Northern Yemen; a highland region often in the news as the center of the Houthi regime, has a political, social, and intellectual history spanning more than a millennium. This exhibition showcases some of the findings of the Early Modern State Development in Yemen project, based at Leiden University,…

In the past few decades, LGBTQ+ acceptance has come a long way. Coming out, however, is still a difficult experience for many people on a personal level. Everyone’s story is different and not everyone belongs to a clear denomination within the LGBTQ+ spectrum. That is why learning about the personal…

President John Quincy Adams studied in Leiden. His father, John, who was also president, also stayed here and received a lot of support from professor and publisher Johan Luzac. And how are presidents Bush and Obama linked to Leiden?

The collection guides of archives and collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) have been made available via the portal Collection Guides. This has greatly improved the findability, visibility and ease of use of these collection finding aids.

Under agreement with the Dutch National Archives (2011), all static archives created by Leiden University are kept as a loan in the University Library. In this way, users can study the history of the university and library in conjunction with other relevant archives, collections and items.

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Urban Studies

As of 1 May Gianne Derks is the new Scientific Director of the Mathematics Institute. Derks succeeds Hermen Jan Hupkes who temporarily assumed the role. Derks has been appointed for a period of four years.

This subject guide is a work in progress, aimed to provide access to relevant academic works and online resources on Palestine and Israel, as well as, documentaries, films, and literature to familiarize yourself with the complexities of the conflict.

Symposium

Tensions between Israel and Palestine again reached fever pitch in May, with hundreds of – mainly Palestinian – deaths as a result. Now that a ceasefire offers some respite, there is an opportunity to reflect on the history of the conflict. Are there lessons to be learned from the past? How do historians…

After large scale protests in the United States following police violence against black American citizens, racism in the Netherlands, too, is once again being widely debated. This renewed and intensified interest in the problems surrounding racism is prompting many to (re)read important works by black…

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…

The Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) organizes the ISGA Conference ‘Who determines the security (research) agenda’ on 9 - 10 November 2016 in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Overview of databases, reference works and website for research in the History of Science

The exhibition 'A Buddha in the Backyard: Asia as a Source of Inspiration' shows how we surround ourselves with elements from Asian cultures and gives a glimpse into the rich Asia collections of Leiden University. The exhibition runs from January 26 to May 9 and is on display in the exhibition hall…

The FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) principles are a framework for researchers to make their scholarly output ready for use and reuse by machines and humans (including themselves and peers). Making scholarly output more FAIR provides a range of benefits to the research community,…

A team including staff from Leiden University won the Open Initiative Trophy on 11 February, a prize for the best open science initiative in the Netherlands. The winners developed Reprohak, a hackathon-like event where participants repeat research to see whether the results were reproducible.

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.

On Saturday 11 September, it will be 20 years since two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in the very heart of Manhattan. The images of smoking towers are etched into the memories of many, not only in the United States, but all over the world. September 11 became the subject of much research,…

While the United States continues to carry out drone strikes, and China conducts large-scale cyber and information operations, Ukrainian and Russian soldiers live in trenches, and NATO sends tanks to the Donbas front to force a breakthrough. Has war changed dramatically in recent decades as a result…

BA 3 student Dasha Derzhavets is one of the first students to be back in the lab at the Faculty of Archaeology. She is conducting experiments in the ceramic and experimental lab for her thesis. ‘It is different in the labs, a lot quieter, I can better concentrate on my work however.’

Lecture

The collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) have been enriched with the Maktabat al-Yaman al-Amstirdāmīyah, or Amsterdam Yemen Library. This collection, which exists of about a thousand books, journals and maps, is the largest coherent Yemen collection in The Netherlands and was brought together…

Curators devote a lot of attention to their collections. How is Martijn Storms, curator of maps and atlases at Leiden University Libraries, managing to do this now he is working from home? And how is Silvia Vermetten digitising Eastern manuscripts from home?

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Chinese Studies

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Caribbean Studies

Slavicist, translator and publisher Pim van Sambeek recently donated his correspondence with Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska to Leiden University Libraries (UBL). Most letters were written in 1982-1983 before the first publication of a collection of Szymborska’s poetry in Dutch, translated by…

Library

In November, the Dutch will elect a new parliament. Not all eligible citizens will go out and vote, however. How can this be explained, and how big of a problem is it? International research into voter turnout can shed new light on this issue – and offer possible solutions.

Former President Kgalema Motlanthe of South Africa gave a public lecture on Campus The Hague on 7 July. His story was about the economic transformation of Africa.

The annual commemoration of the nation’s war dead on Dam Square and at Waalsdorpervlakte, the Dutch apologies for historical slavery and the Cleveringa Lecture itself: our relationship with history is often ritualistic, Cleveringa Professor Frank van Vree will say in his inaugural lecture on 27 Nove…

UNESCO has recognized an international set of fifteen manuscripts about Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe and the three Hikayat Aceh manuscripts as World Heritage. The manuscripts are inscribed in the global UNESCO Memory of the World Register. This list contains documentary heritage…

Comic books and graphic novels are more important than ever in the Leiden University curriculum. That is why Leiden University Libraries (UBL) is currently working on expansion of its collections in this field. Yasco Horsman, University Lecturer at LUCAS, explains why this expansion is necessary and…

With its FestivOWL theme, Orientation Week Leiden (OWL) promises to be one big festival for new international students in Leiden.

The Grand Parade was a festive highlight of the 450th anniversary celebration of 3 October. Students and staff members from Leiden University participated with an impressive float.

Hundreds of beautiful and timeless photos by Emmy Andriesse, one of the most important Dutch photographers of the twentieth century, are now freely accessible for everyone and can be used for research, education or other purposes. Large parts of Andriesse's oeuvre are already available online via Digital…

On May 15th, from 15.15 to 17.00 in the Vossiusroom, Leiden University Libraries will host a program on web-archiving and digital archives of Chinese communities in the Netherlands and Indonesia.

An international consortium of research institutes, universities and non-academic partners in six European countries, including Leiden University, has been awarded with a research grant from ERC Marie Curie ITN for the project Mediating Islam in the Digital Age (MIDA). On behalf of Leiden University…

Finding solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the not-inconsiderable task of the new Peace Academy in The Hague. Professor Maurits Berger and twelve students from different conflict zones are starting a creative thinking process that aims to discover the basic conditions for peace in the…

Lecture, Film Screening

Over hundreds of thousands of years, our region witnessed the comings and goings of various types of hominin. This depended on the temperature as ice ages alternated with warmer periods. In ‘De eerste mensen in de Lage Landen’ (‘The First Humans in the Low Countries’) Leiden archaeologists Yannick Raczynski-Henk…

Historians recently started preliminary research on Leiden University’s role in colonialism and historical slavery. Our knowledge about this is too limited and fragmented. They are looking with fresh eyes at Leiden’s archives and collections. An interview with historians Alicia Schrikker and Ligia G…

With the thematic programme 'Student@University', Leiden University Libraries illuminates the rich past of the university and its students. Several online exhibitions, boekensalons and public lectures will be organised around this theme, especially for the interested public, and various blogs, videos…

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to French writer Annie Ernaux (1940). In an explanation, the Swedish Academy praises Ernaux 'for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory'.