The project ‘Between the Holy Land and the World’ proposes a connected history of the Christian communities in the Near East (1900-1948) by means of a study of unpublished Franciscan and Dominican photographic collections.

Drawing on the analogical lessons of the Great War, this article uses applied history to analyze how the four parallels discerned can help us make sense of contemporary Sino-American rivalry

This research delves into the unique cultural approach of the Tenggerese people, an Indigenous community in East Java, Indonesia, regarding elderly care. It focuses on their traditional practices of bakti (‘filial piety’) and sayan (‘mutual aid’), deeply ingrained in the community's lifestyle and va…

This book bij Hasan Çolak is based on rigorous research on unpublished and unexplored Ottoman correspondence between the Ottoman central administration and the Eastern Patriarchates, published Greek patriarchal documents, and French missionary and diplomatic sources.

On Monday 23 November, Ms Simonetta Cook, member of the Cabinet of the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, addressed master's students following the LLM European Law Programme. She shared valuable insights on what it is like working for the European Council, in addition to some of her…

On the 27th April 2017, the third annual conference of the Leiden Center for East African Law (LEAC) took place at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya. The theme of the conference was ‘East African Law: A Common Market, Opportunities and Challenges for the Business Community’.

From Persia and Arabia to North Africa: as early as the nineteenth century, there were Dutch people who used the camera themselves in various regions of the Middle East.

With the economic surge in East Africa, the East African Community, formally founded in 1999 and now consisting of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, is rapidly developing. A common market is being established, and a monetary union is under construction. The EAC thereby forms an important…

Innovating objects in a Eurasian center of the Late Hellenistic period.

On 29 and 30 April 2015 the Leiden Centre for East African Law (LEAC) hosted its first Annual Conference in Kigali, Rwanda. The conference was organized in cooperation with the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) and compared integration through law in the EU and the EAC.

The research Early Pleistocene human occupation at the edge of the boreal zone in northwest Europe published 8th July 2010 in Nature is part of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project, in which the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University is involved.

‘I did not expect to receive the grant, but it will make an amazing research possible,’ Michelle Spierings says. The researcher of the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) got awarded a Veni-grant of the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Five questions for James Shires, assistant professor at ISGA, about his new book, The Politics of Cybersecurity in the Middle East. The book is available to order now.

This NWO project, which is being be carried out in close cooperation with the universities of Oxford (contact: Prof. Robert Hoyland) and Princeton (contact: Prof. John F. Haldon) and the UMR 8167 (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS, University Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV, University Panthéon-Sorbonne,…

Who assembled the collections of museums? The answer to this question seems to point to men as collectors. Apart from for rare exceptions, female collectors hardly seem to exist. Yet there were indeed women collectors. For the project Museums, Collections and Society, researcher Holly O'Farrell will…

Who has control over which piece of land? Since independence in 2002 East Timor has been struggling to create a land tenure system that can deal with the grievances of past colonial ruling and conflict, and address the needs of its citizens, says researcher Bernardo Almeida. PhD defence on September…

The Leiden Centre for East African Law (LEAC) has been awarded a grant of €25.000 by the EU delegation to the East African Community (EAC) and the Secretariat of the EAC.

Published by Brill Nijhoff and written by leading experts including national judges, academics and practitioners East African Community Law is the first comparative as well as open access textbook on EAC law. The book provides a key resource for the research, teaching, and practice of EAC law. It also…

On the 5th of May 2016, the second annual conference of the Leiden Center for East African Law (LEAC) took place at the East African Community headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania. The Conference was organized on the occasion of Europe Day with the generous support of the EAC, the EU delegation to EAC and…

Essays in Archaeology and Assyriology Dedicated to Diederik J.W. Meijer in Honour of his 65th Birthday

We deeply cherish our natural and cultural World Heritage, so it seems; when historical monuments and sites are destroyed by war or natural disaster, we are mourning collectively. But what if this World Heritage status is not just a preservation label, but a smokescreen for social and political conflicts…

Leiden has the most highly regarded China Studies programme in Europe. But how did this knowledge find its way specifically to Leiden? For his PhD research Koos Kuiper delved into the unique history of the start of this unique programme.

Edegar da Conceição Savio defended his thesis on 28 January 2016

In the study of West-East relations, difference often takes centre stage. This holds for both culturalist and postcolonial perspectives. By contrast, in my investigation of Netherlands-Iran political relations in the 1960s and 1970s, I will focus on the role of SIMILARITY. What lay at the root of the…

“The ideas from society should be heard in order to narrow the gap between government and the people”. These words from Kwagjin Choi, Korean diplomat and co-architect of South Korea’s People Diplomacy sum up why, in the view of this guest speaker at ISGA, foreign ministries should pay much more attention…

Matthias Haentjens and Ross Spence participated in Warsaw conference and PhD workshop on 16 & 17 November 2018.

External PhD candidate Annette Jenowein investigated how women have changed the meaning of gender by claiming their place in traditionally male-dominated domains. Her research focuses on the life of Charlotte Jacobs: the first woman to establish herself as an independent pharmacist in the Dutch East…

In the context of the Erasmus+ programme on ‘International Credit Mobility’, 17 exchange grants, with a joint worth of €83.000, were awarded to an exchange project between Leiden and East Africa.

The Assyrian Empire was the first state to achieve durable domination of the Ancient Near East, enduring some seven centuries and, eventually, controlling most of the region. Yet, we know little about how this empire emerged from a relatively minor polity in the Tigris region and how it managed to consolidate…

The rationale, construction, and function of the imperial capitals of Assyria

Palaeography of an ancient nomadic writing culture

An interdisciplinary study of the Persian Period

An Ancient Egyptian System of Workmen’s Identity Marks

The perception of the Middle East is riddled with stereotypes that have had dire consequences on its people. What is myth and what is reality? How did these stereotypes come about? What consequences have they had? All of these questions and more are answered within this reading list.

On 6 June, Armin Cuyvers lectured students and staff of the University of Nairobi on EU law and comparative regional integration

This dissertation is a study of archaeological remains left behind by nomadic communities in the Black Desert, situated in the northeast of modern Jordan.

An overview of the courses

Friday 25 September, 2015 marks the official launch of Leiden University's Central and East European Studies (CEES) Center.

On Thursday 9 December, Dr Upik Djalins presented an online lecture, entitled 'The Colonial Bureaucratic Network versus the Metropole: The Origin Story of Land Alienation Prohibition in the 1870s East Indies'.