Antoaneta Dimitrova, Professor Comparative Governance, spoke in an interview with Euronews about the hurdles ahead for Borrisov, the current prime minister of Bulgaria, despite winning the elections.

Arts and culture

A collaboration between linguists, geographers and anthropologists aims to uncover how languages spread across South America over thousands of years. Associate Professor Rik van Gijn is responsible for the linguistic side of this NWO project.

Federica Antoniani is the recipient of the very first MA thesis prize awarded by Leiden University’s Europe Hub. She received the prize for her thesis entitled 'Accounting for Accountability: Europol between Protecting Personal Data and Fostering Innovative Artificial Intelligence for Law Enforcement…

Who is Economic Man? Every economic paradigm presupposes an anthropology, a theory of human nature. This project explores the anthropologies presupposed and produced by ancient Greek economic texts, and the specific knowledge forms that shape these anthropologies.

D.P. Kok defended his thesis on 10 October 2017

In this dissertation, a comprehensive portrait of the American-born Quaker Lindley Murray (1745–1826) is painted and the influence of Murray’s Quakerism on his language use is investigated by analyzing a corpus of 262 of his unpublished private letters.

How can groundbreaking research help Europe tackle the huge challenges it faces? At the launch of the Leiden Europe Hub, academics and policymakers discussed this in the heart of European democracy: the European Parliament.

On 1st July Austria will assume the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. An appropriate occasion to invite former president of Austria Heinz Fischer to deliver the eighth Europa Lecture on Friday 8th June. During the lecture Mr Fischer shared his views on the history of his country…

Piercing through the skull with an ice pick, administering electric shocks without an anaesthetic, or applying leeches to the uterus: these may seem like medieval methods of torture, but they are in fact therapies used in medicine. Willem van der Does writes about all of them in his new book. ‘Physicians…

Historic and iconic yet expensive and cold. It’s with mixed feelings that the university is leaving the Gravensteen building, which dates back to the 12th century. How was it to work and study in this former Leiden prison?

On Wednesday 23 October 2024 Judith Jurjens successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The Faculty of Humanities has been ranked 17th Arts and humanities faculty in the Times Higher Education world ranking 2015-16. This makes it the top non-Anglo-Saxon institution on the list. The position is 7 places up in comparison with last year's list.

In Nature researchers at Leiden University and Utrecht University show how 47 teeth from Southern China indicate that anatomically modern humans where present at least 80,000 years ago in the region. This is 40,000 years earlier than in Europe.

On 1 July – Keti Koti, in the year ahead, our university community will be able to reflect extensively on the history of slavery by engaging in research, education and many other activities.

Lecture, COGLOSS lecture

The faculty of Humanities scores well in the anual QS World Universities Ranking By Subject list. This year we have placed sixth in the category Classics and Ancient History.

Debates on political legitimacy in Dutch parliament in the 1880s, 1930s, and 1960s

A Persistent Revolution: History, Nationalism, and Politics in Mexico since 1968

Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) is looking for two PhD's, for a research programme funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO): 'A New History of Fishes. A long-term approach to fishes in science and culture, 1550-1880', supervised by Professor Paul…

Leiden University and the Municipality of Leiden will develop new plans for an alternative Humanities Campus in the city centre. This means they will not proceed with the compulsory purchase of the De Doelen housing complex to facilitate the construction of the new Humanities Campus. The plans to demolish…

Sarah Cramsey's first book, Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

The new student centre in The Hague, the Beehive, will be opening its doors in stages starting from 1 October. The name Beehive was chosen because it stands for connection, an individual identity, activity and belonging. This meeting place for students is dedicated to improving the living environment…

Beyond the immediately visible plenum, parliaments are highly complex institutions. They work through various venues in which decisions are prepared or even taken. The two main institutions in this regard are parliamentary party groups, which comprise legislators who are elected under the same party…

Roos van Oosten's research on medieval cesspits stood on the basis of an article on this subject in Quest Historie, a Dutch magazine about history.

In 'Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680-1800', Gert Oostindie and Jessica V. Roitman, both of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) and also affiliated with the History Institute of Leiden University, assemble an internationally acclaimed selection of authors,…

Islamic banking, freedom of religion, LGBTQ+ acceptance and education are topics that European Muslims find important for their future. These are the results of a survey by Professor of Islam and the West, Maurits Berger. The survey is the starting point of a citizen project in which Berger wants to…

The Hague is the Netherlands’ fastest-growing student city, and has been Leiden University’s second location since 2010. In addition to housing the Netherlands’ ministries and government bodies, The Hague is the International City of Peace and Justice and is home to countless embassies, political…

On 10 February 2025, Vincent Delhomme attended the official launch of the new EU Health Union Fellowship at the College of Europe (Bruges), where he delivered a two hour lecture on EU health governance.

The book on Turkey. A Modern History written by Professor Erik-Jan Zürcher, Professor of Turkish Studies, is now available in nine different languages. Arabic and Polish versions have now been published.