses. These include tropical orchids, ferns, the soursop family (Annonaceae), the dogbane family…

What is it like to study Urban Studies in The Hague? Sonia Dobkowska, second year student, describes what a typical day looks like for her.

Leiden University provides ambitious students with the most recent and innovative areas of knowledge, and offers them the freedom to develop their own area of expertise.

Get the most out of your studies at Leiden University by taking part in our extracurricular activities.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

This multidisciplinary minor within the department of Latin American Studies offers the opportunity to combine language acquisition courses in Spanish or Portuguese with modules in the history, literature, culture and cinema of Spanish America and Brazil. Students can choose to follow the Spanish or…

Leiden’s Faculty of Humanities is one of the broadest of its kind, offering courses in no fewer than 80 different languages and a very broad spectrum of academic disciplines.

You’ve been accepted! Leiden University looks forward to welcoming you as a new student. Your next step is to prepare for your studies. Below you can find some tips to help you get a head start as you embark on your studies at Leiden University.

If you are interested in an academic programme, but do you not wish to complete the entire programme? Then, you can choose one of the many à la carte courses the Faculty of Humanities offers.

Get to know us through our online and in-person events for prospective students!

Uncovering ancient Arabian inscriptions feels like pioneering detective work, says Arabist Michael Macdonald in a video interview with Leiden Islam Centre LUCIS. 'First you have to learn the alphabets that they're written in, and then you have to try and work out what they say.'

PhD defence