This book explores the return of six outstanding Kandyan artefacts to Sri Lanka by the Dutch government in 2023. It captures numerous reflections of the international interdisciplinary research team that investigated the provenance of these artifacts and the remarkable layered history that the research…

Subproject of

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…

What does the interspecies interpretation of the equality principle mean for the liberal democracy, and is it possible to provide for an appropriate legal and political position for animals without defying the classic-liberal principles of the liberal democratic state?

A source of inspiration for readers who are curious to understand how people move and convince each other

The main objective of the Telders International Law Moot Court Competition is to challenge students to excel in international law, consequently testing their creativity and powers of persuasion in a friendly competition. Students and academic staff throughout Europe consider participation to be a great…

In the master’s programme in Dutch Discourse Studies at Leiden University you will study rhetoric and argumentation, and you will specifically focus on research into pragmatics, stylistics, genre research and persuasion.

Religions involve belief in the unbelievable: in evil spirits causing disease, in souls surviving death, and in gods punishing wrongdoers and blessing the just. Cognitive studies suggest that humans are predisposed to speculate about fate and divine agency, but support from so-called ‘plausibility structures’…

Colonial and Global History combines a deep curiosity of transcultural processes such as imperialism, (de)colonization, and globalization with critical historical research on regional societies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

The main objective of the Telders Competition is to challenge students to excel in international law, consequently testing their creativity and powers of persuasion orally and in writing in a friendly competition.

PhD defence

On 22 September, LUCSoR alumnus Bas van Rijn successfully defended his PhD dissertation entitled “The Experimental Culture of Afterlife Research: Attempts by Spiritual Animal Magnetizers to Prove Life after Death” at Universität Bern, Switzerland. The PhD project was part of the of SNF research project…

The main objective of the Telders Competition is to challenge students to excel in international law, consequently testing their creativity and powers of persuasion orally and in writing in a friendly competition.

Sophie Ernst’s doctoral thesis is an artist’s contribution to media art theory.

Markus Davidsen defended his thesis on 16 October 2014

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.

Lecture

The authors compare assumptions about normative utility of the term 'environmental refugee' with empirical evidence compared to 'environmental migrant'.

Luuk van Middelaar and Vestert Borger, both affiliated with the Europa Institute of Leiden University, are conducting a research project that is financed by the Statesman Thorbecke Fund Programme of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). The aim of the fund is to promote knowledge…

The master's programme in Philosophy of Knowledge at Leiden University is your opportunity to investigate the connections between philosophy and science in historical perspective.

How can video games be used as feminist tactical media to expose the root of exclusions (based on sex, gender, class, race, ability, etc.) pervasive to gaming communities?

A master's degree in Psychology at Leiden University combines theoretical knowledge with academic and professional skills, making you an attractive candidate for many employers.

How does the human mind work when it comes to language? Why are some speeches totally persuasive, and others less so? How do children acquire language so effortlessly? How do languages develop over the course of time? How many different speech sounds can humans make? During your BA in Linguistics you…

In the field of Western art music, improvisation has become a much discussed topic. In this interdisciplinary study I argue that in this context, improvisation is not to be seen as a quasi-autonomous skill or art form, but as an aspect of music-making in general.

How do religious narratives persuade their readers to believe their message? And how can it be that some readers even come to treat fantasy and science fiction as authoritative religious texts? These are the core questions treated in Markus Davidsen’s new book Narrative and Belief: The Religious Affordance…

This project aims to uncover a series of sites of difference and innovation. In particular, it locates itself in two kinds of distancing: geo-cultural (ie. in the non-European space of Japan) and medial (ie. in innovative expressive media).

We live in a data-drenched society awash with numbers. An inhabitant of the democratic polis of Athens (5th and 4th centuries B.C.E.) increasingly found himself surrounded by numerical data. This project aims to analyze the communicative functions and the political meaning(s) ascribed to these public…

This specialisation prepares you to combine the insights and rigour of social science with the practical skills needed to make a difference in the world of foreign policy formation, implementation, and evaluation.

This specialisation prepares you to combine the insights and rigour of social science with the practical skills needed to make a difference in the world of foreign policy formation, implementation, and evaluation.

In the field of Western art music, improvisation has become a much discussed topic. In this interdisciplinary study I argue that in this context, improvisation is not to be seen as a quasi-autonomous skill or art form, but as an aspect of music-making in general.

Els Bogaerts defended her theses on 20 December 2017.

This specialisation prepares you to combine the insights and rigour of social science with the practical skills needed to make a difference in the world of foreign policy formation, implementation, and evaluation.

This specialisation prepares you to combine the insights and rigour of social science with the practical skills needed to make a difference in the world of foreign policy formation, implementation, and evaluation.

This specialisation prepares you to combine the insights and rigour of social science with the practical skills needed to make a difference in the world of foreign policy formation, implementation, and evaluation.

eLaw examines the role of law in the information society: how can law contribute to the proper functioning of information and communication technologies, and their use by citizens, businesses and governments?

This project embarks on empirical analysis of popular psycho-physical practices in contemporary Korea.

How is tradition constructed and belief made plausible in fiction-based religion?

The master's specialisation Economic and Consumer Psychology consists of three main parts: the mandatory and elective courses, a thesis and an internship.

An image has great powers of persuasion. It is said that ‘a picture is worth more than a thousand words’. But these days, images can easily be manipulated with severe consequences. ‘Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the value we attach to images’, says Elize de Mul, whose PhD thesis deals with ‘digital…

Every semester, LUCIS invites a scholar to Leiden to provide a lecture series on a topic of their choice. With these lectures, we aim to present state-of-the-art research in Islamic studies to the Leiden academic community and beyond, and to offer students and junior researchers the opportunity to get…

Is it possible to formulate a new conceptual foundation for attributing an evaluative role to historiography of science, without relinquishing the historiographic sensitivity of recent work in the discipline?

In the first year, the Linguistics programme will provide you with a sound basis for specialisation, while training your academic competences. In the second year, you will choose one of our four specialisations. While focusing on this track in your second and third year, you may also choose electives…

Law and Digital Technologies (L.L.M.) examines the legislation and governance regarding internet, computers, persuasive technologies and ambient intelligence.

'How do you write a slogan to win an election?' Steven Ooms answers this question in his PhD research into ideas about good prose in the time of Caesar and Emperor Augustus. This period is considered a high point for the development of literature. The Roman Cicero and the Greek Dionysius of Halicarnassus…