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.

Histories Connected seeks to explore social, cultural, and political issues that connect people of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, and Europe throughout different periods of time.

MINESCAPES invites PhD students from various disciplines to apply for participation in their 2024 summer school, taking place from May 31 to June 10, 2024. The Summer School will bring together students and scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to study mining landscapes…

Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology is a social science. Anthropologists investigate the ways in which people give meaning to different aspects of their life and the way they interact with each other.

Unraveling culturally responsive attitudes, noticing skills, knowledge and reasoned practices of expert teachers.

This project aims to identify, quantify and map the exposure of Dutch national monuments to four climate change effects: flooding, waterlogging, drought and heat.

Violent conflicts all over the world pose a great threat. Not only to the region’s inhabitants, but also to the cultural heritage in the area. This is the subject of the Europe Lecture in The Hague on 13 June.

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World’ proposes a connected history of the Christian communities in the Near East (1900-1948) by means of a study of unpublished Franciscan and Dominican photographic collections.

This research focuses on figurative Byzantine mosaic-floors that have been excavated in the geographical area of the ancient provinces of Palestina and Arabia (current Israel, PA and Jordan) dating to the Late 5th, 6th and early 7th centuries C.E.

This PhD research aims to trace the impact of the Arab conquest, both immediate and long-term, on the material and social organization of Central Asia from 651 to 821 through an “urban change” perspective in four cities: Merv, Paikent, Balkh and Samarkand.

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

Why do some civil wars experience quagmire, a situation in which belligerents are trapped in fighting? To explain this puzzle, Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) analyses the overlapping strategic interactions between foreign powers and the warring parties. Studying…

In Uprooting the Diaspora, Sarah Cramsey explores how the Jewish citizens rooted in interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia became the ideal citizenry for a post–World War II Jewish state in the Middle East. She asks, how did new interpretations of Jewish belonging emerge and gain support amongst Jewish…

On 30 June 2016, Eesa Fredericks is expected to defend his Ph.D.-thesis ‘Contractual Capacity in Private International Law’ in Leiden. Supervisors are prof. Sierd J. Schaafsma (Leiden) and prof. Jan Neels (Johannesburg).

This omnibus brings together some old and some recent works by Jos Gommans on the warhorse and its impact on medieval and early modern state-formation in South Asia.

The Middle Ages are becoming increasingly more popular: just look at the popularity of such ‘medievalist’ TV series as Game of Thrones and Vikings, and let’s not forget popular re-enactments of medieval battles. Leiden University is home to many specialists of this fascinating period and this new blog…

Scholars have long debated the intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East. Some claim the organization supports terrorism, while others believe it is a positive force for democratization.

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.

information activities MSc Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology

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 abrupt climate change of 8200 years ago (the so-called 8.2k calBP climate event) has received wide attention among natural scientists, also because of today's rapid climate changes and their impact on our own society. The archaeological implications, however, have not been investigated so far.…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

With Brill, LUCIS publishes a peer-reviewed book series, “Leiden Studies in Islam and Society” (LSIS), aimed at an international academic audience.

This is a Special Issue of the peer-reviewed journal 'Social Sciences and Missions', which provides a forum for exploration of the social and political influence of Christian missions worldwide.

What is the iconography of propaganda specifically as it relates to the historical development of political ideologies in modern Egypt and how was/is this propaganda disseminated among creative fields such as cinema, art, monuments, architecture, and literature?

Lecture

How did the invention and implementation of the lightning rod change the perception of thunderstorms on a scientific, technical, religious and artistic level, in the Netherlands and beyond, during the period 1752-1830?

This project investigates how the first generation of Dutch printed books (the incunabula, 1473-1501) affected late medieval spirituality, religious practice and visual culture in the Low Countries.

The master in Cultural Analysis: Literature and Theory at Leiden University studies contemporary literature and culture (art, cinema, pop music) from a theoretical, critical perspective, with special emphases on approaches developed in cultural and literary studies, feminist theory, phenomenology and…

This dissertation studies the construction of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a cultural icon in American memory, particularly by FDR himself.

Before the modern nation-state became a stable, widespread phenomenon throughout northern Europe, multilingualism-the use of multiple languages in one geographical area-was common throughout the region.

Visualizing the internal structure is a crucial step in acquiring knowledge about the origin, state, and composition of cultural heritage artifacts. Among the most powerful techniques for exposing the interior of cultural heritage objects is computed tomography (CT), a technique that computationally…

As part of the VIDI 'Cultural innovation in a globalising society: Egypt in the Roman world', this research explores manifestations of Egypt in the material culture of Augustan Rome. This period was a crucial turning point for the urban landscape of Rome, which was characterised by cultural diversit…

What socio-cultural transformations did indigenous communities in the Lesser Antilles undergo from the late precolonial to the early colonial period in response to Amerindian­ European-African cultural encounters? How did Amerindian populations realign themselves in response to the colonisation…

Do you want to understand the complexities of today’s gender issues, social media use, food habits, social justice movements, labour relations or religious expressions? Join our bachelor's programme in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology and get insight into people's social and cultural…

Do you want to understand the complexities of today’s gender issues, social media use, food habits, social justice movements, labour relations or religious expressions? Join our bachelor's programme in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology and get insight into people's social and cultural…

The acquisition and administration of the possessions of the “Teutonic House” in Utrecht, and its dependencies, in the Middle Ages until c.1600.