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

Anna Derksen is a PhD candidate at Leiden University Institute for History. Her thesis examines the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) with a focus on the Nordic countries and their contributions to social and developmental policies and international rights agendas.

Sanjar Golomov is a senior scholar at the Al-Biruni Institute in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In Leiden he will deliver two lectures and one masterclass for MA and PhD students as part of the Erasmus Mobility Plus project between Leiden University and the Al-Biruni Institute. The project is coordinated and…

As part of the celebrations around the 25th birthday of the Faculty of Archaeology, a panel discussion on the future of archaeology was organised on December 13th. For this discussion an international panel of scholars was invited to give their perspective and enter into conversation with our Faculty…

Ian Simpson is a relatively new face at the Faculty of Archaeology. Starting as an assistant professor in the Heritage and Society department in 2018, he is one of the faculty’s members in critical heritage studies and looks both at the past as well as the future. ‘I study how heritage can be employed…

The 4th Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) meeting was held at the Faculty of Archaeology on 20 November. Ambassadors and representatives from countries in Latin America and the Caribbean region met with the Leiden LAC region group to strengthen academic cooperation and discuss the internationalisation…

North Korean workers designed and built numerous monuments, museums and other buildings in southern Africa. This is clear from research by history student Tycho van der Hoog for his master's thesis. These monuments can be an important source of income for a country that has become quite isolated on…

An international team of researchers, involving members from the ERC Synergy project NEXUS 1492 based at the Leiden University, the Universities of Oklahoma, Copenhagen and York reveal challenges when studying ancient microbiomes in a recent issue of Scientific Reports.

Back in June, the annual Leiden Archaeology Field School took place in Oss. For a month, every week, a group of 25 first year students gets to learn the ins and outs of a professional excavation. This is what they have been prepared for in the past year. ‘It is very exciting to put all the theory into…

Many mosaic stones and potsherds have been excavated, and a Byzantine synagogue is revealing its history layer by layer. The excavations at Horvat Kur are a field school for a young generation of researchers.

Trinidad and Tobago, a twin-island nation, has over 300 identified archaeological sites that testify to its diverse history, covering pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. Many of these sites were discovered by archaeologists in the 20th century and have not been regularly visited and assessed.…

Human trafficking is much more than kidnapping and selling people. Those who commit labour exploitation can, for example, also be sentenced for human trafficking. Criminologist Masja van Meeteren hopes to simplify the complexity of the phenomenon by charting the different forms of labour exploitati…

How do you make niche subjects interesting and accessible? Benjamin Suchard, historical linguist and researcher, seems to have created the perfect recipe, which consists of his various projects alongside his regular research, including a Twitter account and a major international film.

During the Faculty Staff Meeting of August 28th, Corinne Hofman spoke about her time on the Faculty Board. “I look back on a rich decade in which I have seen the Faculty, and the University as a whole, change at a rapid pace.”

Lifelike gods, provisional professors and the city militia with weapons a clanking. Leiden put on a colourful procession and drummed up hundreds of citizens to celebrate the foundation of the first university of the Republic of the Netherlands on 8 February 1575. 'It wasn't a party just for the sake…

On 27-28 January 2022, Leiden University’s interdisciplinary seed grant programme ‘Beyond Anthropocentric Interests and Values? Human Rights and Climate Change’ hosted a conference on human rights and climate change.

A thousand-year-old tooth has provided genetic evidence that the so-called

On January 7th Minister van Engelshoven of Education, Culture and Science of The Netherlands announced that the project Island(er)s at the Helm: Co-creating sustainable and inclusive solutions for social adaptation to climate challenges in the (Dutch) Caribbean is one of two projects awarded with funding…

Assyriologists in Leiden have been conducting research into ancient clay tablets from the Middle East for 100 years already. What exactly do these clay tablets tell us? And why is Leiden such a good place to study them?

The oldest forms of literature and law originate from Mesopotamia (3000 BC until AD 70), as do important discoveries in science and technology. All these developments were recorded in cuneiform texts on clay tablets. There is still a lot to learn from the study of cuneiform texts, says Professor of…

On March 1 2022, Professor Ann Brysbaert will succeed Dr Winfred van de Put as director of the Netherlands Institute at Athens (NIA). Having been a regular at the institute for several decades, she will combine her new appointment with teaching at the Faculty of Archaeology. ‘Visits at the NIA were…

Economic anthropologist Erik Bähre does research on the morality of insurance. In his latest ethnography ‘Ironies of Solidarity’ Bähre explores how the South African insurance market expanded.

Archaeology has always been at the forefront of innovation. Now, an inventive collaboration between archaeologists Tuna Kalayci and Alex Brandsen brings together the winning combination of robotic technology with an archaeological AI. While an impressive new step in the archaeological technology, this…

A shadow cabinet has just been formed. This one consists of students from all the Dutch universities. They will be keeping politicians on their toes in the coming year, and want to show that progress cannot be made without academic research and teaching. Master’s student Zeineb Romdhane is Minister…

How do you maintain diplomatic relations in a world of rising tensions? This was the theme of a guest lecture by Minister Sigrid Kaag at Campus The Hague. ‘Policy proposals won’t go through if they don’t foster women’s development.’

