The two-year MA in Chinese Studies, a specialisation of Leiden University’s master's in Asian Studies, combines content courses with intensive and advanced language training, outstanding teaching, and world-class resources to bring you the only qualification of its calibre offered in the Netherlands…

We celebrate Leids Ontzet, the Relief of Leiden, on Monday 3 October. This means that all University buildings in Leiden will be closed. The University buildings on Campus The Hague will be open, but there will be no classes.

As part of the ongoing cooperation programme between LEAD at Leiden University and the National University of Singapore since 1999, the Singapore Institute of Biology (SIBiol) had requested the LEAD Programme to participate in the Commemoration of ‘Fifty Years of SIBIOL’ in Singapore in 2004, and as…

Prof. Hermen Overkleeft has been awarded the 2015 Jeremy Knowles Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry for his innovative and insightful development of activity-based protein probes for the imaging and identification of enzymes in health and disease.

On 26 November 2014 Prof. Dr. Thomas Bäck gives the Cleveringa lecture at the University of Calgary in Canada entitled: Innovation: Can we use principles of evolution to guide it?

Every year on 26 November Leiden University commemorates the protest speech given by Professor Cleveringa against the Nazis. At least 663 students, staff and alumni of the University lost their lives during the Second World War, yet little was known about these victims. PhD candidate Adriënne Baars…

The European Research Council has awarded an Advanced Grant to Prof. dr. Maarten E.R.G.N. Jansen for the research project

Stijn Bussels will attend the two-day conference on The Tableau Vivant – Across Media, History, and Culture at the Colombia University of New York. He will deliver a paper on ‘‘Restored Behaviour’ and the Performance of the City Maiden in Joyous Entries into Antwerp’.

Past objects offer a wealth of information about life in earlier times. Loe Jacobs is an expert in making earthenware objects, using the same methods and means used in earlier times.

Considering Mesoamerican Precolonial books as material objects

Between 1798 and 1813 successive regimes attempted to enforce a fundamental geographical and administrative redivision of the Netherlands. The provinces that had been sovereign states within the Republic of the United Netherlands for over two centuries were dissolved and replaced by ‘departments’, subordinate…

Diplomatica: A Journal of Diplomacy and Society addresses the broad range of work being done across the social sciences and the humanities that takes diplomacy as its focus of investigation.

Together with members of indigenous communities Leiden researchers preserve and disseminate philosophical, historical and medical knowledge.

At LUCIS we offer a varied programme of scholarly meetings (conferences, workshops) which reflect our multidisciplinary and comparative view on Islam and Muslim societies in past and present.

To understand which groups turn against their government, you need to understand the political culture in which they grew up, what they expect from a ‘state’ and what alternatives there are. With its long interdisciplinary experience, ASCL is often considered to be a regional expertise centre. But this…

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

One of the three long-term research interests of our group concerns the Transformation of the Roman World (c AD 450-900).

Volume 72 of the Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art is dedicated to the relationship of art and death in the Low Countries and its diaspora, from premodern times to the present. The editors welcome contributions on works of art and architecture (paintings, prints, sculptures, objects of applied…

Do you live in Egypt and have you always wondered about all the pharaonic heritage surrounding you? This spring NVIC organizes a beginner’s level, introductory course in Egyptology. In 6 richly illustrated lessons, the history of ancient Egypt will be brought to life, both chronologically as well as…

The KNIR seminar 'Reasoning to Believe' will concentrate on early modern sermons, a genre of tremendous impact on European culture not just in the period of the Reformation but throughout. We will lecture on the practice of sermons in the period 1200-1650 throughout and beyond Europe, concentrating…

Gert Oostindie, Emeritus Professor of Colonial and Postcolonial History, is this year’s Cleveringa Professor at Leiden University. He was appointed by the University on 4 October. In his inaugural lecture on 24 November, entitled Courage and Disregard, he will talk about (academic) freedom in relation…

MIDDELBURG/GENEVA – The president of the United Nations Human Rights Council has invited the Zeeland Archives from the Netherlands, to Geneva on March 20th in order to present its project about the historical slave voyage aboard The Unity (1761-1763).

Frank van Vree, Emeritus Professor of War, Conflict and Memory Studies at the University of Amsterdam (UVA), is the new Cleveringa Professor at Leiden University this year.

Like every year, our institute organized the Cleveringa lecture to commemorate the courageous speech held by professor Rudolph Cleveringa on the 26th of November in 1940.

To commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Resolution 1325, this introduction discusses the state of the field in the women peace and security (WPS) agenda and outlines the challenges to implementation. It begins by ntroducing the current gaps we see in WPS practice, many of which are driven by…

On 17 November 2023, Dr Mark Klaassen participated in a seminar commemorating the 20th anniversary of the EU Family Reunification Directive. The event, initiated by Dr Karen Geertsema and Professor Tineke Strik, was hosted by the Centre for Migration Law at Radboud University in Nijmegen.

On Tuesday 3 October we will celebrate the Relief of Leiden, so all Leiden University premises will be closed that day. The University premises at our campus in The Hague will remain open (with the exception of Anna van Buerenplein/Leiden University College).

On 26 November 1940, Professor Cleveringa – at the time the Dean of Leiden Law School – spoke out in protest against the decision of the Nazi Occupying Powers to dismiss Jewish academics. Every year Leiden University appoints a professor as rotating Cleveringa Chair, whose task, amongst others, is to…

In March 2021, Assistant Professor Valentina Carraro took part in an expert roundtable providing recommendations to the United Nations Secretary-General on turning into action the goals of the Declaration on the Commemoration of the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the United Nations (UN75 Declaration).

On Wednesday 3 October we will celebrate the Relief of Leiden, so all Leiden University premises will be closed that day. The University premises at our campus in The Hague will remain open (with the exception of Anna van Buerenplein/Leiden University College).

Recently, a pro-Palestine demonstration was held outside the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam during its opening, which was being attended by President Herzog of Israel. Wilders’ response? ‘It smells like a political campaign by the far-left mayor of Amsterdam. Irresponsible.’

Some 5000 years ago the people of the corded ware culture exchanged ideas about death on a continental scale. There were strong gender differences in these ideas: men were buried in an international style, and women in a local style. This discovery was made by archaeologist Quentin Bourgeois.

On 1 February 2014 the second issue of the Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference, titled 'Death: Ritual, Representation and Remembrance', was published.

On November 25, Dr Araceli Rojas presented her book El tiempo y la sabiduría: un calendario sagrado entre los ayöök de Oaxaca. The event took place in the Central Public Library of the State of Oaxaca, in the heart of Oaxaca City, at 7 pm.

The Upper and Lower Houses of the Dutch Parliament are struggling with how tolerance should best be interpreted. As a result, the freedom in the Netherlands for people who hold alternative views is diminishing. This is Floris Mansvelt Beck’s conclusion on the basis of his PhD research. Defence on 2…

From 12 – 16 May, prof. Fokkens and five RMA students (Kiki de Bondt, Jordy Aal, Mette Langbroek, Gwendolynn de Groote and Bastiaan Steffens) visited Cambridge for a two-day workshop with prof. Marie Louise Sørensen, staff and students of Cambridge University, and a number of the members of the Cambridge…

Congratulations to David Fontijn, who has been recognized by the University with the title of full Professor of the Archaeology of Early Europe.

To what extent is the image of the Taino settlements on Hispaniola representative for the whole island, or is it only related to a few large settlements of known caciques?

The one-year master's in History, Arts and Culture, a specialisation of Leiden University’s MA in Asian Studies, allows you to focus on one or more countries or regions of pre-modern, modern or contemporary Asia.

Using enslaved people as servants, becoming an administrator in the Dutch West India Company or making uniforms for the colonial army. Many people from Leiden played a role in colonialism and slavery. Historians are conducting preliminary research and finding striking examples.

Dr. Bettina Reitz-Joosse, postdoctoral researcher in the Classics department, has received a Niels Stensen Fellowship.

Like every year, the NVIC with the support of the Netherlands Embassy in Cairo, organised a Cleveringa lecture to commemorate the courageous speech by Professor Rudolph Cleveringa on the 26th of November in 1940, in which he protested the 'Berufsverbot' imposed on his Jewish colleagues by the Nazi…

Emeritus Professor Ben Lugtenberg received ‘The Arima Award for Applied Microbiology’ from the IUMS (International Union of Microbial Societies) for his life-time contributions to this field.

Professor Niels Blokker, Schermers Chair and Professor of International Institutional Law, and Dr Brian McGarry, Assistant Professor of Public International Law (Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies), organised a first-of-its-kind conference at the headquarters of the International Criminal…

Michiel Pronk defended his thesis on 30 March 2016

Leiden’s beadle, Willem van Beelen, is retiring on 29 February. How does he look back on his career and what do those in the know have to say about him?