Leiden University has made history with its many scientific discoveries; a history that is also illustrated in a variety of books and films.

Leiden University offers ambitious students a world-class environment in which to reach their full potential.

In the coming years, Asghar Seyed Gohrab receives an advanced European Research Council grant of two and a half million euros to spend on his research into non-conformism in Islam. ‘Hopefully I can use this to contribute something to society, to pass something on to future generations.’

Sex and power are closely linked, and this was certainly true in the former Dutch colonies. PhD student Sophie Rose investigated how sexual and love relationships influenced eighteenth-century power structures there. 'You can see that there was constant fighting over who stood where in the social hi…

The one-year History specialisation in Ancient History offers an attractive mix of theoretical knowledge and practical experience.

During the one-year master’s programme in Politics, Culture and National Identities, 1789 to the Present you will be studying an academic field that is an entirely new research area, putting you at the forefront of a new way of thinking about European history.

The Leiden University Centre for Islamic Thought and History aims to promote the study of Arabic and Islamic thought and history in a number of ways, both online and in person.

Teaching Legal History

Leiden University offers ambitious students a world-class environment in which to reach their full potential.

In this research master at Leiden University you will focus on the important cultural and political transformations that characterised Europe between 1000-1800.

Throughout the history of computer science, a major challenge has been how to assert that software is free of bugs and works as intended. Software bugs can lead to serious negative impacts on any software system. Throughout the main body of the thesis, we implemented a series of studies on exploring…

Global History has become a much-debated field. Is it about globalisation, is it a method, a subject matter, all of the above? Over the last two decades global historians have outlined topics and approaches that set the foundations for a transforming field.

Interested in studying Ancient History at Leiden University? Find out what our alumni said about this master's programme.

Read more about the partner organizations of the Summerschool Global History in the 2020s.

Find out how to apply for Colonial and Global History (research) at Leiden University by following our step-by step guide.

This summer school will explore the concept of socioeconomic diplomacy in the context of global empire building (16th-19th centuries).

Find out how to apply for Colonial and Global History at Leiden University by following our step-by step guide.

Find out how to apply for the MA Ancient History at Leiden University by following our step-by step guide.

Find out how to apply for Ancient History (research) at Leiden University by following our step-by step guide.

According to New York Magazine, the massive open online course (MOOC) ‘The Rooseveltian Century’ by Professor by Special Appointment Giles Scott-Smith is one of the best online courses. We asked him why you should take the course and how it came about.

Did you know that Arabic was for centuries the lingua franca in an area stretching from the south of Spain to the Chinese border? And that the Middle East under Muslim rule was the world’s beating heart of trade, but also of science and scholarship? Want to learn more? Then sign up for the new MOOC…

The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology provides an overview of archaeological investigations in the insular Caribbean, understood here as the islands whose shores surround the Caribbean Sea.

Interested in studying Colonial and Global History at Leiden University? Find out what our alumni said about this master's programme.

This book connects labour history, global history and the institutional or political history of international organisations.

Situated at the crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Spanish Philippines offer historians an intriguing middle ground of connected histories that raises fundamental new questions about conventional ethnic, regional and religious identities.

The history of sign languages of deaf people is severely understudied. The historical linguistics of sign languages offers a fundamentally new perspective on the history of human languages. This project addresses the dearth of knowledge about historical sign language linguistics through a large-scale…

The new privacy laws make it more difficult to combat human trafficking: under-age victims are often not registered. In her lecture, Cleveringa Professor Corinne Dettmeijer called on everyone to be on the alert. 'We don't want to live in a society where people are treated as throw-away objects.'

Sara Polak, PhD researcher and lecturer at LUCAS, has won a Fulbright scholarship to work on her research on Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yale University from September 2014 till February 2015.

Stories of resistance in the Second World War are widely covered in Dutch historiography: Hannie Schaft, Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, and Professor Cleveringa are some of the best known. But these accounts largely focus on the Dutch domestic perspective. On the other side of the world, a complex colonial…

Jan de Vetten brengt zijn promotieonderzoek ook uit in boekvorm. ‘In de ban van goed en fout’ beschrijft voor het eerst - op basis van archiefonderzoek en interviews - op samenhangende wijze de bestrijding van de CP en CD, en ook de reactie daarop van die partijen. Waarom werden ze zo fel werden bestreden?…

In less than a week’s time, millions of Turkish people are going to decide who will govern their country for the next five years. These elections promise to be the most closely contested in years, with the opinion polls showing very small differences and everything at stake, including for Europe. Alp…