When did the Mali Empire disintegrate? What does the Sunjata heritage demonstrate about the political situation after 1600?

For some devout Muslims, going to the cinema or viewing certain images is provocative and problematic. Ahmad Nuril Huda investigated the development Santri (young, pious Muslims) have undergone in this field over the past ten years. The Cinematic Santri is the result of his PhD research.

A large new campus square on the Leiden Bio Science Park will be used for a range of activities for students, staff and Leiden residents, a knowledge festival, shows and sporting activities, for instance.

This book by Dirk Jacob Jansen traces the career of Jacopo Strada (Mantua 1515-Vienna 1588), examining his role at court in Vienna, where he served as Imperial architect and antiquary. Strada’s career was unusually wide in scope and cosmopolitan in outlook even for a Renaissance artist.

Leiden University 2016 thesis awards were awarded to Kaspar Pucek (History), Mariska Meijer (Bio Medical Sciences) and Paul Kozowyk (Archaeology).

Archaeologist Quentin Bourgeois received an NWO Vidi grant to investigate the emergence of a pan-European culture in the third millennium BC. ‘We see ideas being shared across the entire continent in pre-literate societies. And not only that, for a thousand years, the same cultural ideas persist.’

The prehistory of communication metaphors

Intensive 5-day programme on the world-famous Antwerp-based printing and publishing house founded by Christopher Plantin in 1555. International experts will discuss how it developed the production and distribution of religious books and related illustrations and prints in the following centuries.

This project investigates properties of quantity expressions across languages from the perspective of how quantity is represented in the human brain.

A linguistic prehistory of the Tarim Basin in Northwest China

When are you (sexually) mature? A KNAW grant will enable associate professor Rafal Matuszewski to organise an interdisciplinary workshop on this question.

This volume sheds light on the role played by progeny in maintaining dynasties in early modern royal courts as well as the horizontal and vertical interplay between the actors. It attempts to break through the narrative of older research that saw dynasties as a series of male rulers. Instead, these…

Scientific methods and techniques have been employed in archaeological research since the very birth of the discipline. It is impossible to imagine modern archaeology without this expertise in archaeological sciences. These archaeological sciences take centre stage in the new temporal exhibition at…

What was the relationship between women and modern media in different parts of Asia in the 20th century? Under what historical and social conditions did women achieve prominence in popular music in Asia?

The film MعLMIN made by Visual Ethnography alumna Loes Moree will be screened during the fourth Fieldrecordings event. Field Recordings is an annual event for visual anthropology, sound art and landscape film.

Osteoarchaeologists help forensic scientists solve crimes. They also study bone material from the Second World War in order to identify victims.

Learning from small data sets in machine learning is a crucial challenge, especially when dealing with data imbalances and anomaly detection. This thesis delves into the challenges and methodologies of learning from small datasets in machine learning, with a particular focus on addressing data imbalances…

Promotores: S.F. Portegies Zwart, E. M. Rossi

Leiden archaeologists investigate how people in the past impacted their environment. Together with scientists, environmental scientists, and humanities experts, they use this information to draw conclusions about the present – and show what we can learn from it for the future.

Archaic and Classical architectural terracottas constituted an integral part of the architecture of monumental buildings at Akragas. These objects therefore provide unique insights into the built environment of sanctuaries at this important Greek colony in Sicily. This research's multi-disciplinary…

Morphometric and morphological differences have been used extensively in the past to study domestication of the wolf and the origin of dogs. Certainly before genetic testing was performed, these methods were the only means to diverge both groups. But still now, when aDNA cannot be extracted, morphometry…

How can we find novel natural products from Actinomycetes that act as growth modulators on mammalian cells? Can we harvest and develop the potential of these novel compounds for industrial and medical biotechnology?

