This 4-year research project focuses on vernacular and unacknowledged heritages of the highlands of Bhutan. It seeks to make a major contribution to the preservation of these heritages, to create a cultural resource for current and future generations.

This Research project is funded by the 7th European Community Framework Programme, with additional funds from NWO Aspasia grant, and in collaboration with University of California, Berkeley.

The genetic material of currently living Europeans is partly of Neandertal origin. Were our ancestors successful because they were hybridising and interacting with the local populations they encountered when migrating into new places? Reconstructing our evolutionary trajectory is key for rethinking…

Although official law generally conceives of personal injury victims as individual rights holders, the actual experience of physical injury and its consequences is relational. Indeed, many researchers in the global North as well as the global South have contended that the very concept of the Self should…

What are the rights of migrants in Morocco and how do this receiving state and migrants deal with them in practice?

The CADS Asia Research Cluster extends the legacy of the Institute’s Asia focus into the future, as an important hub in international networks on the study of Asia and through active engagement with colleagues in Asia. Within the Institute the Asia Research Cluster offers a platform for anthropologists…

Explore the contemporary dilemmas of archaeological heritage management, or focus on museum practices from an archaeological perspective.

Sociology of Policy in Practice focuses on policy-oriented research. It enables you to gain relevant working experience by conducting a three-month research internship in Ghana or the Netherlands.

Prepare for Leiden University's MSc in Cultural Anthropology & Development Sociology with our tailored pre-master's programme.

Op zaterdag 3 juni vindt de Museumnacht Leiden plaats. Ook dit jaar zijn Leidse wetenschappers en studenten onderdeel van de programmering.

Nurturing Student Creativity: Innovative Approaches to Sharing Scientific Results. Bridging Generations and Empowering Ethical Exploration in Anthropology Education

The Leiden University Medical Anthropology Network (LUMAN) brings medical anthropologists together with the aim of fostering interfaculty collaborations and creating common ground for working interdisciplinary on health-related themes in Leiden and beyond.

This page features an overview of relevant lectures, publications and conference papers.

The CADS Spotlight shows us the latest research being produced at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden. In this special edition of the research seminar, three advanced PhDs and recently minted Dr’s present their work, ranging from the relations of Egyptian migrant…

'Echoes of the Silent Roots' by Mark Lindenberg wins the Multimodal Incentive Grant for Alumni of the Metje Postma Awards. His film is a touching auto-ethnographic project about family estrangement and repair. Ieke van Dam won the Excellence in Visual & Multimodal Ethnography Thesis Prize for her film…

Provenance and distribution of raw materials

The Future of Dying: End-of-Life Care in a Time of De-medicalized Death explores how patients, their relatives, and healthcare providers make decisions about end-of-life care when such treatments are readily available.

With an ERC grant, anthropologist Jasmijn Rana will explore how outdoor groups address the lack of diversity and how ethno-racial inequalities are experienced and resisted in Europe's outdoor spaces.

It is with great sadness that we share the news that on Friday, May 3rd 2024, Carla Risseeuw, Professor emerita of CADS, passed away. Carla Irene Risseeuw retired as Professor of Intercultural Gender Studies from CADS in 2009 after a long and productive career.

In the beginning of December 2016 PhD candidate Catarina Guzzo Falci was awarded a scholarship for a collections study by Musée du quai Branly. The Musée du quai Branly has implemented this scholarship programme to document its collections.

NWO has granted a 4-year subsidy to the project The Popular Culture of Illegality, ellaborated in collaboration between the University of Amsterdam, University Utrecht and Leiden University. This research focuses on the esthetic representations and practices in visual, musical and symbolical forms of…

The project officially started in September 2020, but with the enrolment of PhD students Hanum Atikasari and Shajeela Shawkat the research team of the ERC project 'Globalizing Palliative Care? A Multi-sited Ethnographic Study of Practices, Policies and Discourses of Care at the End of Life' is compl…

How do local, non-institutional ideas about end-of-life care influence professional palliative care and vice versa? These questions will be answered by medical anthropologists Annemarie Samuels and Natashe Lemos Dekker in the coming years.

