As a student, Thijs Brocades Zaalberg was primarily interested in diplomacy surrounding conflicts. Through research on peace operations and subsequently the fight against guerrillas, he became increasingly involved with the most violent aspects of colonial warfare. Per 1 September 2024 he is appointed…

PhD defence

PhD defence

Did you know that Arabic was for centuries the lingua franca in an area stretching from the south of Spain to the Chinese border? And that the Middle East under Muslim rule was the world’s beating heart of trade, but also of science and scholarship? Want to learn more? Then sign up for the new MOOC…

Guido Tintori is Marie Curie Fellow (Experienced Researcher) at our Institute since last November.

Ever since Nadine Akkerman, Professor of Early Modern Literature & Culture, came across a woman spy in her research, secret agents have kept cropping up in her work. Now there’s Spycraft, a popular history book exploring the espionage techniques used by early modern spies, which she has co-written with…

Jelle van Buuren, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, discusses the death of Al-Baghdadi and whether this could also mean the end of IS.

Anar Ahmadov, Assistant Professor of Political Economy at LUC, has been awarded NIAS Individual Fellowship by the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS-KNAW).

Erik Kwakkel, researcher at the Faculty of Humanities, has found an extraordinary manuscript in the University Library’s extensive collection of medieval books. The book in question dates back to the first half of the eleventh century and is made entirely out of waste left over from the production of…

How many cities were there actually in the Roman Empire? And why did some regions only have a few cities, while others consisted of a tight urban network? Luuk de Ligt, Professor of Ancient History, wants to know the answer to all these questions. With the ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million awarded to…

Since February 1, 2015, Adriejan van Veen is working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for History. Here, he is preparing a NWO grant proposal on local experiments with candidate selection in British and Dutch politics in the nineteenth century.

On 29 February there appeared a column by Maaike Warnaar in the Volkskrant on the Iranian elections.

The emergence of the Köprülü household that imprinted its stamp on the latter half of the seventeenth century in the Ottoman Empire. What is the power struggle they carried out against Ottoman dynastic power?

Intermediality, Media Practices and Media Literacy is one of the six research themes of the LUCAS Modern and Contemporary cluster.

How did a circle of Soviet artists and writers virtually unknown until perestroika turn into Russia’s most influential contemporary art movement? This book reconstructs the cultural history and canonization of a group of painters and poets known as the Moscow conceptualists, who paradoxically did not…

Many conflicts in Africa have been studied and described as location and time bound. Yet conflict is rarely confined and contained, and instead reaches across communities, borders, and generations.

Our research group Intelligence and Security, provides a diverse range of educational opportunities that combine theoretical foundations with practical applications in intelligence and security.

Compact Cinematics challenges the dominant understanding of cinema to focus on the various compact, short, miniature, pocket-sized forms of cinematics that have existed from even before its standardization in theatrical form, and in recent years have multiplied and proliferated, taking up an increasingly…

Mobility, Globalisation, and Interculturality is one of the six research themes of the LUCAS Modern and Contemporary cluster.

In this article, Bart Schuurman and Sarah Louise Carthy conduct further research into the understanding of the causes of terrorism by assessing differences and similarities between left-, right- and jihadist extremists and terrorists. The article draws on the Analysen zum Terrorismus, one of the most…

This political theory specialisation focuses on the concepts of legitimacy and justice—political philosophy’s core themes. These concepts lie at the heart of questions of politics and analyzing them conceptually and theoretically gives us tools to engage and assess political practice.

The programme consists of 60 EC, to be completed in one year.

Since 2009, at ACPA, 90 candidates received their PhD in Creative and Performing Arts. On this page you will find an overview of ACPA's alumni.

NEARCH aims to explore the different dimensions of public participation in contemporary archaeology and uncover new ways to work and collaborate within this field of expertise.

Everything you need to know about the minor Gender and Sexuality in Society and Culture.

On some Sunday evenings the NVIC is presenting NVICinema. We bring a varied programme of Dutch or Flemish films, Egyptian classics as well as contemporary Egyptian feature films and short films from young talented directors, all with English subtitles.

In the coming years, Asghar Seyed Gohrab receives an advanced European Research Council grant of two and a half million euros to spend on his research into non-conformism in Islam. ‘Hopefully I can use this to contribute something to society, to pass something on to future generations.’

Warja Tolstoj, alumna Art History, has been awarded the 2021 edition of the Ted Meijerprijs. Named after the former director of the KNIR (Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome), the prize is awarded yearly to the best MA/ReMa thesis or PhD in the Humanities.

Women confined to the kitchen? Not in Scheveningen around 1900. There, some women ran entire shipping companies. This is according to new research by history student Sjors Stuurman. He compiled the results in a book he wrote for Muzee Scheveningen.

Curiosities from the anatomical theatre, swords from the fencing school and 17th-century portraits of the University's founders. The new University Room in Museum De Lakenhal portrays the turbulent first hundred years of Leiden University.

Arts and culture

Two thousand years ago, the Middle East found itself caught between the rise of the Roman Empire in the west and the Parthian Empire in the east. PhD candidate Nolke Tasma has been awarded an NWO grant to investigate how local inhabitants experienced these changes.

This book sheds new light on domestic forced migration by examining the experiences of American-born slave migrants from a comparative perspective.

The hypothesis of this research is that the municipality used the impressive the Town Hall to enforce its rule and represent its political ideas and make use of sources such as biographies, poems, pamphlets, sermons and governmental documents.

LIAS aims to advance the globally conscious vision of area studies, both within and outside the academic community. Focusing on Asia and the Middle East, the institute is a meeting place of multiple fields of inquiry, theories and methods, historical periods, and areas.

Are you thinking about studying Asian Studies (Research MA)? Learn more and watch the programme presentation.

The 260 year old prize of the Legatum Stolpianum has been awarded in 2014 to two well written historical studies of high quality and with current significance. Leiden classicist Tazuko van Berkel is one of the two prizewinners.