Numerous beads and pendants of amber, jet and bone have been found in Dutch Neolithic and Bronze Age context, both in settlements and in graves. Because ornaments are personal items, they are closely linked with people’s identity.

Human and animal cells are very complex: very different chemical processes are going on at the same time, but they are separated from each other because the cells are divided in compartments. These compartments may also have a profound effect on the potential efficacy of therapeutics, because the drug…

Modelling supra-regional communities in the early 3rd Millennium BC

This volume investigates how urban growth and prosperity transformed the cities of the Roman Mediterranean in the last centuries BCE and the first centuries CE, integrating debates about Roman urban space with discourse on Roman urban history.

Our recent excavations have focused on the more recent New Kingdom/Late Period (ca. 1500-332 BCE) material.

The focus of the dissertation

This project proceeds from the observation that since the second half of the twentieth century, forgiveness and reconciliation have become pervasive themes in western culture, both on a political level and in personal relations.

Human impact and plant subsistence in Dutch wetlands during the Late Mesolithic and Early and Middle Neolithic (5500-3400 cal BC)

New Approaches to the Study of Textual Material from the Early Pharaonic to the Late Antique Period

What are the circadian disturbances underlying depression vulnerability? How are they related to mood, cognition and sleep ?

Anna Scott is a Canadian pianist-researcher interested in using the early twentieth century recordings of the Brahms circle of pianists to question persistent gaps between the loci of knowledge, ethics, and act in both modern mainstream and historically-informed performances of Brahms’s late piano w…

A study into the investment and impact of construction projects on Mycenaean communities in Late Bronze Age Greece

This study presents an agent-based simulation model exploring the patterns of presence and absence of Late Pleistocene Neanderthals in western Europe.

Today’s performances of medieval polyphony have a lot in common with those of other ‘classical’ or ‘early’ music. Ensembles perform pieces written by known or lesser known composers, which the listener can revisit by listening to recordings or reading a score.

Four studies on its prehistoric occupation and Holocene geology. With a contribution by Agatha S. Knip, Late Neolithic Skeleton Finds from Molenaarsgraaf (Z.H.).

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Debate

Knowledge and culture subproject 1:

This long term project in Jordan is at the basis of many specialists’ studies and has several off-shoot projects. The project, with its many approaches, is also a framework for much teaching in Levantine Archaeology at Leiden University, especially concerning fieldwork methods, artefact studies, research…

Lecture, China Seminar

The thesis reconstructs Carl Schmitt's 1956 monography on 'Hamlet'. By scanning and unearthing books, essays, think-pieces, articles, personal diaries and private correspondence, this investigation fully addresses the unwritten philosophy of history -partially developed- in Schmitt's late thought. The…

Mattias Brand defended his thesis on 10 April 2019

How did common people write in the late eighteenth century? Little is yet known on this topic, since our knowledge is mainly based on printed texts written by a small part of the (male) elite population. This dissertation – written from a sociolinguistic point of view – gives us new insights into late-…

PhD at the Natural Products Laboratory, Institute of Biology, Leiden University - the Netherlands

On the 11th of June, Umberto Selva successfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Umberto on this great result.

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume project, authored by an international team of researchers, and offering the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe.

This project analyzes to what extent hodegetical textbooks relied on each other in warning their readers against vicious habits, how much continuity their catalogs of vice displayed, and to what extent vices that persisted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries were associated with easy-to-remember…

Ibrahim Saweros defended his thesis on 9 November 2016

The Pontine Region Project (PRP) is an on-going archaeological project that aims to study the long-term history of settlement and landscape in the Pontine region

The Vrijthof excavations (1969-1970)

Conference

Leiden University and the Netherlands National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden) are jointly involved in the intensive archaeological exploration of Northern Syria, by means of field surveys and large-scale excavations at a number of archaeological sites in the Balikh basin: the Tell…

Lecture

Promotor: P. T. de Zeeuw, Co-promotor: N. Neumayer; G. van de Ven

The Case of the Painted Plaster

This project explored the role of material culture, in casu painted plaster and its technologies, in expressing dynamic social identities and in forging complex interwoven human relationships in the context of the Middle to Late Bronze Age of the Aegean and East Mediterranean.

Part two: Settlements in their natural and social environment.

This book is a celebration of the work of Professor Frans Theuws and was published in conjunction with the symposium held at the University of Leiden on June 29, 2018.

LUCIS funded several research programmes to boost interfaculty and interdisciplinary cooperation and to widen the involvement of LUCIS members.

The first direct detection of gravitational waves opened the possibility of mapping the Universe via this new and independent messenger.

HOME will search for a diversity of Palaeolithic shelters during the Late Pleistocene through informed systematic surveys and excavations of archaeological sites in East-Central Europe.

Alexander West defended his thesis on 20 May 2021

Heightened activation of the striatum that adolescents show in response to reward is often associated with risk-taking and negative health consequences. This article in Nature Communications investigates a potential positive side of this heightened activation. It shows that the activity peak in late…

Arts and culture

On January 8 and 9, a conference will take place at Leiden University, titled: "The Plurality of Early Modern Media: 21st-Century Perspectives on Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities". This conference marks the 25 years anniversary of the Intersections series (published by Brill) and reflects…

On 11 and 12 September 2025, a conference will take place at the KU Leuven, titled: "Canonical Life in Western Europe in the Long Tenth Century: Reforms, Identities and Intellectual Networks (Late Ninth Century - c. 1050)." The organisers invite paper proposals of max. 400 words in English or French,…

Lecture, China Seminar

Dirk Huyge (Director) & Wouter Claes (Vice-Director)