In a modernist interpretation of migration controls, nation states play a major role. This book challenges this interpretation by showing that comprehensive migration checks and permanent border controls appeared much earlier, in early modern dynastic states and empires, and predated nation states by…

Leiden University is a unique international centre for the advanced study of languages, cultures, arts, and societies worldwide, in their historical contexts from prehistory to the present.

Correctly interpreting the patterns of fire evidence in the archaeological record will illuminate the origin of human fire use.

How can we quantify the density of species within a community through environmental DNA concentrations?

In a recent article published on PLOS, Drs. Briana Pobiner and Ryan McRae of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History discuss the top 13 discoveries in human evolution in 2023.

In the Humans of Humanities series, we will do a portrait of one of our researchers, staff members or students, every other week.

Salvador Santino Regilme, Jr. Associate Professor of International Relations and Program Chair of MA in International Relations, has been honored with the Cecil B. Currey Book Award for 2023. The accolade, presented by the Association for Global South Studies (AGSS), recognizes Regilme’s exceptional…

Recently, Ingrid Leijten’s book Core Socio-Economic Rights and the European Court of Human Rights was published with Cambridge University Press. The monograph was published in the series Cambridge Studies in European Law and Policy (edited by Laurence Gormley and Jo Shaw) and deals with the protection…

Investigating epistemic and ethical practices in medical experimentation on humans in the colonial period in Southeast Asia.

Despite the field’s general agreement that pyrotechnology had a significant impact on the cultural evolution of humankind, our understanding of the origins and development of fire use and its role in humankind’s cultural evolution is very limited, blurred by strong disagreements over its chronology…

Human Rights at Risk brings together social scientists, legal scholars, and humanities scholars to analyze the policy challenges of human rights protection in the twenty-first century.

Melanie Fink, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Europa Institute of Leiden University, has published her book Frontex and Human Rights, Responsibility in 'Multi-Actor Situations' under the ECHR and EU Public Liability Law. This work is based on her doctoral dissertation, which she defended in December…

Our Master Law in European and International Human Rights Law (LL.M.) looks at the various human rights protection mechanisms from a comparative perspective

The currently available in vitro generated human skin equivalents resemble the human skin in many aspects. However, some essential barrier characteristics do not fully mimic the native barrier. Consequently, the human skin equivalents cannot be used for screening of drugs for skin penetration.

We are very happy to welcome you to spend a semester or year studying with us in the Faculty of Humanities. Here you will find information on your course timetables and more.

Leiden’s Faculty of Humanities is one of the broadest of its kind, offering courses in no fewer than 80 different languages and a very broad spectrum of academic disciplines.

The Faculty of Humanities

The Faculty of Humanities is committed to creating an inclusive and diverse community, where all students and staff are supported, respected, and empowered to do their best work, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, age, religion, or socio-economic background.

The Faculty of Humanities has 8 institutes:

Large carnivores and humans, along with their livestock, have co-existed for thousands of years. However, human population growth and an increase in economic activities are modifying the landscape for large carnivores and their prey.

This article discusses the degree of independence that is required for national human rights institutions to function successfully.

On 1 October 2019 the Hazelhoff Centre for Financial law hosted its 19th guest lecture starring Paul Sharma, managing director at Alvarez & Marsal and co-head of the European Financial Industry Regulatory Advisory Services practices.

As a Faculty of Humanities graduate you are part of a valuable network. Discover how you can remain in contact with other alumni and the University!

Nederland ligt in de periferie van het verhaal van menswording. De evolutie van onze familie vindt lang exclusief in Afrika plaats. En, als Europa eenmaal bewoond wordt door mensachtigen, ligt het zwaartepunt ten zuiden van onze streken. Toch heeft ons land een aantal interessante vindplaatsen en vondsten…

Building a fire involves many variables, such as size, choice of fuel, temperature, and burn time, that affect the way the generated heat can be used, and therefore the potential function of a fire. A group of Leiden archaeologists are, together with a team of international colleagues, investigating…

At high doses, drug candidate BIA 10-2474 binds not only to the protein that it targets, but to other proteins as well. It thus deactivates proteins that are involved in the metabolism of nerve cells. This is what an international group of researchers from Leiden University and Erasmus MC, among others,…

Promotor: J.A. Bouwstra Co-promotor: A. El Ghalbzouri

Environmental Humanities is one of the LUCAS research themes, bringing together members of the three LUCAS clusters.

To what extent are, can, and should, human trafficking and human smuggling be(ing) seen as interlinked phenomena? What are the consequences of seeing the phenomena as either distinct or interlinked for the way in which migrants crossing intra-Schengen borders are treated.

On 17 January 2024 Ying Wang successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

At the Faculty of Humanities, we study languages, cultures, civilisations and their connection to each other. This knowledge is relevant to society and we gladly share it with the world around us.

This book explores how physicists, astronomers, chemists, and historians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries employed ‘epistemic virtues’ such as accuracy, objectivity, and intellectual courage. In doing so, it takes the first step in providing an integrated history of the sciences…

Humanities Campus Project is the name of the redevelopment of the Witte Singel-Doelen Complex, the location of the Faculty of Humanities and associated knowledge partners and institutes. Over a period of ten years the complex will undergo a gradual metamorphosis, while classes continue to be taught.…

Learn new ways to analyse and study cultures and languages and provides insight into how digital methods and artificial intelligence (AI) are changing our personal lives and societies in the minor Digital Humanities and Artificial Intelligence.

The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.

Leiden University is building on its future in Leiden. As a means to achieving this aim, the University will be investing in excess of 100 million euros over the coming years in constructing the new accommodation for the Faculty of Humanities at Witte Singel and Doelensteeg. The University aims with…

This multidisciplinary minor provides students with knowledge on how and why humans became the way they are. The minor focuses on the evolution of the species Homo sapiens from other hominin lineages and animal ancestors, and on the various factors shaping this process. Not only is human evolution of…

This case study-based textbook in multivariate analysis for advanced students in the humanities emphasizes descriptive, exploratory analyses of various types of data sets from a wide range of sub-disciplines, promoting the use of multivariate analysis and illustrating its wide applicability. Fields…

In Humanity’s End As A New Beginning, Emeritus Professor Mineke Schipper reflects on myths about ‘the end’.

Markus Altena Davidsen and colleagues Michaël van der Meer, Maurits Berger and Kim Beerden received a subsidy from the KNAW-Pilotfund. They will use the 10.000 € for an inspiration book for teachers religion/worldview.

Why did 'character', 'habit', and 'virtue' serve as key terms in late 19th and early 20th-century scholarly correspondences, biographies, and obituaries? Why did scholars around 1900 display so much interest in the working habits and character traits of what they called the 'scholarly self'?