Cristina Grasseni and Adele Arrigoni Ravasio have co-presented the result of Grasseni’s ethnography with Val Taleggio’s cheesemakers.

Prof. dr. mr. Maartje van der Woude (Van Vollenhoven Institute) has received funding from the National Police to carry out a phenomenon research on the extent to which, and how, human trafficking and human smuggling are intertwined phenomena in intra-Schengen border areas.

This conference explored the various ways in which anthropologists at the Leiden Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology engage with global vulnerabilities and social resilience through their ethnographic research and representation. All staff and students were invited to participate…

Investigating the intercultural connections that shaped practices of knowledge production in colonial Dutch Brazil.

In two weeks' time, the official opening of the Humanities Hub will take place in the Huizinga Building. The first projects have already begun. Professor Journalism and New Media Jaap de Jong and director of the AI and Digital Humanities Lab Jelena Prokic share their experiences.

For ten months, PhD student Sanne Rotmeijer worked on the editorial boards of various news media on Curaçao and Sint Maarten. She also tracked how news goes around on the streets and circulates on social media. The aim? To find out how stories became 'the news'.

The international conference ‘Lessons from Afghanistan’ touched on many serious issues and raised several reasons for concern. But it also ended on a positive note. While politicians on both the domestic and the international levels have failed to prevent the collapse of the Afghan state, and we are…

From sponsored runs to festivals and from open days to concerts: Leiden University hosts lots of events each year. We are highlighting six of them for 2023.

Nine staff members of the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance, and Society participated in the Law and Society Association’s (LSA) annual conference from 27-30 May. VVI staff presented ten conference papers, organised multiple sessions, as well as served as chairs and discussants for numerous…

Marianne Maeckelbergh has received a Consolidator grant from the European Research Council for a project on the impact of property regimes on experiences of citizenship. The project will be carried out in five democratic countries: Greece, The Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United St…

‘The care of an au pair' is chosen as the best Fieldwork NL report and 'The unruly reality of a new government' as the best master's thesis. Lila van Grieken, Annika Kruger, Benjamín Maldonado Fernández and Holly Zijderveld and Mony Klaus receive the Speckmann Award 2024.

Annemarie Samuels and Andrew Littlejohn, Assistant Professors at the Leiden Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, have both been awarded a Leiden University Fund research grant. Samuels will use the grant to kickstart a multi-sited ethnographic study of care at the end of life.…

Call for participation:

All over Europe you will find ethnographic museums with large collections of indigenous objects from Latin America. These collections shaped the image of native populations in the European mind. An ERC Starting Grant allows Dr Martin Berger to look at the bigger picture, contextualizing individual collections…

Bart Barendregt receives a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros from the NWO for his research project 'One between the Zeros, an Anthropology of Artificial Intelligence in Islam'.

This collaborative project aims to explore the history of the concept “barbarism” in Europe from the 18th century to the present, with a particular emphasis on the role of literature and art in the concept’s shifting functions.

With its iconic buildings, Leiden University has a strong presence throughout the city. The university has left its mark clearly on museum collections in the city.

In the spring semester, NIMAR offers university and HBO students a 30 EC program where students can choose between an intensive Arabic program focusing on Modern Standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic or a research-focused program in which you conduct ethnographic research.

Time, Religion and Sacred Discourses of the Ayuuk People

On this page you will find more information about the selected projects of the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Fund for 2024.

Dynamics of material, social and ideological relationships in the pre-Columbian insular Caribbean

Within the Graduate School you can conduct your PhD research in a wide range of subjects across the Social and Behavioural Sciences, with five distinct research areas offered by its Institutes.

Students of Leiden University's Master's in Visual Ethnography join a decades-long legacy, producing inspiring films and projects supported by the Metje Postma Fund.

A study concerning the collective memory in the region of the Bene lo Ya/ Ene lo I'ya, Sierra Norte, Oaxaca.

The research programme Descriptive and Comparative Linguistics brings together LUCL researchers who focus mainly on descriptive and comparative linguistics.

The international bachelor's programme in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology covers three years, allowing you to establish a firm foundation and specialise in topics that you find interesting.