This research investigates the impact of socioeconomic developments on the physical condition of medieval populations in Holland and Zeeland between AD 1000 and 1600 through the analysis of human skeletal remains from three archaeological sites.

In Reframing the Diplomat Albertine Bloemendal offers a unique window onto the unofficial dimension of Cold War transatlantic relations by analyzing the diplomatic role of the Dutch Atlanticist Ernst van der Beugel as a government official and as a private diplomat.

This book investigates how the rulers of the Habsburg world empire developed and implemented a central maritime policy for the Netherlands and appointed an admiral of the sea or admiral-general for that purpose.

In White Lies and Black Markets, Fatah-Black offers a new account of the colonization of Suriname—one of the major European plantation colonies on the Guiana Coast—in the period between 1650-1800.

During the early modern period, many medieval manuscripts were cut up into strips of parchment which were reused to reinforce the bindings of newly printed books. Until recently, these reused pieces of medieval manuscripts only came to light when the early modern book binding was damaged and/or subjected…

This book argues that the combined literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence supports the theory that early-imperial Italy had about six million inhabitants.

PhD defence

Most people would not even consider it, starting a PhD at the age of 62. However, for the former Teylers Museum curator Bert Sliggers it was like a dream that came true: ‘The opportunity I was given felt like a gift, it brought me and Teylers Museum a lot.’

Elsemieke Daalder has won the prestigious ‘Premio della Corte costituzionale italiana’, part of the ‘Premio Boulvert’ awards, for her dissertation ‘De rechtspraakverzamelingen van Julius Paulus’, for which she was awarded her doctorate cum laude on 23 October 2018 in Leiden.

On February 2nd the book Beelden zonder weerga appears, written by professor in science history Dirk van Delft and biochemist Ton van Helvoort. They describe the rich history of electron microscopy, which comes to a conclusion in the final chapter with the current state-of-the-art ESCHER microscope…

Leidens's Classics and History rank 6th and 15th place in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. Every year, QS ranks universities all over the world on academic reputation and research impact, grouped by subject. Linguistics (23), Languages (39) and Religious Studies (40) also do well in the…

Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

The central aims of this project are to establish the shapes of the various urban hierarchies existing in the provinces of the Roman Empire and (especially) to use the quantitative properties of these hierarchies to shed new light on levels of economic integration.

French title: Communication et violences dans le Guéra et le Moyen-Chari (Tchad) de 1940 à 2010. This research investigates the relationship between the introduction of new means of communication and violence experienced by the local populations in the Moyen-Chari and the Guéra regions in Chad from…

Research on the global field of museums, heritage, commemoration, consumption and material culture

The Secret Life of Art Works. Exploring the Boundaries between Art and Life is the first collection of essays to present case studies from the visual arts, architecture, sculpture and numismatics, and to engage critically with theoretical perspectives from art history, psychology, aesthetics and ant…

The aim of this project is to study the influence of Longinus’s treatise ‘On the sublime’ on practice and theory of architecture and theatre in seventeenth-century Paris and Amsterdam.

On the 2nd of September Jiyan Qiao successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Leiden alumnus Makoto Yoshida from Japan studied Dutch history and politics from 1996 to 1997. Now he is back in Leiden with his wife who is currently a student at the Faculty of Humanities. Some things still surprise him. 'Everyone at university uses first names, which was - and still is - unacceptable…

The ESSHC is coming to Leiden (Wednesday 18 - Saturday 21 March 2020)! The European Social Science History Conference is one of the largest gatherings of historians in Europe. The next conference will be held in Leiden in 2020. We are very happy that Leiden has been chosen to host this conference.…

Carmen Gonsalves has been the Dutch ambassador to Chile since this autumn. She studied history in Leiden. How useful has her degree been and what’s it like to be an ambassador? ‘Diplomacy is fascinating.’ We spoke to her just before the presidential elections.