At the end of the fifteenth century, two intriguing Christian epics were written in Virgilian Latin by the poets Sannazaro and Vida. They did so in accordance with the wishes of the pope. These epics, both praised and criticized by contemporaries, are often seen as innovative for their specific combination…

Like any language, the natural sign languages of deaf communities differ from each other in their grammars and lexicons. A growing number of studies indicates that sign languages make use of the gestures of hearing speakers to build linguistic structure. This implies that variation and similarities…

Are you a British citizen currently studying at Leiden University? Find out about the effects of Brexit such as the transition period, residence permits, tuition fees and more.

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…

Lecture, Research Seminar

Coming to and living in The Netherlands after Brexit.

Like any language, the natural sign languages (henceforth: SLs) of deaf communities differ from each other in their grammars and lexicons. A growing number of studies indicates that SLs make use of the gestures of hearing speakers to build linguistic structure. This implies that variation and similarities…

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).

In The Golden Mean of Languages, Alisa van de Haar sheds new light on the debates regarding the form and status of the vernacular in the early modern Low Countries, where both Dutch and French were local tongues. The fascination with the history, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary of Dutch and French…

This paper explores how citizenship is enacted and experienced in welfare encounters for Egyptian migrant parents in Paris, Amsterdam, and Milan, highlighting the importance of social citizenship and personal interactions in shaping belonging.

Chinese materia medica (CMM), comprising a diverse array of natural substances from plants, animals, and minerals, has been integral to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) throughout history. This study investigates the dynamic evolution of CMM, noting shifts in species for improved therapeutic effects…

Cynthia van Vonno, political scientist at Leiden University, explains why individual MPs vote according to the party group line.

MPs in the Netherlands are first and foremost motivated by their direct environment, i.e. the parliamentary and partisan institutions.

The aim of ANCIENT CHARM was to develop neutron-imaging techniques and the associated equipment, and help establish neutron imaging as a mainstream archaeological analytical technique. In particular, one of the goals was a new imaging technique which called neutron resonant capture imaging combined…

A course that concludes with a video pitch, instead of a paper or examination: Italian Language and Culture students each recorded their own knowledge clip, speaking to a wide audience about Italian cultural expressions. We asked Goran Bouaziz, Cameron-May Bosch and Katja Timmer what they thought of…

The role of religion in the identity construction of LGBTQIA+ folks

Using brain imaging to discover the area in the brain that recognizes emotion.

Promotor: M. de Jong, Co-Promotor: Samtleben

The Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) aims on doing applied research with partners. You can be involved in our research, and in the knowledge transfer of our research results.

The Winter School of the Food Citizens? project has been a success! Running from Monday 24th January to Friday 4th February 2022, with this milestone we handed down the project’s methodological toolkit as a team. Nine participants attended in Leiden, coming from Belgium, Ghana, Italy, Lithuania, the…

Shirley van der Maarel won the Thesis Award 2020 with her thesis 'Terra Incognita'. Van der Maarel graduated summa cum laude for the master's specialisation Visual Ethnography. She researched a group of refugees housed in an Italian village and wrote an interactive thesis and made a film. This resulted…

Maria Vasile and Cristina Grasseni have presented the results of Maria’s ethnography in Turin.

Visual Ethnography graduate Ildikó Plájás received the Best documentary award in the student competition at the international Astra Film Festival in Romania.

Activities of Thalia Hoffman and Basma Hamdy

The project’s main aim was to build a reconstruction of a prehistoric house plan, without using any metal tools. How effective are tools made of stone, flint, bone, antler and wood? What are the constraints imposed by the various building materials? How much labour do we need and how much knowledge…

Promotores: G.A. Persoon, H.H. de Iongh

In August 2022 we welcome our new colleague Dr Letty ten Harkel as Assistant Professor in Roman and Post-Roman Archaeology. For the past ten years she has built up an impressive track record in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. Read the interview about her background and research…

How can we work together to create a safe study and learning environment and offer students the support that they need? The Vision on Student Well-Being outlines the University’s plans to promote student well-being in the coming years.