Starting September 1st, philosopher Douglas Berger will be professor of Comparative Philosophy at the Leiden Institute for Philosophy. His appointment marks a new direction for research and education in philosophy at Leiden University.

Olivier Nieuwenhuyse, member of the Faculty of Archaeology, was successful in receiving a grant from the Bijvanck Foundation for a first campaign of work at Tell Begum, northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan). A small international team directed by Olivier Nieuwenhuyse in a joint effort with the Directorate…

Manuscripts that look like a comic book, that's how you could describe the manuscripts of the Dongba people from China. The manuscripts are one of the last examples of a so-called pictographic script that can only be interpreted by Dongba priests, shamans, who have knowledge of the ancient Dongba cu…

Since August 2017, dr. Sarah Schrader is working at the Faculty of Archaeology in the department of Archaeological Sciences. Her expertise is human osteology with a specific focus on the bio-archaeological reconstruction of daily activities. Recently she took over the management of the Osteoarchaeology…

The research Early Pleistocene human occupation at the edge of the boreal zone in northwest Europe published 8th July 2010 in Nature is part of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project, in which the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University is involved.

Until the 18th century, Latin annotations of well-known classical texts were an important source of scientific knowledge, but over the course of time the texts lost their authority. Classical scholar Maarten Jansen re-examines the annotations of Virgil's Aeneid. PhD defence 20 September.

A European project should help reinvigorate Latin teaching in secondary schools. 'By focusing on citizenship, we want to show that Latin is relevant to discussions about citizenship and migration.'

The Faculty of Humanities’ On-Campus Master’s Experience Day was a pleasantly busy event. The information sessions and corresponding information market went down well with interested undergraduates.

Translating texts, rehearsing scenes or practising music. Over the last few weeks, students of the BA Classics programme have been focused on just one thing: their production of the Greek tragedy Hecuba. Almost a third of them are involved in it. Iris de Smalen, who plays Hecuba, and Christoph Pieper,…

Language can be a time machine: we can learn from ancient texts how our ancestors interacted with the world around them. But can language also teach us something about people whose language has been lost? PhD candidate Anthony Jakob investigated whether the languages of prehistoric populations left…

From the mid-19th century until the 1970’s, the Middle East witnessed the presence of various European missionaries who played a fundamental role in the birth and the development of humanitarianism. Since these Christian missionaries were well integrated in the local Middle Eastern societies via their…

On 8 December, on the occasion of her 65th birthday, Cisca Hoogendijk was surprised with a festive bundle of 56 text editions by friends and colleagues, edited by her former students Dr Joanne Vera Stolk and Guus A.J.C. van Loon, MA.

In its session of 15 April 2024, the Austrian Academy of Sciences elected professor Petra Sijpesteijn as one of its new Corresponding Members.

Ancient clay tablets, between 2,500 and 4,000 years old, bearing cuneiform script have been scanned using a micro-CT-scanner at Delft University of Technology. The tablets are owned by the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO).

In his Inaugural lecture of February 10th Prof. dr. Henk Borgdorff advocated positive understanding of artistic research, of reasoning in and through art, within academia.

In Mapping the Pāśupata Landscape: Narrative, Place, and the Śaiva Imaginary in Early Medieval North India, Elizabeth A. Cecil explores the sacred geography of the earliest community of Śiva devotees called the Pāśupatas.

Skandapurāṇa III presents a critical edition of the Vindhyavāsinī Cycle (Adhyāyas 34.1-61, 53-69) from the Skandapurāṇa , with an introduction and annotated English synopsis.

The Leiden Jewish Studies Association is pleased to announce a call for nominations for the

This interview features Drs. Peter Bisschop (Leiden University) and Yuko Yokochi (Kyoto University) and their work on the monumental Skandapurāṇa project.

NOSTER, the research school for Theology and Religious Studies, organizes a Coptic Course in the fall of 2023. Students can enroll until October 1.

Many thanks for visiting the Master’s Open Day on Friday 2 November! We hope that you enjoyed the day and that all your questions were answered.

How did the mythical kings of ancient Persia live? In this podcast, we delve into the Shahnameh, also known as the Book of Kings.

Something that a year ago would have been unthinkable has become a reality on 12 June: Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un sat down together to talk about nuclear disarmament. Can these two hardliners reach agreement in the negotiations? Professor of Korea Studies Remco Breuker is doubtful. 'As it looks now,…

Skandapurāṇa V presents a critical edition of Adhyāyas 92-112 from the Skandapurāṇa, with an introduction and annotated English synopsis.

The School for Advanced Research organised an onlne conversation between Dr Bleda Düring and his co-editors of the publication Archaeologies of Empire and the editors of the publication Imperial Formations. Watch the resulting video.

Dr. Rafal Matuszewski, assistant professor at the ancient history department of the Institute for History, has been awarded an Early Career Partnership by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

Free advice and tips on the job market from a Leiden alumnus. This is what the Leiden University Mentor Network offers. Curious about how it works? Hear what a number of users have to say about how the Mentor Network has helped them. Maybe you need a mentor yourself, in which case sign up today!

We are proud to announce that Amirardalan Emami has been awarded the Houtan Scholarship (3500€) to help fund his PhD project “Transformation in Ancient Iranian Religion: The Achaemenids as Agents of Long-Term Change”.

Chiara Piccoli has been awarded a scholarship by the Italian Research Council to work at the Virtual Heritage Lab of the Institute of Technologies applied to Cultural Heritage (ITABC-CNR) in Rome.

Eleven talented Leiden researchers with several years of research experience have been awarded a Vidi subsidy to set up or expand their own line of research. One of them is LIAS researcher Lara Weiss.

As from Wednesday 13 May, the Faculty Office has moved to the Herta Mohr Building.

The president of South Korea, Yoon Suk-yeol, has chosen not to use his presidential compound. Professor Remco Breuker states in Time that this marks a change in South Korea’s approach to the compound.

History and Religious Studies in Leiden rank # 17 and #32 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. With this, History in Leiden ranks as the best in The Netherlands and Religious Studies ranks as second best.

The LUCDH foster the development of new digital research by awarding a number of Small Grants each year. These are our past awardees.

Research in the arts at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA)  

This project aims to answer the following questions: how did the landscape and geography of the local surroundings of Chalcis impact medieval to early modern productivity, habitation, mobility and interaction in a wider sense? And where are such changes and continuations still visible in the landsca…

Forum essays provide a framework for intellectual exchange and debate about the role of diplomacy around a particular theme. The essays are argumentative contributions and are shorter than research articles.

The Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University is host to the NWO programme,

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

The NVIC has published a series of scholarly publications in Arabic and several European languages.

The application procedure is broken down into three parts.

Leiden Asia Departments

This NWO project, which is being be carried out in close cooperation with the universities of Oxford (contact: Prof. Robert Hoyland) and Princeton (contact: Prof. John F. Haldon) and the UMR 8167 (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS, University Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV, University Panthéon-Sorbonne,…

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

The application procedure is broken down into three parts: