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.

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…

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

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

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.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

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.

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

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…

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

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.

Conference, Research Seminar

December 2020 saw the crowning publication of the Landscapes of Survival project by Professor Peter Akkermans. Its main topic is human habitation in marginal environments like the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. ‘The people living here built their own society, and they would not have viewed it as…

Three PhD candidates have recently started working in the ERC project 'the Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in Historical Perspective', which is led by Dr. Monika Baar.

What inspires scholars who study the history, cultures, religions and languages of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia? LUCIS interviewed scholars about their work and research in the video project “Passion in Profession”. The videos are available online now.

The faculty's research on the ancient rock art found in Jordan's Black Desert has recently been covered by several news and science websites.

On 3 and 4 March, the 2nd Doctoral Seminar on International Criminal Law, International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law was held at the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights in Sicily. Ida Asscher and Anna Smulders, both PhD Candidates at the Grotius…

PhD defence

Japanese was not always the language spoken in Japan. Researchers link the arrival of the language in Japan with the migration of farmers around 400 BC. Linguist Elisabeth de Boer has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to carry out research on the further spread of the language in Japan.

LUF grants for research projects have been awarded to Liesbeth van Vliet, Michiel Claessen, Anna van Duijvenvoorde, Laura Steenbergen, Kim de Jong and Franziska Richter. Each of these Leiden University scientists receive an amount between € 17.500 and € 25.000 to realise their scientific plans.

How do you offer proper education in times of corona? Annebeth Simonsz (Educational Advice and Quality Assurance) and Anna Benjamins (ECOLe) work closely together to support lecturers in hybrid and online education. They are happy to share with the faculty, lecturers’ creative solutions for the new…

The Editorial Board is pleased to announce that the winner of the Common Market Law Review 2015 Young Academics Prize is Anna Wallerman, University of Gothenburg, for her article entitled: Towards an EU law doctrine on the exercise of discretion in national courts?

Paper dr. Anna Scott discussed in one-day conference on Pianism in the Long Nineteenth Century, featuring scholarship and interviews from across the globe.

English student Anna Carey has won the Student and City film competition. Her promotional film for Leiden as a student city was the best of the 12 entries.

This abrupt climate change of 8200 years ago (the so-called 8.2k calBP climate event) has received wide attention among natural scientists, also because of today's rapid climate changes and their impact on our own society. The archaeological implications, however, have not been investigated so far.…

This project aims to revisit the relationship between the European cultural agenda and the local identity formation process, and social and religious transformations of Arab Christian communities in Palestine, when the British ruled via the Mandate. What was the role of culture in European policies…

Promovendus Tristan Mostert onderzocht de ‘kruidnageljacht’ op de Ambonse eilanden en ontdekte dat VOC-gouverneurs extreme tactieken gebruikten.

After a lobby lasting many years, the Dutch government has decided to finance an independent study of the war of decolonisation (1945-1950) in the former Dutch East Indies. This is partly due to the work of Professor of Colonial and Post-Colonial History, Gert Oostindie, Director of the KITLV. ‘The…

Studying Sumerian grammar in your free time: Bram Jagersma did it. He described centuries-old Sumerian using a modern method he devised himself. For this PhD research he was awarded the De La Court Award for Independent Research by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science (KNAW).

The secular West is struggling with the rise of AI, but so too is Muslim Southeast Asia. What can we learn from each other?

The project aims at contributing to the safeguarding of Palestinian cultural heritage and the enhancement of economic situation through tourism development, by presenting and managing one of the most important archaeological resources, the archaeological site of Tell Balata.

Every semester, LUCIS invites a scholar to Leiden to provide a lecture series on a topic of their choice. With these lectures, we aim to present state-of-the-art research in Islamic studies to the Leiden academic community and beyond, and to offer students and junior researchers the opportunity to get…

The renovation of the Herta Mohr building (formerly known as Cluster Zuid) is completed. It is the third project in the redevelopment of the Humanities Campus. With the renewal of these buildings, the university ensures a sustainable campus with modern facilities. The university wants to create an attractive…

The colonial and slavery past is an important theme in education and research at Leiden University. Particular attention is also paid to structural abuses that arose from this history and that often still persist in the present day.

This Philosophy bachelor's programme offers perspectives from around the world. It will make you one of the next generation of students who will shape philosophy in the 21st century, ready to take on academic or professional challenges that call for critical thinking, analysis and argumentation skil…

One of LUCIR’s key objectives is to bring together scholars and students of International Relations. To this end, LUCIR regularly organises events such as conferences, roundtables, lectures and book launches.

Amerindian settlement patterns and early colonial cartography in Northern Hispaniola

For Arabic and Islamic Studies and Middle East Studies

The Persian Empire (539-330 BCE) was the first world empire in history. At its height, it united a territory stretching from present-day India to Libya - and it would take 2,000 years before significantly larger empires emerged in early modern Eurasia. Its size and power was revered by some, feared…

The Wadi al Jizzi Archaeological Project is a systematic and long term archaeological surface survey project, investigating the rich archaeological heritage of the Wadi al Jizzi region (Oman) from the Paleolithic until the early Modern period.