De lichtheid van literatuur: Engagement in de multiculturele samenleving (The Lightness of Literature: Engagement in the Multicultural Society) is a plea for the social relevance of literature. The book delves into an age-old debate about literature and social engagement, which has recently been reinvigorated…

On 18 september 2018, Claudia Bouteligier defended her doctoral thesis 'Dialoog in recht en literatuur. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. mr. dr. A. Ellian.

Early Modern Medievalisms: The Interplay between Scholarly Reflection and Artistic Production

How did Anglo-Saxons reflect on the experience of growing old? Was it really a golden age for the elderly, as has been suggested?

Due to the fact that the Frisian lands lacked major political centers in the Middle Ages and also because most of its monasteries suffered complete destruction in the second half of the 16th century, relatively few written documents concerning medieval Frisian history have survived. To analyze them…

Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500 provides a comprehensive survey of this complex and varied formative period of European history, covering themes as diverse as barbarian migrations, the impact of Christianisation, the formation of nations and states, the emergence of an expansionist commercial…

Generations of Leiden students and academics have done archaeological research into the early medieval history of Oegstgeest. This makes this old settlement one of the best-documented sites from that era. In a new book, Leiden researchers take stock.

The Corfu Papers

Leiden’s Institute for History has an exceptionally strong expertise in premodern European history in its global context, with specialists whose interests cover virtually the whole continent. We have a strong track record in leading larger research teams and work together with colleagues across Europe…

Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on Eastern Cuisine and Western Foodways

Mapping sanitary infrastructure in large urban societies in the Low Countries, 1200–1900

Politically speaking, the Frisian coastal area constitutes a special case in late medieval Europe since it was not subject to an overlord as it withstood feudalization in the 13th century. Its many sub regions, which were dominated by elites of small noblemen and freeholders, long time succeeded in…

Magistri Symonis (?) Questiones secunde partis Doctrinalis Alexandri de Villa Dei First Critical Edition from the Manuscript with Introduction, Appendices and Indexes

During the early modern period, many medieval manuscripts were cut up into strips of parchment which were reused to reinforce the bindings of newly printed books. Until recently, these reused pieces of medieval manuscripts only came to light when the early modern book binding was damaged and/or subjected…

Archaeometric analysis of glazed pottery assemblages from the Early Byzantine to the Early Modern periods in the Aegean.

Leiden’s Institute for History has an exceptionally strong expertise in Medieval European History, with specialists whose interests cover virtually the whole continent.

In the 19th century, Old English poems were claimed as cultural heritage by various non-Anglophone nations, including Scandinavians, Germans and Dutch. These competing nationalistic, cultural appropriations happened against the backdrop of a growing interest in early medieval English language and literature…

This research project studies the distribution and impact of medieval malaria in the Netherlands.

The representation of death children in Dutch literature through time

This collection brings into conversation several kinds of scholarship on medieval authorship which have tended to remain separate over the last two to three decades, a period of steadily increasing scholarly interest in this topic.

This thesis attempts to establish a dialogue between the modern and the medieval traditions in logic, by means of ‘translations’ of the medieval logical theories into the modern framework of symbolic logic, i.e. formalizations.

Combining cutting-edge quantitative approaches with more traditional book history approaches, this new book offers the first history of medieval manuscript destruction in England from the medieval period to the present.

The aim of this project is to gain a better understanding of daily life, diet, mobility and health in late medieval Zeeland, as well as to test the potential of multi-isotopic analyses on a Dutch assemblage.

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?

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Byzantine and Ottoman Archaeology, Amsterdam, 21-23 October 2011

It is often claimed—in both scholarly and popular sources—that guide dogs for the blind are a modern innovation. But as this project demonstrates clearly, guide dogs also existed during the medieval period.

In this course, we will focus on the fascinating history of the Arabic Medieval World. We will take you on a journey through the Middle Ages. All along, we will present you with historiographical debates and dilemmas and travel back and forth in time explaining to you how events of the past affected…

In an age before GoogleDocs and LinkedIn, 19th-century scholars relied on letter-writing for collaboration, peer-feedback and the building and sustaining of academic networks. Letters were a quick, efficient way to share insights, data and discoveries. Scholarly correspondence thus allows a vital behind-the-scenes…

This new study by professor Peter Hoppenbrouwers focuses on conflict in village communities of late medieval Drenthe in order to depict a typical peasant society in late medieval Europe.

How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

This research cluster explores processes of cultural creation, reception and transformation within a wide range of societal contexts from the early Middle Ages until c. 1800.

This book is witness to Hendrik Vanden Abeele’s research into the development, construction and creation of a present-day performance practice of late medieval plainchant, based partly on his work with the Belgian chant group Psallentes.

How did the life course, with all its biological, social and cultural aspects, influence the lives, writings, and art of the inhabitants of early medieval England?

University Lecturer Ahab Bdaiwi:

This project aims to answer the following questions: how did the landscape and geography of the local surroundings of Chalcis impact medieval to early modern productivity, habitation, mobility and interaction in a wider sense? And where are such changes and continuations still visible in the landsca…

This project incorporates spatiality into the discussion of medieval demography, allowing for a more nuanced view on medieval town populations. It establishes a maximum population count for towns for periods prior to 1400 and provides a means to compare the ranking of towns using size and density instead…

In Voices on Birchbark Jos Schaeken explores the major role that writing on birchbark – an ephemeral, even ‘throw-away’ form of correspondence and administration – played in the vibrant medieval merchant city of Novgorod and other cities in the Russian Northwest.

This book is a result of the collective research project Urban Societies in the Port Towns of Atlantic Europe in the Late Middle Ages. It studies the connections between diplomacy and trade from a comparative and transnational perspective throughout medieval Atlantic Europe.

The contributions in this volume seek to highlight the atypical features of the Hanse, and place them in a wider context of common roots, influences and parallel developments.

Onlangs verscheen het boek ‘Afgrond zonder vangnet’ van Yra van Dijk, hoogleraar Moderne Nederlandse Literatuur. In haar boek analyseert ze verschillende thema's in het werk van Arnon Grunberg.

An exploration across thirteen essays by critics, translators and creative writers on the modern-day afterlives of Old English, delving into how it has been transplanted and recreated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

In a podcast episode of 'New Books in History' Claire Weeda talks about her book 'Ethnicity in Medieval Europe 950-1250: Medicine, Power and Religion'.

The aim of the project is two-fold: first, to further scholarly understanding of the human dynamics that shaped the growth of Dorestad in a broader, international context; and second, to test the potential of multi-isotopic analyses on an early medieval Dutch assemblage.

In early medieval England, there was an interest in the history of the Roman Empire and kings adopted such imperial titles as 'imperator' or 'basileus'. How can we explain this interest and what functions did imperial ideas and the reception of the classical world serve in early medieval England?

An investigation into how racial stereotypes were created and used in the European Middle Ages.