From mandrill teeth to the microstructure of bones: archaeology alumna Simone Lemmers (31) is determined to reveal the past by studying old remains. Her curiosity has led to a very international career, also in the UK, where she witnessed the Brexit referendum.

PhD defence

On this page you can learn more about the history of our Faculty Awards and view the previous winners.

Situated on the west coast of modern Turkey, the site of Ephesus is one of the largest excavations in Turkey and one of the most visited tourist attractions. Only one tenth of the city has been exposed until now although the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Vienna (ÖAI) has been excavating here…

The Vrijthof excavations (1969-1970)

ASLU 28 Michalis Karambinis (2015)

TruLife applies lessons from the study of long-term urban traditions, exemplified by pre-Columbian Maya tropical cities, to present-day sustainable urban design.

As an artist Clevis is fascinated by the phenomenon of place in relation to beginnings and final destinations.

A comprehensive analysis of Nietzsche's conception of conflict and the way in which relations of struggle condition the organisation of complex systems (with a specific focus on the human psyche and the body politic).

Play and Media is one of the six research themes of the LUCAS Modern and Contemporary cluster.

Welcome to the Graduate School of the Faculty of Humanities.

What was the practice of keeping the Necropolis Journal?

Shining a new light on the Roman world

The Modern and Contemporary Cluster is the largest within LUCAS and home to more than 100 staff members and PhD candidates. Hosting a diverse group of young and advanced scholars, it offers an especially fruitful and dynamic environment for interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Archaeology and Epigraphy of Jordan’s North-Eastern Desert and Beyond

In comparing a selection of 18th-century histories to a representative sample of 19th-century histories of science, this project inquires: Which early modern vices persisted into the 19th century and to what extent were those vices embodied in anecdotes, conveyed through commonplaces, or symbolically…

Modern receptions of Graeco-Roman Antiquity are important ideological markers of the ways we envisage our own twenty-first-century societies. An urgent topic of study is: what kinds of narratives – sometimes controversial – about Antiquity do people create for themselves at this moment in time, and…

Caspar Reuvens, the world’s first Professor of Archaeology, was a prominent classical scholar and from his appointment in 1818 onwards Classical & Mediterranean Archaeology has been an important field of research in Leiden.

Associates of Leiden University Center for Intercultural Philosophy

This study documents and translates the Saa (Zapotec) cultural heritage of the Bene’ Ya’a/En’ne I’ya peoples, the Zapotec inhabitants of the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca.

An investigation into how racial stereotypes were created and used in the European Middle Ages.

Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

The edited volume 'Arabic in context: celebrating 400 years of Arabic at Leiden University' edited by Ahmad Al-Jallad is out. The volume contains the contributions to the 2013 conference with the same title, held at Leiden University and was published as part of Brill's the Studies in Semitics Language…

Ms. Anaïs Massot defended her thesis on 26 January 2021

A Spatial Enquiry into the Urban Society of Rome’s Imperial Port-Town

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 most famous monument of the Dutch Golden Age is undoubtedly the Amsterdam Town Hall by architect Jacob van Campen inaugurated in 1655.

The main question I want to answer is about the mutual influence between the cultural and settlements changes that occurred between the Bronze and the Early Iron Age in Margiana and the management of water resources.

The Altai region has yielded a cluster of Middle and Upper Paleolithic stratified sites that have been recently excavated using a multidisciplinary approach.

Yeonhwa Jeon defended her thesis on 6 July 2017.

For thousands of years bloodlines have been held as virtually unassailable credentials for leadership, with supreme political power perceived as a family affair across the globe and throughout history. At the heart of royal dynasties, kings were inflated to superhuman proportions, yet their status came…

This thesis attempts to establish a dialogue between the modern and the medieval traditions in logic, by means of ‘translations’ of the medieval logical theories into the modern framework of symbolic logic, i.e. formalizations.

The study of language in change.

On the 21st of September, Carlos Benítez-Torres successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Carlos on this achievement!

In a podcast episode of 'New Books in History' Claire Weeda talks about her book 'Ethnicity in Medieval Europe 950-1250: Medicine, Power and Religion'.

Volume II: Plates of Room Contents

Volume I: Excavation and Material Culture

Get to know us through our online and in-person events for prospective students!

Get to know us through our online and in-person events for prospective students!

Whether implicitly or explicitly, we all have ideas about how the law is supposed to function, whose interests it should represent, and what role it should play in society. This project explores the ways in which these questions are addressed in the works of the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus…

Get to know us through our online and in-person events for prospective students!

Get to know us through our online and in-person events for prospective students!

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…

Studies on Ancient West Asia in Honour of Peter M.M.G. Akkermans

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

You’ve been accepted! Leiden University looks forward to welcoming you as a new student. Your next step is to prepare for your studies. Below you can find some tips to help you get a head start as you embark on your studies at Leiden University.