The two-year master's programme in Japanese Studies, a specialisation of the MA in Asian Studies, offers teaching by leading academics and a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of the East Asian region.

Academic staff and students blog about their research and teaching.

Leiden University offers its students a wide range of bachelor's, master's and minors that explore sustainability or climate. Here, you find an overview of those programmes in the academic year 2020-2021.

The master's specialisation in Global Ethnography is all about your three-month ethnographic research project. Experienced scholars teach you in extensive courses and by individual supervision how to get to most of your research.

Both within the university and also with outside partners, Leiden University participates in sustainability programmes. These initiatives hopefully contribute to a growing and more robust sustainability movement, locally and world wide.

How do social and political developments influence the process of meaning-making in different parts of the world? Why is a particular discourse interpreted in numerous ways depending on the context it is produced and propagated? And how are culture, politics, history, and language intertwined?

The Laboratory for Human Osteoarchaeology specialises in the macroscopic and microscopic analysis of human remains. We use cutting edge scientific approaches to address archaeological, historical, and anthropological research questions. In addition to paleopathological, histological, and 3D scanning…

Disciplinary History and Epistemology

On 12 January 2023 ms. Nor Ismah successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This edited book presents case-studies and reflections on the role of languages and their analytic study in development practices across four regions: Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific.

Perfect for use at advanced undergraduate and graduate level, this is the first text to offer students a unified narrative regarding the place of the body in Western thinking. The book investigates the ways in which the fact of human embodiment makes the notion of ambiguity central to all major areas…

Both on a personal and institutional level, the staff of Leiden CADS collaborates with:

Migration is the talk of the town. On the whole, however, the current situation is seen as resulting from unique political upheavals. Such a-historical interpretations ignore the fact that migration is a fundamental phenomenon in human societies from the beginning and plays a crucial role in the cultural,…

Research on Inclusiveness and Diversity at the Faculty of Science at Leiden University

An interdisciplinary study of the Persian Period

Andrea Giolai defended his thesis on 3 May 2017.

To what extent does the Law Ombudsperson for Children achieve its goals as intended by the legislator when introducing the law?

Published on 26 February 2021.

The main aim of this research is to understand the dynamics of identity within indigenous Caribbean communities as expressed through the practice of intentional cranial modification. A multidisciplinary approach will be applied to achieve this aim, combining current anthropological and sociological…

The Leiden University-European Center for Chinese Medicine and Natural Compounds (LUECCM) is a virtual research Centre bringing together research projects of many different researchers from different origin.

The civilizations of ancient China and Mesoamerica, although not historically related and obviously different in many specific aspects (such as language and writing), show many interesting commonalities and similar tendencies in their cultural manifestations.

The Historia Naturalis Brasiliae Reconsidered

Central to the research of several cluster members are the social function and contexts of the production and consumption of medieval and early modern art, literature and media:

Fostering multi-polar perspectives that engage more connected, nuanced and pluralistic understandings of the world. Global Interactions encourages and supports research that provides significant new insights on these global processes across time and space.

How are social structures of gender, religion and race/ethnicity learned and embodied in practices of movement?

Museums and collections are often frontpage news nowadays. The collections stored and curated in museums, universities and private institutions are no longer seen as 'neutral' entities to be enjoyed without political connotations.

LUCIR aims to bundle together, strengthen and disseminate existing research in the field of international relations.

Sociopragmatics is a rapidly growing field and this is the first ever handbook dedicated to this exciting area of study.

Along with your application, you will have to submit a variety of documents. This information only applies to students who need to submit an application for admission. If you have a diploma that grants you automatic admission to a bachelor’s programme, you won’t need to submit additional documents.

Une étude archéo-anthropologique de la céramique des sociétés caribéennes multiculturelles de la période précoloniale à nos jours

Inspired by a critical reconsideration of current monolithic approaches to the study of Greek religion, this book argues that ancient Greeks displayed a disquieting capacity to validate two (or more) dissonant, if not contradictory, representations of the divine world in a complementary rather than…

Museum Studies looks at museum practices from archaeological, historical and anthropological perspectives.

This research aims to study the practice of cremation in Alexandria and Graeco-Roman Egypt, through the examination of its cinerary urns.

This dissertation provides an up to date description of the Indo European lexical stock of Armenian (ca. 500 entries) with systematic inclusion of unused data that are found in Armenian dialects.

The VVI seeks to develop and disseminate socio-legal knowledge and theory regarding the interaction between law, governance and society. More specifically, the Institute studies the emergence, functioning, and evolution of legal institutions.

Within the Sociology of Policy in Practice specialisation you will develop a research project on prevailing policy problems.

This procedure is relevant for contract and external PhD candidates only.

At LUCL we study almost all aspects of a wide range of African languages. From phonology to anthropological linguistics, from theoretical syntax to urban youth languages, we study it all.

The ERC project 'Food citizens?' is a comparative analysis of a growing phenomenon in Europe: collective food procurement, namely networks of people who organize direct food production, distribution, and consumption.

Studying archaeology at Leiden University is all about studying societies and cultures from the past, trying to reconstruct them and bring them back to life. The programme offers various specialisations and regional focus areas. You may choose to focus on regions like Europe, the the Mediterranean and…

Studying archaeology at Leiden University is all about studying societies and cultures from the past, trying to reconstruct them and bring them back to life. The programme offers various specialisations and regional focus areas. You may choose to focus on regions like Europe, the the Mediterranean and…

Leiden University research institutes based in Leiden and The Hague.

This book explores the relationship between the production of new urban spaces and illiberal community-making in contemporary India. It is based on an ethnographic study in Noida, a city at the eastern fringe of the state of Uttar Pradesh, bordering national capital Delhi.

Irene Moretti published the article Kin Enough in Social Analysis, The International Journal of Anthropology.

Presenting case studies by both senior and emerging scholars, it makes mandatory reading for anyone interested in the challenges of governance, citizenship and development faced by the people of India’s North East.

'Food Citizens? An anthropological project on collective food procurement in European cities

'Collaboration, Mediation, and Comparison: Epistemological Tools from Theory-driven Fieldwork Practice' is written by Cristina Grasseni and published in Anthrovision.

'Skill, craft, and poiesis-intensive innovation' is written by Cristina Grasseni and is published in FormAkademisk.

In this article, Samuels focuses on the active fostering of subjunctivity in processes of narrative worldmaking. Drawing extensively from the narrative of an HIV‐positive woman in Indonesia, she shows that by subjunctively leaving open multiple narrative trajectories and future possibilities, individuals…

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