Studying Sumerian grammar in your free time: Bram Jagersma did it. He described centuries-old Sumerian using a modern method he devised himself. For this PhD research he was awarded the De La Court Award for Independent Research by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science (KNAW).

Another year's end draws near. And what a year it has been! On December 12th staff and students of the Faculty of Archaeology came together to celebrate and reminisce. Professor Joanita Vroom got us in a festive mood by telling tales of Byzantine banquets, while a chef served historical dishes to sa…

The idea that prejudices about the (Middle)-East came to be during the colonisation of North-Africa in the 19th century is false. Mounir el-Badri wrote a cum laude bachelor thesis about orientalist judgments with which 18th century slaves in Morocco much earlier characterised their captors with.

The ‘Leids Universiteits Fonds’ (LUF) award grants to research and educational project in various academic fields once a year. This year, Honorata Mazepus, Tanachia Ashikali, and Jaroslaw Kantorowicz of the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs were three of the recipients of such a grant.

Accreditations. All study programmes have to deal with them and once every six years they cause a good amount of tension. How do you survive the assessment panel? And how does an accreditation proceed in times of corona? Chair of education Kim Beerden recently coordinated the accreditation for the research…

The story of the iconic Silk Road is often told from the Chinese perspective. An exhibition at Oude UB focuses on the inhabitants and monuments of historical cities in Central Asia, a neglected part of the Silk Road. From 5 September to 17 October.

Sylvie Ramakers of Leiden University College The Hague has been accepted to the prestigious Yenching Academy of Peking University in Beijing China, making her the third LUC alumnus in five years to break the ceiling of the notoriously competitive selection.

In our globalised economy, goods and services are frequently produced abroad. Is it the producer or the consumer that should be held responsible for greenhouse gas emissions associated with production? Together with colleagues from Berlin, Hauke Ward of the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML)…

Five Leiden researchers have been nominated as members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).They will be inaugurated on 16 September.

Casper de Jonge, Professor of Greek Language and Literature, believes that Greek texts from the Roman Empire are more interesting than was first thought. They offer a fascinating glimpse of the polyphonic and multicultural world of the Roman Empire. Inaugural lecture on 7 October.

On the first weekend of June a plot of land in Lutkemeerpolder, West Amsterdam, was occupied in order to host the Food Autonomy Festival. The event was organized in solidarity with local farms to protest against the development of Schiphol airport-oriented business park. Two of our PhD's, Maria Vasile…

Professor Joanita Vroom, together with the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR) offered the course Byzantine Rome in September 2023. The course, co-taught by Vroom, Letty ten Harkel and various guest lecturers, investigated the transition of the city of Rome from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages,…

UNESCO has recognized an international set of fifteen manuscripts about Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe and the three Hikayat Aceh manuscripts as World Heritage. The manuscripts are inscribed in the global UNESCO Memory of the World Register. This list contains documentary heritage…

What if we start taxing carbon-intensive products such as electricity and gasoline, and at the same time compensate low-income households? Hauke Ward and colleagues did just that in a computer simulation for Peru, with a remarkable outcome. Not only does the approach tackle climate change, but it could…

The newly established Leiden Jewish Studies Association aims to bring together Leiden scholars working on Judaism. The first annual conference will take place in Leiden on 6 and 7 December. Leiden professors and co-organisers of the LJSA Sarah Cramsey and Jürgen Zangenberg talk about their plans.

More and more Leiden students are studying in China. Two of them talk about their summer course there. 'Now I understand better the kind of country Chinese students come from who are studying in Leiden.'

According to a new study by an international team of researchers from the Caribbean, Europe and North America, the Caribbean was settled by several successive population dispersals that originated on the American mainland.

Loss of cultural heritage first brings to mind the destruction in the Middle East. But in the Caribbean it is mainly natural processes such as coastal erosion and human interventions driven by economics that are damaging the local natural and cultural heritage. A conference is taking place on Bonaire…

Nationalism is so prevalent in our society that we hardly realise it once didn’t exist. In his new book, senior university lecturer Eric Storm reveals the global history of the phenomenon. ‘Nationalist movements have always influenced each other.’

The 22nd of march 2023, political scientist Lukas Spielberger will defend his dissertation ‘Lessons from Europe for the study of international bank cooperation’. He wrote his thesis about the cooperation of central banks during international financial crises: ‘central banks pay more attention to shared…

Several years ago, two amateur archaeologists from Brabant discovered over a hundred Roman coins near to Berlicum in the north of the province. After years of research, it now appears that the location, close to a ford in the river, was a site for offerings. Another interesting fact is that the coins…

No less than seven scholars of the Faculty of Humanities were awarded a Veni grant. Veni grants are aimed at excellent researcher who recently obtained their doctorate. With a maximum grant of 250.000 euros, the laureates can develop their research ideas in the coming three years.

Debates about the ‘end’ of the Roman era, how, when, and even if it ended, are still very much alive and raging. However, what happened after the (long) late antique period is a lesser-known and lesser-studied subject. The post-Roman past needs, however, as much energetic investigation and discussion.…

This year, an NWO PhD in the Humanities grant went to Mink van IJzendoorn, enabling him to investigate the disappearance of amphorae. ‘We take means of packaging and shipment for granted, but they are deeply ingrained in our daily lives; they are crucial.’