With Brill, LUCIS publishes a peer-reviewed book series, “Leiden Studies in Islam and Society” (LSIS), aimed at an international academic audience.

How and under what conditions Dutch primary school principals' managerial networking activities affect the performance of their school

Studies on representative bureaucracy have often confirmed the positive performance effects of bureaucracies mirroring the demographic characteristics of their clientele. However, little is known about the underlying individual level mechanisms leading to these outcomes.

LUCIS is directed by Nathal Dessing, who is advised by a steering committee.

Knowledge of Islam and of Muslim societies is indispensable when trying to properly understand the globalising world, as well as changing Dutch society. Researchers from Leiden are therefore immersing themselves in the languages, culture and religion of Muslim societies. Their work and insights can…

Alumni event, Lunch webinar

An overview of the Middle-East studies research projects at Leiden University where faculty and students cooperate. Coming fall 2024!

During the Autumn semester (September-December), the Netherlands Institute in Morocco (NIMAR) offers a minor that focuses on the study of Morocco from a social sciences and humanities perspective.

An overview of our exhibition catalogues and research monographs on the Middle Eastern collections.

Lecture, Applied African Linguistics

In this dissertation a large corpus of letter signs and texts gathered during fieldwork in Niger, and to a lesser extent Mali and Burkina Faso is used to show the graphemic diversity of the traditional script of the Tuaregs, tifinagh, and to analyze the orthographic system.

At Leiden University you can study Islam and Muslim societies within two Dutch-language BA and various MA programmes and specializations.

Jews and Christians in the Middle East

This Global and Comparative Philosophy master’s programme is unique in Europe. It offers comparative perspectives from around the world that will enable you to be part of the next generation of thinkers: someone studying and shaping philosophy for a globalised 21st century.

On this page you find useful links to cooperating universities, Dutch institutes and other interesting links to information related to Arabic & Islamic studies, Egyptian Archaeology, and learning Dutch.

This paper aims to understand the most common underlying problems causing strategic surprise in the context of the European Union.

The present monograph, spanning a wide range of world and local literatures represents a high academic standard of both literary criticism and philological analysis. By demonstrating her expertise as an Africanist conversant with the Arabic canon, Raia reveals how the narrative of Joseph has been re-narrated…

The NVIC offers academic courses in Arabic & Islamic studies and in the study of Ancient Egypt, in the framework of study programmes at the Dutch and Flemish universities that support the institute. NVIC also puts its teaching experience at the disposal of companies, embassies, international organisations…

LUCIS produces various video series and MOOCs to showcase the variety of expertise available at Leiden University.

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

'Consider languages in their shared context.' That is the message of Professor and Arabist Beatrice Gründler, who will receive an honorary doctorate from Leiden University on 8 February. ‘I would like people to learn that Arabic history has a close connection with Europe.’

PhD defence

What is the impact of Ramadan on patients with a bipolar disorder? What does it mean to be sensitive to psychiatric patients' religious beliefs? Driss Moussaoui, a Moroccan psychiatrist, talks about this in a video interview with Leiden University's Islam Centre LUCIS.

Persian stories with beautiful miniatures, letters on papyrus from Egyptian traders and medicinal manuscripts translated from Greek and edited in Arabic. Studium Generale organizes a lecture series on the world-famous manuscripts from the Middle East collection of Leiden University Libraries (UBL).…

A living language?

NIMAR offers educational programs (BA-level) about Morocco, the Arabic world and North-West Africa.

The Academic Language Centre Leiden offers Arabic language courses at various levels, an intensive summer course and tailor-made Japanese language training. The courses are practical in nature: focusing on the use of the language. More information can be found here >

The basic concern that informs every part of the research is in wonder of what happens when sound happens as an aesthetic force. The emphasis of each query lies on the active occasion, the radical empiricism, the moment of encounter, how the sonic event comes to pass as aesthetic force.

Nuran Buket Cengiz defended her thesis on 13 June 2017

What is the state of access to justice in real property grievances in today’s Libya, and how should it be improved?

Combining approaches from intellectual history, philology and the study of Arabic manuscripts, this study places the Bornu scholar Muḥammad al-Wālī within his intellectual environment on the one hand, and it portrays him as someone who responded to the concerns of ordinary Muslims around him on the…

The Leiden Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to promote research on the ancient languages and cultures of Arabia, and to disseminate this knowledge to the broader public.

This book is the first comparative study of estimative intelligence and strategic surprise in a European context, complementing and testing insights from previous studies centred on the United States. It does extensive empirical analysis of open-source material and interviews in relation to three cases…

In recent years, and especially since the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011, a growing body of research, media reporting, and scholarly literature has focused on the role of ‘Arab youth’ as the drivers of social and political movements across the Middle East and North Africa.

On 13 September 2023 Eline Scheerlinck successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Designed for high-achieving students, Leiden University's master's in Middle Eastern Studies (Research) offers you unmatched resources and expertise.

The Centre is the proud home of several research programmes.

LIAS is comprised of three research schools with expertise in different areas:

Uncovering ancient Arabian inscriptions feels like pioneering detective work, says Arabist Michael Macdonald in a video interview with Leiden Islam Centre LUCIS. 'First you have to learn the alphabets that they're written in, and then you have to try and work out what they say.'

Edmund Flett, alumnus of the International Relations master's programme, has won the 2023 J.C. Baak Prize for his thesis ‘Settlements now, settlement later. Land swaps, settler relocation, and the viability of the two-state solution in Israel-Palestine’.

‘Islam and Muslims are not something that happened to Europe; they are part of Europe. In fact, Islam is one the biggest constants in European history,’ argues Professor Maurits Berger in the new eight-part Matters of Humanities: History of Islam in Europe podcast series of the Leiden University Faculty…

The new Middle Eastern Library (MEL) will bring together the UBL's own Middle Eastern collections and the collections of the library of The Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), which has been part of the Leiden University Libraries since 1st January 2018.

At our regular panel discussions we bring together scholars and other experts to discuss a current topic that captures the interest of the general public as well as academics.

The Leiden Institute for Philosophy has a unique profile in the Low Countries and is one of few of its kind worldwide. It takes a global and comparative perspective of philosophy, whereas most philosophy programs restrict themselves to European and Anglo-American philosophical traditions rooted in Greek…

Lecture, Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series