The conquest by Rome brought profound changes to large parts of Europe. Unprecedented infrastructural works were created, towns sprang up, a ribbon of fortresses was laid out along the frontiers.

The central aim is to systematically study differences in crime patterns and social control between migrants and non-migrants in early modern Frankfurt am Main.

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections between a variety of artistic and cultural expressions and their role in society from 1800 onwards.

China wordt steeds assertiever in zijn relaties met andere landen, maar achter dit beeld gaat een opmerkelijk diverse maatschappij en politieke realiteit schuil die tal van aanknopingspunten biedt voor samenwerking en verdere integratie van China in de wereld. In China een gids voor de 21e eeuw past…

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…

On 1 September 2022 Afke van Ewijk successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Built Environment and Domestic Material Culture in the Medieval and Post-Medieval Cyclades, Greece (13th – 20th Centuries AD)

This study addresses and explains the issue of negative descriptions of the Arab Other in modern Iranian thought.

In the Brill series Intersections a new volume has been published, entitled Ronsard and Du Bartas in Early Modern Europe.

On 21 September 2022 Arfiansyah successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This special issue of Media History (22-3/4, 2016), co-edited with Helmer Helmers (University of Amsterdam), develops a new perspective on the early modern communication revolution. It discusses news as a specific kind of information – by its nature continuous, unreliable, and diffuse – which needed…

In the South African context, certain iconic images have been a dominant source for public understandings of historical events. The emphasis given these images tends to overshadow the historical value of other more personal photographic sources – like studio or amateur photography. This project looks…

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.

Announcement of the publication of Vamping the Stage: Female Voices of Asian Modernities, the first book-length study of women, modernity, and popular music in Asia (University of Hawai'i Press, 2017).

What was the relationship between women and modern media in different parts of Asia in the 20th century? Under what historical and social conditions did women achieve prominence in popular music in Asia?

Noah Millman defended his thesis on 26 May 2015

Conference

Published on 26 February 2021.

In this 3-volume set of primary sources, Lionel Laborie and Ariel Hessayon bring together a wide range of vital sources for the study of prophecy in the early modern world. This meticulously edited collection includes rare material and fascinating manuscripts published in English for the first time.

This research cluster explores processes of cultural creation, reception and transformation within a wide range of societal contexts from the early Middle Ages until c. 1800.

On 5 September 2017, Alessandro Tonutti defended his PhD dissertation

This programme adopts a new approach based on the paradoxical nature of these responses in early modern Italy: it draws on rhetorical discussions of lifelikeness and living presence, and it uses the anthropological theory of art as agency developed by Alfred Gell.

LUCIS is happy to welcome Christian Müller to Leiden from mid-April to mid-May.

New Texts and Studies on Christian Nubian Culture

Leiden’s Institute for History has an exceptionally strong expertise in premodern European history in its global context, with specialists whose interests cover virtually the whole continent. We have a strong track record in leading larger research teams and work together with colleagues across Europe…

Barbarism: from the 18th century to the present.

For several years, contemporary composed music has been critiqued among others by funds, sponsors, and festival organizers for having lost contact with their audiences. This music has increasingly become a pursuit of a privileged, well-situated, and higher educated public, and is most often confined…

By the end of the sixteenth century, stories about the Revolt in the Low Countries (c. 1567-1648) had begun to spread throughout Europe. These stories had very different authors with very different intentions.

A platform to research memory and culture in the Muslim world. This programme explores the ways modern memory studies methodologies can be applied to pre-modern Muslim societies to reveal the uses of the past and senses of tradition in diverse contexts of Muslim thought.

This research deals with the royal houses of the Vijayanagara Empire and four of its successor states: Ikkeri, Tanjavur (under both the Nayaka and Bhonsle rulers), Madurai, and Ramnad. This study is thus concerned with dynastic politics and imperial legacies in south India between the 14th and 18th…

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural…

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural…

Sonic Modernities situates Southeast Asian popular music in specific socio-historical settings, hoping that a focus on popular culture and history may shed light on how some people in a particular part of the world have been witnessing the emergence of all things modern.

The complexities of modernization in Brazil and Graciliano Ramos significance for our understanding of Brazil today.

An interdisciplinary cultural analysis of how the Hindustani double migration informs contemporary processes of identification and problematises the juxtaposition of tradition and modernity.

Conference

From ca. 1540 to 1600, thousands fled the war-stricken Southern Low Countries to the British Isles, Germany, and the Northern Low Countries. Research on this displacement crisis, central to the formation of the Netherlands and Belgium, reflects 21st-century debates on migration and language: language…

Aristocratic dynasties have long been regarded as fundamental to the development of early modern society and government. Yet recent work by political historians has increasingly questioned the dominant role of ruling families in state formation, underlining instead the continued importance and independence…

Bruno Munari (1907–1998) was a prolific and influential artist, designer, and writer. Alessandro Colizzi’s study is the first extensive, detailed record of Munari’s graphic design production, and as such provides a substantial base for a full understanding of his oeuvre.

On 30 January 2024 Jurre van der Meer successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The Dutch and English East India Companies were formidable organizations that were gifted with expansive powers that allowed them to conduct diplomacy, wage war and seize territorial possessions. But they did not move into an empty arena in which they were free to deploy these powers without resista…

Drawing on a broad array of sources, this project examines modern retrievals of Bacon’s idols, thereby testing Justus von Liebig’s intriguing observation, back in 1863, that Bacon’s name lived on mainly in mottos or stereotypical phrases. More importantly, it examines the rhetorical purposes served…

An investigation into how racial stereotypes were created and used in the European Middle Ages.

igraph development focused on improving the most-used interfaces, which are Python, R, and Mathematica. Additionally, the developers aim to make the library and the interfaces easier to maintain, focusing on long-term sustainability. This ensures that igraph continues to be a useful tool for network…

Imaging and Imagining Palestine is the first comprehensive study of photography during the British Mandate period (1918–1948).

Which young scientists are best at explaining their research in three minutes and can take part in the national finals? These questions were answered on 14 February in the Academy Building. Researchers Laura Steenbergen (cognitive neurosciences) and Christian Eistrup (astronomy) impressed the judges…