Leiden is a winning combination of being small and fun, yet big in character as a student city. It’s also conveniently close to cities like Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam, which can all be reached by train in just 30 minutes.

Leiden is a winning combination of being small and fun, yet big in character as a student city. It’s also conveniently close to cities like Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam, which can all be reached by train in just 30 minutes.

Find your home at LUC! We are located at the heart of The Hague. With our own campus building and international profile, LUC creates an environment for those looking for an intercultural experience and who wish to become responsible global citizens.

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.

This book explores how changes in the patterns of cooperation and conflict among states, regional actors and transnational non-state actors have affected the rise of emerging global powers and the suggested decline of US leadership. Scholars, students and policy practitioners who are interested in the…

Essays dedicated to Frans Wiggermann

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

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.

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?

The Leiden Ancient History specialization concentrates on the study of the economies, societies and cultures of the large empires of the Graeco-Roman world, starting with the empires of Alexander the Great and his successors.

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…

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

Library of Arabic Literature: Critical Edition and Translation of Ibn Qutaybah’s Faḍl al-ʿArab.

Xiao Ma defended her thesis on 26 September 2018

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.

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,…

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Examine and experience the material features and characteristic appearances of medieval manuscripts, annotated books, prints, drawings, photographic albums and much more, in various settings.

The recent terrorist attacks in Europe are presumably not just acts committed by individuals, but acts facilitated by larger jihadist networks. But how do such networks operate? Understanding their modus operandi can be useful knowledge to counter terrorist threats.

Yeonhwa Jeon defended her thesis on 6 July 2017.

Intensive public debates have erupted about integration of immigrants in Europe. The influx of refugees from the middle east during the summer and autumn of 2015, the increasing visibility of immigrants throughout European societies, but also the widely publicized occurrences on New Year’s eve in Cologne…

The NVIC library is a public, academic reference library. Entrance is free—no membership needed—and offers access to our book collection and two reading rooms, which have a WiFi connection. It is not possible to borrow books from our library.

Promotor: E. Gittenberger, Co-promotor: B.W. Hoeksema

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.

Social Aspects of Space in the Configurational Architecture of Frankish Castles in the Holy Land, 1099-1291

Kathryn Emerson defended her thesis on 28 June 2016

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

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

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?

Mathilde Mechling defended her thesis on 28 january 2020.

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…

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

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.

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.

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…

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.

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

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.

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

Jeffrey Kotyk defended his thesis on 7 September 2017

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

Tijmen Baarda defended his PhD thesis on 8 January 2020