Many traces of the city's slavery history can be found in Leiden but the public isn't always aware of them. The initiators of 'Mapping Slavery in Leiden' want to change this with guided tours and street markers. Representatives of the University and other Leiden institutions will be giving the first…

What does the daily life of those who travelled to Syria to join jihadist groups look like? Destination Syria, a new ISGA report, provides answers to this question

Religion, Class, and the Postwar Development of the Dutch Welfare State. Dennie Oude Nijhuis.

The archaeology domain produces large amounts of texts, too much to effectively read or manually search through for research. To alleviate this problem, we created a search system (called AGNES), which combines full text search with entity and geographical search.

Homicide engenders broad moral concerns in society, and its aftermath can be understood as a barometer for criminal justice policy. Of all homicides committed, however, only some lead to arrest, to prosecution and ultimately to conviction in court.

On 20 September 2023 Mark van de Water successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

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…

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.

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.

Develop a tool to assess land tenure, access to land and, and land tenure conflict in Timor-Leste

This project explores how the populations of the historically contiguous towns of Nusaybin, Turkey and Qamishle, Syria articulate citizenship in the everyday.

One of our LUCIS members, Karène Sanchez, has been granted the Internationalisation in the Humanities grant for her project 'Engaging Europe in the Arab World: European missionaries and humanitarianism in the Middle East (1850-1970)'. Sanchez is cooperating with researchers from IEG Mainz and IISMM…

The Swahili coast has a long-standing history of transoceanic Islamic connections dating back to the 25th century. Yet, print, has changed the world – not only ours. This project unravels unique forms and archives of intellectual history emerging from within South-South connections. In East Africa Indian…

In the early modern period women played a prominent role in crime. At times they even made up half of all defendants. Female criminality was a typically urban phenomenon. Why do we find so many women before the Dutch criminal courts?

The parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, scheduled for March 2017, are likely to result in a fragmented parliament and a complicated coalition formation process, according to Dutch political scientist Hans Vollaard (Leiden University).

When we think of the history of Dutch slavery, the areas that spring to mind are primarily the Antilles and Suriname. However, until the end of the eighteenth century there were also Dutch plantation colonies in neighbouring Guyana. Bram Hoonhout’s book ‘Borderless Empire’ describes this forgotten h…

Conference

This book examines the history of The Netherlands in a way that connects global processes to local developments.

This article describes that although the use of the concept of energy justice is new, normative interpretations have long been part of energy policy.

ASLU 27 Sjoerd van der Linde (2012)

Knowledge and culture subproject 3:

The Colonial and Global History (research) programme at Leiden University offers the most in-depth and comprehensive programme of European expansion and globalisation currently available in Europe.

Leiden University has long history of research and teaching on Asian traditions, with a focus on language and philology, history, religious studies, philosophy, law and literature. Leiden has in the last thirty years also built up an equally impressive strength in the study of modern and contemporary…

To what extent did the Netherlands grow rich from the Transatlantic slave trade? In his dissertation 'Walcherse Ketens', Gerhard de Kok looks at Vlissingen and Middelburg, the most important slave trade cities in the Netherlands during the second half of the 18th century. It turns out that, although…

Discover the effects of clothing value and lifespan on buyer-user-producer relationships through collaborative research with Localising Global Garment Biographies.

So much has happened this year! 2023 was an eventful year in which several wars raged about which our experts could offer interpretation. It was also the year in which the government made apologies for the slavery past. Leiden humanities scholars were at the forefront of this with their research on…

A group of ten Indonesian scholars, NGO-members, and state officials coming from the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry visited their Dutch colleagues, academic and practical experts, to discuss issues related to water management and environmental regulation .

The powerful Dutch East India Company and West India Company were summoned before the High Court more often than historians have assumed. The complainants varied from competitors, to the Companies' own staff and even poor citizens. This is what Leiden historian Kate Ekama has discovered. PhD defence…

Reflective dialogue is an effective instrument for professional learning of teachers. This research considers the characteristics, development, stimulating and limiting conditions for reflective dialogues in the context of Dutch primary school teachers who collaborate and learn together. The goal is…

How do governments distribute resources across economic sectors during a crisis? And why do some sectors receive more than others? The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgency of these questions. In this paper, we explore the extent to which a political economy…

How can we understand the encounter between communities active in sustainability initiatives and governmental agents at the multiple institutional layers in the Netherlands?

This project explores the religious lives of a Surinamese Hindu community practicing in Amsterdam at the Sri Radha Krishna Mandir from an interdisciplinary perspective.

A thorough description of the relationships among languages and their social environment in a given context, reflecting an ecological perspective, involves attention to the agency of local actors, and the policies, discourse, and ideologies that surround them.

Dutch archaeologists are making three-dimensional virtual reconstructions of archaeological objects lost in the Syrian civil war.

Leiden historian Herman Obdeijn has created an exhibition for NIMAR about the centuries-old bond between the two countries. The exhibition opens on 1 March at the Université Mohammed V in Rabat. ‘The Moroccans changed from distant allies to close neighbours.’

One of LUCIR’s key objectives is to bring together scholars and students of International Relations. To this end, LUCIR regularly organises events such as conferences, roundtables, lectures and book launches.

The Persian Empire (539-330 BCE) was the first world empire in history. At its height, it united a territory stretching from present-day India to Libya - and it would take 2,000 years before significantly larger empires emerged in early modern Eurasia. Its size and power was revered by some, feared…

The research programme Descriptive and Comparative Linguistics brings together LUCL researchers who focus mainly on descriptive and comparative linguistics.

In the South and Southeast Asian Studies programme you will gain a strong foundation in the academic, language and critical thinking skills essential to understanding the history, culture and modern context of this dynamic and increasingly important region.

This grammar describes Sumerian, an ancient Near Eastern language which was spoken in what is now southern Iraq, on the basis of written sources dating from about 2500 to 2000 BC.

On October 31st, Margarita Gulian succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Margarita on this great result.

Cultural Anthropologist Erik de Maaker published, together with Monica Janoswki (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), Stories across Borders: Myths of Origin and Their Contestation in the Borderlands of South and Southeast Asia in Southeast Asian Studies (SEAS).

Ideology and Christianity in Japan shows the major role played by Christian-related discourse in the formation of early-modern and modern Japanese political ideology.

More than a thousand 17th- and 18th-century Dutch letters from seized ships are now available online. The letters are a gold mine for researchers wanting to study the everyday language used by men and women during this period.

What did colonial officials and missionaries think they were doing?

The nineteenth-century writer Nicolaas Beets and his son Dirk were thoroughly colonial, Nicholas without ever having been to the Dutch Indies, or any other colony for that matter. But they didn’t realise it. The new Scaliger Professor, Rick Honings, shows that writers’ archives are a treasure trove…