Leiden criminologists have co-developed an artificial intelligence technology that tracks firearms incidents by scanning over 350 news sources.

Thanks to an extremely successful crowdfunding campaign, the Leiden Law School now has a mock courtroom for Moot Court, the course that teaches students advocacy skills. ‘The more realistic it is, the better. Then students grow into their role.’

Peyman Jafari defended his thesis on 11 October 2018

From 15 augustus 2014 onward, Leonor Álvarez Francés is appointed as PhD student on Raymond Fagels NWO project ‘Facing the Enemy. The Spanish Army Commanders during the First Decade of the Dutch Revolt (1567-1577)’

The transformation of the myriad of medieval kingdoms, principalities, local lordships, city-‘states’ and peasant ‘republics’ into ‘modern’ states, claiming some measure of sovereignty, remains one of the core themes of European history, because it gets down to the very root of the (idea on the) Europe…

This book argues that Dutch Brazil (1624–54) is an integral part of Atlantic history and that it made an impact well beyond colonial and national narratives in the Netherlands and Brazil.

This project explores themes at the intersection of maritime history and environmental history by looking at the problems Dutch ships encountered in the different climates of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, and the solutions they could provide.

Alicia Schrikker doesn't usually get involved in urban history. As a senior lecturer, her research field is generally the colonial history of Asia and partly South Africa. So, the fact that she is going to carry out an urban history research project together with colleagues, is something that even she…

The studies outlined in this volume explore how connectedness continues to change Africa and how Africa continues to shape the social life of connections.

Painstaking research in Dutch and Portuguese archive materials, so far poorly assessed on the topic of social relations, reveals intense and intricate associations between different European individuals both in terms of ethnicity and social strata.

Bringing together the most current research on the relationship between crime and gender in the West between 1600 and 1914, this authoritative volume places female criminality within its everyday context.

The second authors' conference of the General Labour History of Africa (GLHA) project will be held from 10 to 12 December 2015 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

To what extent was labour-induced migration important to the functioning of the towns and cities of Roman Italy?

This project focuses on urban commercial space in Roman Italy and deals with the impact of economic growth on urban communities in the late Republic and the Imperial period (200 BCE – 300 CE).

Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500 provides a comprehensive survey of this complex and varied formative period of European history, covering themes as diverse as barbarian migrations, the impact of Christianisation, the formation of nations and states, the emergence of an expansionist commercial…

On 1 November, Stijn Bussels assumed his role as professor of Art History, especially before 1800 at Leiden University. The chair is located at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS).

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.

Who still remembers that Leiden attracted a lot of reds from Suriname during the 1970s? The exhibition ‘Dynamic Suriname’ offers a number of surprising insights on the links between Leiden University and Suriname, which is celebrating the fortieth anniversary of its independence this year.

Antique wooden oars, hard-fought medals and iconic photos from rowing history. An exhibition at Oude UB spotlights key figures and moments from the 145-year history of Njord Royal Student Rowing Club.

In The Golden Mean of Languages, Alisa van de Haar sheds new light on the debates regarding the form and status of the vernacular in the early modern Low Countries, where both Dutch and French were local tongues. The fascination with the history, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary of Dutch and French…

How did African actors engage with the idea of Eurafrica?

The Discovery of El Greco: The Nationalization of Culture Versus the Rise of Modern Art (1860-1915)

Who had a say in making decisions about the natural world, when, how and to what end? How were rights to natural resources established? How did communities handle environmental crises? And how did dealing with the environment have an impact on the power relations in communities?

As of 1 September Jan-Bart Gewald has been appointed as Professor of Southern African History in the Leiden Institute for History, in conjunction with the African Studies Centre, Leiden.

Migration and Mobility in the Early Roman Empire by Luuk de Ligt and Laurens E. Tacoma (Eds.)

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.

With the aid of the General History of Africa (GHA) series of books, PhD candidate Larissa Schulte Nordholt researched what it meant to decolonise the history of Africa. This proved to be a tricky process, which was hampered by politics and lack of funding. PhD defence on 1 December.

When you think of squatting, the picture that comes to mind is of young people occupying derelict buildings in big cities. Leiden also has a history of squatting, and that history is very diverse.

The World of the Fullo takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with high-quality garments, of Roman Italy. Analyzing the social and economic worlds in which the fullers lived and worked, it tells the story of their economic circumstances, the way they organized their workshops, the…

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of…

This year, the Leiden University Institute for History ranks #29 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. With this, the institute ranks as the second best in The Netherlands for the subject History.

Subproject of

Subproject of

As of 1 September 2015, Michiel van Groesen is Professor of Maritime History at Leiden University. He succeeds Professor Henk den Heijer, who retired and gave his farewell lecture at 25 September. Den Heijer held the chair from 2010 to 2015. Before coming to Leiden Van Groesen worked as Associate Professor…

Subproject of

Fighting for the faith, caring for the sick, and praying for the soul of their benefactors were the main tasks of the military orders, who since the time of the crusades were well represented in the Netherlands in the Middle Ages, including the Frisian lands. Especially the Hospitallers and the Teutonic…

The first objective is to create a catalogue raisonée, i.e. a structured database that will store the main attributes of each town in a standardized format database, which will be freely accessible when completed; the second objective is to exploit theories and methods that can help us to understand…

My current research focuses on criminality and gender interactions in nineteenth-century Europe. This project uses a comparative methodology to explain gender constructions in a criminal and in a court setting.

This monograph by dr. Kim Beerden compares Greek divination to divinatory practices in Neo-Assyrian Mesopotamia and Republican Rome.

How do we explain the fact that certain areas had many large cities, while other areas were studded with large numbers of small towns and yet other areas had very few urban agglomerations of any kind?

Two statues of gorillas abducting women: they were what led PhD candidate Dick van Broekhuizen to write a new type of history of nineteenth-century sculpture. ‘If you view nineteenth-century art history from a less narrow perspective, the narrative changes completely.’ PhD ceremony on 21 June.

In her teaching, University Lecturer of Ancient History Liesbeth Claes uses various digital tools. Using that experience and interest she started an innovation project in order to research which digital skills history alumni need on the labour market and how these skills can be implemented in the cu…

Serhan Afacan defended his thesis on 23 June 2015

'The World Upside Down. The Geographical Revolution in Humanist Commentaries on Pliny's Natural History and Mela's De situ orbis (140-1700)', in: Enenkel, K.A.E. & Nellen, H. (Eds.), Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (1400-1700).Humanistica…