Lecture

Lecture

Lecture

Lecture

This project investigates the full ecosystem of Middle Dutch prayerbooks in order to answer questions about their role in – and impact on – religion, culture, and society in the late medieval Low Countries.

Lecture

Many of our staff and students have won an award, received a grant, obtained an academic fellowship for their quality or have been socially engaged due to their specific expertise. See below for an overview per year.

Conference, Research Seminar

Holocaust scholars Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski will jointly hold the Cleveringa lecture on November 26. They were accused of defamation in Poland for a book they co-edited. How has this affected them? ‘This is an attempt to wear us down.’

The four thousand war victims buried at the Netherlands Field of Honour at Loenen include a number of Leiden students who were in the Resistance. The War Graves Foundation is looking for volunteers to take part in a special event to honour the deceased.

During World War II, the Nazi’s ordered a coastal defensive line to be built from the south of France to Norway. This Atlantik Wall aimed to defend their territories in continental Europe from an Allied naval invasion. The defensive line went right through the Dutch city of The Hague. The material remains…

Her book ‘Veel valse hoop’ (Much False Hope) about the persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands was immediately hailed as a seminal work. German historian Katja Happe gave the Cleveringa Lecture on 26 November. She is fascinated by what makes people take a stand.

Herta Mohr was a promising Egyptologist who died in Bergen-Belsen. Lawyer Amandus Wolfsbergen died in Auschwitz, without knowing that the his work would continue to be a respected authority for many years. Thanks to research by PhD candidate Adriënne Baars, some more personal information has been added…

PhD defence

The prestigious Praemium Erasmianum Dissertation Prize is annually awarded to the five best dissertations published in the year before in the fields of Humanities, Social sciences and Law. During a festive ceremony in Utrecht Lennart Kruijer received the award from the hands of professor Bas ter Haar…

To mark its 75th anniversary, the Netherlands War Graves Foundation is publishing a portrait of a war victim every week this year. On 24 January the drawing of Irawan Soejono, a Leiden student and Indonesian resistance member, was unveiled at the Groenesteeg cemetery in Leiden, the place where Soejono…

The ancient Roman province of Lusitania, more or less contemporary Portugal, has been the focus of a joint research project by Leiden University, Évora University and the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. The research project has now been provided with a new boost by a large Regato grant managed…

Every year on 26 November Leiden University commemorates the protest speech given by Professor Cleveringa against the Nazis. At least 663 students, staff and alumni of the University lost their lives during the Second World War, yet little was known about these victims. PhD candidate Adriënne Baars…

Through the Chastelain-Nobach LUF fund, Classical and Mediterranean archaeologist Tymon de Haas has received a grant for his research on the ecological impact of Roman expansion. He will use this grant to further expand on the case-study that was made possible by the Byvanck LUF fund earlier this ye…

Until recently the Congo’s isolated Boa community had never read a single letter in their own language: quite simply, there was no alphabet to describe the language. A crowdfunding campaign by guest staff member Gerrit de Wit has changed that. He plans to use the rest of the money to work with a Congolese…

It is crucial that Leiden University reflects on its colonial history. These were the words of Cleveringa Professor Gert Oostindie in his inaugural lecture on 24 November. ‘As a university community, we must dare to hold up a mirror to ourselves and, where possible and necessary, also take concrete…

A new memorial stone on the facade of a student house in the Hugo de Grootstraat is a reminder of the dozens of Indonesian students who studied in Leiden before and during the Second World War. Some of them were active in the Resistance, which cost a number of them their lives.

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 do harrowing war experiences affect different generations? Students have made a video about poignant family stories. They interviewed other students and writer Dubravka Ugrešić. The premiere of the film was on 4 May during the online Hour of Remembrance. Watch this online memorial.

In the media, we hear a lot of worrying news from Africa: refugees, attacks, Ebola, starvation, corruption... But Africa is much more than that: it is a continent in transition, with developments occurring at breakneck speed. African Studies scholars from different academic disciplines in Leiden conduct…

The Seasons of Interdisciplinarity are an initiative by the Young Academy Leiden that started in 2021.

Almost 81 years after his famous protest speech against the German occupation, Leiden professor Rudolph Pabus Cleveringa will be remembered in his Groningen birthplace of Appingedam. A statue of him will be unveiled there on 12 November amid various other activities.

In summer 2018 classical archaeologist Hanna Stöger passed away. At that moment she was in the midst of several cutting-edge research projects on the use of space in the Roman city of Ostia. To make sure that her groundbreaking work would not go unpublished, long-time colleagues Hans Kamermans and Bouke…

A group of confidants including a former student of Meijers managed to avert his deportation to a death camp. In her lecture on 27 November, Cleveringa Professor Marjan Schwegman revealed the history of the persecution of the Jewish Professor Eduard Meijers.

The archaeologists have been working from home three weeks now. Remotely, through Teams, we meet up with Miguel John Versluys’ research team, to see how they continue working in times of corona.

Lecture

Paul Christiaan Flu, originally from Surinam, was a brilliant tropical doctor, who in 1938 rose to the position of Rector Magnificus of Leiden University. The war years brought his lightning career to an abrupt end: his son was murdered and he himself was imprisoned in a concentration camp. A sad family…

Two thousand years ago, the Middle East found itself caught between the rise of the Roman Empire in the west and the Parthian Empire in the east. PhD candidate Nolke Tasma has been awarded an NWO grant to investigate how local inhabitants experienced these changes.

A number of European countries have started evacuating their citizens and there is a threat of military intervention by neighbouring countries: the situation in Niger is deteriorating rapidly. A military coup has thrown the country into turmoil, partly aided by social media.

A delegation from Leiden University recently embarked on a knowledge mission to various NGOs, universities and government organisations in Indonesia. New partnerships were formed and important knowledge exchanged, and researchers from Leiden gave guest lectures.

The Faculty of Archaeology proudly presents the research brochure Perspectives on the Past, featuring passionate, dedicated researchers introducing a dazzling scala of research topics: from present-day traditional knowledge in Africa to the power of glue in Palaeolithic Europe. In addition to these…

Now that war is once again raging in Europe, the question of when you need to stand up against injustice has become more relevant than ever. In his Cleveringa lecture on 24 November historian Gert Oostindie will discuss why colonial domination was not regarded as an issue in Leiden for a long time.

Five thousand years before the common era (BCE), Proto-Indo-European, the mother of many languages that are spoken today in Europe, Central Asia and South Asia, originated in eastern Europe. PhD candidate Axel Palmér has combined a 175-year-old hypothesis with new techniques to demonstrate how descendants…

Festival

Within the scope of innovating and connecting – the theme of our new Strategic Plan – I paid a visit to Brussels last week. It is important to give Leiden University a face in Brussels and to show our expertise, on Africa for instance.

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…

Meet and Greet

Promovendus Tristan Mostert onderzocht de ‘kruidnageljacht’ op de Ambonse eilanden en ontdekte dat VOC-gouverneurs extreme tactieken gebruikten.

Ever since Nadine Akkerman, Professor of Early Modern Literature & Culture, came across a woman spy in her research, secret agents have kept cropping up in her work. Now there’s Spycraft, a popular history book exploring the espionage techniques used by early modern spies, which she has co-written with…

A love of puzzles and the patience of a saint: these are two essential traits for linguists wishing to explore the Indo-European language family. Fortunately, Professor Michaël Peyrot possesses both. In his inaugural lecture he will take the audience on a voyage of discovery to the past.

PhD defence

Lecture, Discussion

Global Interactions sponsors a number of research projects of Leiden University researchers.