My research project focuses on the development of a popular national agency in late nineteenth century Amsterdam and the question how ‘ordinary’ citizens imagined ‘the Netherlands’ through the experience and use of their urban surroundings.

If mankind wants to survive into the 22nd century, we will need to change the way we live drastically. The human impact on our planet is everywhere, we are changing the atmosphere, the oceans and the land, leading to global warming, climate change, loss of biodiversity and pervasive pollution. There…

Understanding the complexities of world affairs requires an ability to think critically and to draw insights from a variety of perspectives, sources, and analytic frames. Leiden University’s Master of Arts in International Relations addresses these needs through distinctive humanities-based training…

Johannes Boer's research intends to question the way explicit knowledge is applied in order to restore and perform music from the past with the intention to get as close as possible to its original meaning.

A retrospective impact assessment of human and environmental resource usage in Late Bronze Age Mycenaean Monumental Architecture, Greece

In the specialisation Occupational Health Psychology, part of the Master in Psychology, you will integrate knowledge of several disciplines in psychology, with a clear focus on workers and their work setting.

The specialisation Global Political Economy of the master’s in International Relations at Leiden University provides you with a cutting-edge understanding of the world economy and its social and political foundations.

The one-year master in Cultural Analysis: Literature and Theory offers you the choice of four themes and a wide array of study options.

Why is Crossnational and Cross-cultural agents such as Henrich Carloff and Willem Leyel important when studying Early Modern expansion?

The purpose of the initiative is to establish Central Asian Studies at Leiden University. Central Asia is a region with fluid borders stretching into present-day Afghanistan, Russia, China, Mongolia, Iran and the Caucasus; a premodern highway of global interaction and today increasingly important as…

Research within the centre is broad and pluralistic, ranging from the history of political thought to contemporary analytic and continental political philosophy and critical social theory. Members of the CPP also participate in the Research Profile Area on Political Legitimacy. The Centre is the proud…

This volume presents fourteen papers by Roman archaeologists and historians discussing approaches to the economic history of Pompeii, and the role of the Pompeian evidence in debates about the Roman economy.

The central aim is to systematically study differences in crime patterns and social control between migrants and non-migrants in early modern Frankfurt am Main.

History lecturer Giles Scott-Smith is enthusiastic about the new pitch-to-peer programme (P2P), for which students have to make an original, creative assignment and evaluate one another’s work. This is part five in a series of articles about lecturers and innovation in teaching and learning.

Aesthetic formations and cultural repertoires give meaning to our reality in ways that are never neutral. Focusing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and its global interlocutors, this project brings together a team of scholars from Leiden University who bring in inter-disciplinary, inter-area…

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. This territorial sweep is both a source of fascination…

The biographer of Leiden University, Willem Otterspeer, has a new book out. In ‘De stad, de dood en de dichters’ (The City, Death and the Poets) he combines his love for the University and poetry with autobiographical reflections. ‘With my magnifying glass I discovered yet more new details in the pr…

On January 17th, Frits Scholten (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam) will give a lecture titled: "Private Devotion & Immersive Play - The Use of 'Spiritual Toys' in the Late Middle Ages." The lecture is part of a Lorentz Center workshop on 'Religious Imagination in the Late Medieval Low Countries' and can also be…

From October 17 to October 20, the international conference "Patristic Sermons in the Middle Ages: Collections, Mediators and the Practice of Compiling" will take place at the Dutch Royal Institute in Rome. Research Master students can obtain 2 ECTS by participating in this conference an an additional…

The Horizon programme 'Eurasian Empires: integration processes and identity formations' started September 1st 2014. The six PhD students and two Postdocs introduce themselves.

When discussing the history of Islam, the focus is almost always on the history of the Sunni majority. University Lecturer in the history of Islam, Edmund Hayes wants this to change. His new ERC-funded project , focuses on the development of the early Shia community.

Cosmopolis seeks to explore the transnational and cultural dimensions of intra-Eurasian encounters through Dutch sources.

The changing status of anatomical collections from the early modern period to date.

The treasure houses of Leiden's University Library and Naturalis house wonderful historical collections with dried plants and botanical drawings. Professor by Special Appointment Tinde van Andel will be studying these collections. Inaugural lecture 6 January.

Two open letters are currently circulating among civil servants in the Netherlands calling for the Dutch government to take a different stance towards Israel. Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law in Leiden, says in a national radio broadcast that this is an unusual and unique…

PhD defence

This series of seminars convenes researchers based in North America and Europe in order to inspire and further establish reflections about race, race-thinking, and racialization among scholars of late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The first seminar will be held on Monday, October 19, at 12:00 EDT by…

On 25 and 26 October 2024, the first biennial symposium Environmental History in the Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries, is scheduled to take place at Leiden University.

How were the Russians, under early modern conditions, able to incorporate this distant, undeveloped and, because frequent nomadic attacks, dangerous territory? And what role did the Kolyvan-Voskresensk plants play in this process?

Louis Sicking's Maritime Conflict Management in Atlantic Europe was awarded an 'Internationalisation in the Humanities' grant from NWO. What can we learn from how maritime conflicts were managed in the past?

This PhD project studies immigrant groups in ancient Babylonia and aims at investigating their identities, socioeconomic status, and integration into an ancient multicultural society.

In the period between the First and the Second World War, many Muslim intellectuals came to Europe. What impact did they have on each other’s, as well as on European thinking, and how were they in turn influenced? Leiden Islam expert Dr Umar Ryad has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to investigate…

The territories that would make up what is today the Republic of Zambia officially became British in 1891. However, this did not equate to an on-the-ground presence of colonial authority capable of affecting the destiny and daily lives of people.