The Issues beneath the Surface

Linguistic Choices in the Contemporary City focuses on how individuals navigate conversation in highly diversified contexts and provides a broad overview of state of the art research in urban sociolinguistics across the globe.

Leiden’s expertise on the Middle East spans from ancient history to contemporary tensions in the region. By studying languages, cultures, religions, literature, art, and philosophy in in conjunction, we create an indispensable, in-depth understanding.

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural…

Cwiertka wants to investigate how waste is produced and disposed of in modern East Asian society. With her research group she will be carrying out a comparative analysis on two levels: the international level (between China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) and the inter-regional level (between East Asia…

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural…

Since 2017, NVIC offers an interdisciplinary semester in Middle East Studies for students of Dutch and Flemish universities, primarily in the fields of International Studies. Half the semester (15 ects) is devoted to Arabic language acquisition, both Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Colloquial…

Confucianism has been a major force in the cultural history of China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam for thousands of years, affecting the art, literature, science and politics of all these countries.

On the 6th of July, Anthony Jakob successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Anthony on this achievement!

The narrow but long stretched stript of Frisian land along the North Sea was already occupied before Roman times. However, man repeatedly suffered setbacks when he tried to extend his living space, both in the tidal marshes and the peat area south of them.

On 9 June 2020, Maral Darouei defended her thesis 'Managing a sustainable career in the contemporary world of work: Personal choices and contextual challenges'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.I. van der Rest.

This PhD research sets out to unravel and explain the socio-structural and cultural impacts of oil-industrialization on the local Bakhtiari community in general and the industrial laborers it provided in specific.

Special Issue in: Visual Anthropology, Volume 29, Issue 3, 2016

After an initial suggestion of a move toward Israel, India’s Prime Minister Modi has signaled a significant recalibration of his government’s engagement with the Middle East region. Now, India seems to be prioritising strong ties with the Gulf states.

From the mid-19th century until the 1970’s, the Middle East witnessed the presence of various European missionaries who played a fundamental role in the birth and the development of humanitarianism. Since these Christian missionaries were well integrated in the local Middle Eastern societies via their…

This book rovides an economic history of Portugal over the course of eight centuries, from 1143 through to 2010 and situates Portugal's economic growth within the context of European development. It also responds to fundamental questions about when, how and why the economy expanded, stagnated or co…

In the History of the Roman Emperors, what does Herodian’s method of composition consist of and how does it relate to his writing intention, particularly in terms of political and moral idea(l)s?

This centre brings together the research of the members of the Institute of Philosophy and affiliated academics whose work focuses on the history of philosophy broadly conceived. Research interests range from ancient to near-contemporary philosophy in various regions of the world, and cover all subdisciplines…

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume project, authored by an international team of researchers, and offering the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe.

The Historia Naturalis Brasiliae Reconsidered

On the 16th of February 2022 Mr. Yunus Sulistyono successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Exhibition, Photo exibition

This anthology contributes to a historically grounded understanding of the complex relationship between Christian missions and the roots of humanitarianism and its contemporary uses in a Middle Eastern context.

Nichiran kankei-shi o yomitoku [Revisiting the History of Dutch-Japanese Relations] is a new, two-volume Japanese publication with a chapter written by Wulan Remmelink. Both volumes offer a new look on the historical relations between Japan and The Netherlands during the Edo period by examining various…

Read on these pages all about the history of Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands. The Academia Lugduna Batava was founded in 1575 and its motto is: Libertatis Praesidium ('Bastion of Freedom').

What is nationalism and how can we study it from a historical perspective? Writing the History of Nationalism answers this question by examining eleven historical approaches to nationalism studies in theory and practice.

The Center participates in East European Politics, one of the major political science journals focusing on the contemporary post-communist space.

The main objective of this research is to map out the cities of the Roman Near East in the imperial period, with a focus on location, city size and urban features, in order to study the form the urban system and its levels of integration.

Thirteen Centuries of Creed, Conflict and Coexistence

The project re-examines the role of the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox missionaries in the cultural and social developments of the Middle East and their interactions with the indigenous communities, from the nineteenth century until today. It seeks to discover and retrace such ‘entangled histories’…

This seminal volume covers the entire global history of urbanization since the rise of cities in Mesopotamia in the 6th millennium BC. Leiden historians Wim Blockmans, Leonard Blussé, Luuk de Ligt and Leo Lucassen contributed survey and thematic chapters.

For thousands of years, societies have fallen under the reign of a single leader, ruling as chief, king, or emperor. In this fascinating global history of medieval and early modern dynastic power, Jeroen Duindam charts the rise and fall of dynasties, the rituals of rulership, and the contested presence…

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?

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

How was time understood during the colonial period by Tlaxcaltecan Naua communities? What is the relationship between time, spirituality and ritual in the present-day Naua community of Santa Catarina? What does this tell us about the strengths and values of Indigenous heritage and about the impact of…

This collaborative project aims to explore the history of the concept “barbarism” in Europe from the 18th century to the present, with a particular emphasis on the role of literature and art in the concept’s shifting functions.

It is integral to many cluster members’ research to use Medieval and Early Modern Arts as a lens for studying the medieval and early modern periods at large:

On the 16th of February, Yunus Sulistyono successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Yunus on this achievement!

Conference

The Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) is devoted to the study of places in the human world from antiquity to the present time in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective.

On the 11th of October, Micheal Swanton succesfully defended his PhD-thesis and graduated. LUCL congratulates Micheal on this great result.

Political Islam is not new to the Middle East, but the appearance of ISIS has stretched the phenomenon to the extreme.

What is the history of the humanities? What does this new field look like? How does it relate to the history of science or to the history of individual disciplines (linguistics, history, media studies)? And how can you participate?

This dissertation studies the formation of the wage laboring class in the Iranian oil industry during the first decades of the 20th century.

The main aim of this project is to reveal and unravel the invisible histories of the UN, transcending the dominant Western perspective to recover the historical agency of Global South actors. The research will investigate how the UN has both facilitated and limited their role in shaping global order…