There is a crisis in the law concerning the accommodation of religious practice. The legal profession is demanding that the law be changed because it does not want religious institutions to have the 'right to discriminate'. The profession holds that evolving societal sexual norms can render lawful religious…

On January 19, a masterclass on the theme of religious imagination will take place in the Lorentz Center in Leiden. This masterclass for MA and PhD students will focus on the religious imagination as a spiritual skill in the late medieval Low Countries, and the role of religious texts, images, and objects…

Religions involve belief in the unbelievable: in evil spirits causing disease, in souls surviving death, and in gods punishing wrongdoers and blessing the just. Cognitive studies suggest that humans are predisposed to speculate about fate and divine agency, but support from so-called ‘plausibility structures’…

The bachelor program Religious Studies has, besides also Linguistics and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, been awarded by the 'Keuzevakkengids Universiteiten 2019' with the predicate top program.

It is becoming increasingly common for large Dutch municipalities, including the Municipality of Amsterdam, to allow special enforcement officers to wear religious symbols such as the kippah and headscarf. Dutch Minister of Justice Dilan Yesilgöz and PVV party leader Geert Wilders are opposed to this…

Program for postgraduate research master seminar 'Current Issues in Religious Studies and Western Esotericism' 2024–2025 is online

Leiden’s Religious Studies ranks 40th place in the QS World University Rankings by Subject.

Jifeng Liu defended his thesis on 2 February 2017

A selected group of unpublished amulets from various collections in the world will be studied and edited.

This project explores the religious lives of a Surinamese Hindu community practicing in Amsterdam at the Sri Radha Krishna Mandir from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Since my master's thesis on the landed property of the Frisian monasteries in the Middle Ages I am highly interested in the do ut des-aspects of the relation between religious houses and the lay world. Key words here are: property, power, patronage and the role of religious institutions in the 'salvation…

Muhammad Adlin Sila examines the range of ways Bima Muslims constitute their Islamic identities and agencies through rituals and festivals. In response to their surroundings, what it means to be a Muslim is constantly being negotiated.

This study discusses the position of the monasteries in pre-1950s Tibetan societies and how that position was informed by Buddhist monastic ideology.

How do religious narratives persuade their readers to believe their message? And how can it be that some readers even come to treat fantasy and science fiction as authoritative religious texts? These are the core questions treated in Markus Davidsen’s new book Narrative and Belief: The Religious Affordance…

Thirteen Centuries of Creed, Conflict and Coexistence

Religious Studies at the University of Amsterdam organises a postgraduate seminar on current issues in religious studies and western esotericism. You can find the programme for the year 2023-2024 below.

What forms does religiosity take among Muslims in Europe today? How are answers to the question of what it means to be a Muslim in Europe reached in institutions of Islamic higher education, Muslim student organizations, and women’s organizations? What is the relation between the individual and religious…

The BA Religious Studies programme has been awarded the label 'Topopleiding' (Top Education) in the Keuzegids 2021.

Mining the unusually rich diaries, memoirs, and poems written by Netherlandish Catholics, Judith Pollmann explores how Catholic believers experienced religious and political turmoil in the generations between Erasmus and Rubens.

A project aimed at understanding the complicated process of religious transformation in one of the centres of the early Muslim world.

History and Religious Studies in Leiden rank # 17 and #32 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. With this, History in Leiden ranks as the best in The Netherlands and Religious Studies ranks as second best.

Three students in Elpine de Boer’s class “Practicing Religious Studies” have been working together on a “Leren met de Stad” (“Learning with the City”) project with community centre Morschwijck, located in Leiden. The students were asked by the organization Incluzio to investigate to which extent cultural…

The programme focuses on the medieval dynamics of intellectual life in the Rhineland and the Low countries, nowadays divided over five countries (Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands) but one cultural region in the later Middle Ages.

This study elucidates a critical facet of modern global Buddhism that has escaped the attention of the scholarly community by exploring the life, teachings and influence of Master Wuguang 悟光上師 (1918-2000).

Henk Versnel's work on ancient religion has been seminal. For his 80th birthday, a group of scholars assembled to celebrate and analyze his oeuvre.

On October 11, the Austria Centre Leiden teamed up with the Leiden Jewish Studies Association to welcome Dr. Lena Sadovski for a lunch time talk. Fifteen colleagues from across the university, including retirees and graduate students, attended Dr. Sadovski's fascinating lecture entitled “When religion…

A new paperback edition of Brian Heffernan's book Freedom and the Fifth Commandment. Catholic priests and political violence in Ireland, 1919-21 was published by Manchester University Press in September 2016.

Intensive 5-day programme on the world-famous Antwerp-based printing and publishing house founded by Christopher Plantin in 1555. International experts will discuss how it developed the production and distribution of religious books and related illustrations and prints in the following centuries.

In 2014 Hans-Martien ten Napel received a Research Fellowship in Legal Studies at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, NJ. The book he wrote as a result of this fellowship was published last week by Routledge Law.

In Belgium, officially recognised religions receive financial support from the state. Partly as a result, there is no clearly implemented secularism (separation of church and state) though this is considered to be a guiding notion in modern constitutional theories. PhD candidate Alain Vannieuwenburg…

Markus Altena Davidsen was 'extremely happy' when he heard that he and his colleagues had been awarded a grant from the KNAW pilot fund for science communication. Together with partners from all over the country, they are working on a book that should inspire secondary schools to renew their education…

How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

This study describes religion in Java.

In Sri Lanka, a prominent Singhalese Buddhist monk publicly proclaims that it is not a sin to kill Tamils. In Japan, the family register kept in a Buddhist temple and specifying the outcaste status of a lineage is provided to private detectives investigating the marriageability of a young woman. Throughout…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

From October 1-3, 2017, the 24th Annual International Law and Religion Symposium was held at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, USA. The Symposium was attended by 100 participants, from 50 different countries, while interpretation at the venue was available in 11 languages (Arabic, French, Italian,…

How do religious narratives persuade their readers to believe their message? And how can it be that some readers even come to treat fantasy and science fiction as authoritative religious texts? These are the core questions treated in Markus Davidsen’s new book Narrative and Belief: The Religious Affordance…

Leiden University Centre for the Study of Religion (LUCSoR), Thursday 10 and Friday 11 November 2016

Within the Comparative Religion Network staff and graduate students from LIAS-LUCSoR (and beyond) discuss ongoing work and cooperate on key issues in the comparative and systematic study of religion.

What forms does Muslim religiosity take in daily life? What is the relation between representations of Islam and Muslims by scholars and the views that exist in the ‘real world’?

Religious Studies at Leiden University allows you to study a broad spectrum of religions and their manifestations.