Minims are letters that are made up of short, vertical pen strokes, such as 'm', 'i', 'n' and 'u'. In Gothic script, there is often little distinction between letters composed of minims. Assistant professor of medieval literature Krista Murchison has written an article in History Today on the hidden…

At the end of the fifteenth century, two intriguing Christian epics were written in Virgilian Latin by the poets Sannazaro and Vida. They did so in accordance with the wishes of the pope. These epics, both praised and criticized by contemporaries, are often seen as innovative for their specific combination…

From a new generation of antibiotics and more-effective vaccines to a map of dark matter and new light on Hindu traditions. Four researchers from Leiden University have received a prestigious €2.5m ERC Advanced Grant to develop their research.

How did disability become a global concern? In this project we will identify the contribution of international agencies, governmental and non-governmental organizations and, just as importantly, disabled people themselves, to the IYDP and by showing the connections, interactions and entanglements between…

Lecture

Lecture, Studium Generale

Paolo Sartori is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna. In Leiden he will deliver one guest lecture on Twilight of the Persianate: The Vernacularization of Central Asia (18th - early 20th Centuries) on 12 April and a masterclass on How can we…

Every month a member of the Institute for History tells about a book that inspired him or her. Afterwards, the pen is passed on to another colleague. This month dr. Meike de Goede tells about the book 'Between Tides' by Valentin Mudimbe. The novel, little known beyond the circles of Africanists and…

The rise and fall of the cesspit in an urban context

Investigation of 1.) The whereabouts of the epistemological dissonances in art criticisms on Post-war contemporary art from Japan between two different language realms, in this case in English and Japanese; and 2.) What the dissonances disclose, disturb, and contribute in the process of the establishment…

Lecture, INVISIHIST Keynote Roundtable

This fall, LUCIS will have the pleasure of welcoming Professor Hugh Kennedy from SOAS University of London to Leiden. He is the fourth Abdulaziz Saud Al-Babtain Cultural Foundation Visiting Professor in Arabic Culture at Leiden University.

The contributions in this volume seek to highlight the atypical features of the Hanse, and place them in a wider context of common roots, influences and parallel developments.

Leiden Asia Departments

A Selection of the Poems of Sir Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) was published in July 2015, edited and translated by Adriaan van der Weel and Peter Davidson.

The revolutionary organizations in Paris and Berlin around 1848.

Krista Murchison, University Lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, received a Veni grant of 250.000 euros. Her Veni-project will explore the ‘immaterial archive’ and its social and historical significance by digitally recreating manuscripts that were destroyed during World…

Numismatic research of Roman coin hoards in the Netherlands. The use of numismatic sources is incorporated in Claes’s research project “Dialogues of Power”. This project aims to analyse the legitimising dialogue between Roman emperors and their Germanic legions during the so-called “crisis of the third…

Radboud University is looking for a PhD researcher who will investigate the afterlife of medieval thought in early modern Europe through the study of concrete instances of intellectual transfer, for instance the appropriation of specific medieval authors or early modern revaluations of specific themes…

In Harper’s Magazine, reviewer Dan Piepenbring discusses the latest book by professor Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman. ‘Spycraft’ showcases how and why messages were ciphered in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.

Nearly eight decades after the liberation of Auschwitz, we continue to learn more about how the Holocaust “happened” in central and eastern Europe. In Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey’s History MA Research Seminar “New Approaches to the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe,” a dozen Leiden students read what…

Three PhD candidates from the Faculty of Humanities have successfully applied for funding from NWO for new PhD candidates. The three upcoming researchers will receive funding from the PhDs in Humanities programme. With the funding, NWO wants to boost the recruitment and advancement of young talent in…

Conference

This year four research trainee projects were approved by the faculty to be carried out at the Institute for History this semester.

The research group Politics, Culture and National Identities 1789-present investigates a wide range of national political cultures in Europe and the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries. Instead of only analyzing high politics (the acts of governments and political parties), the research group focuses…

Stijn Bussels will attend the two-day conference on The Tableau Vivant – Across Media, History, and Culture at the Colombia University of New York. He will deliver a paper on ‘‘Restored Behaviour’ and the Performance of the City Maiden in Joyous Entries into Antwerp’.

The present volume focuses on the political perceptions of the Hajj, its global religious appeal to Muslims, and the European struggle for influence and supremacy in the Muslim world in the age of pre-colonial and colonial empires.