Many students dread writing a thesis. Master’s student Laura Robustella's practice-based thesis shows that it is well worth the effort. She developed an art exhibition based on her master’s thesis.

Liselotta Jahnke, Jason Irwin, Rachel Cruickshank and Paula Kovač are the new student members of the Programme Committee (OLC). This committee advises the Executive Board and the Faculty Board of CADS about educational matters, such as determining the Course and Examination Regulations and evaluating…

The Leiden Lectures in Media | Art | Politics (MAP) is a series of talks organized by Pepita Hesselberth and Yasco Horsman. Speakers from various academic backgrounds and in different stages of their careers reflect on diverging ways in which technological and social changes challenge and transform…

Essays in Honour of Olivier P. Nieuwenhuyse

Nadine Akkerman's book Invisible Agents is the very first study to analyse the role of early modern women spies. The book foregrounds the agency of early-modern women, offering a corrective to the gender bias implicit in modern historiography.

Ian Simpson is a relatively new face at the Faculty of Archaeology. Starting as an assistant professor in the Heritage and Society department in 2018, he is one of the faculty’s members in critical heritage studies and looks both at the past as well as the future. ‘I study how heritage can be employed…

Mindfulness is all the rage. But what is mindfulness and is this popular form of medication completely harmless? Come to the workshop on 19 September by Chris Goto-Jones, Professor of Philosophy and mindfulness therapist, and find out for yourself.

The Leiden-Delft-Erasmus (LDE) alliance signed a collaboration agreement with the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology on 23 September.

In Renaissance Florence, humanists wrote Latin poems fashioning their city as the new Rome, and members of the Medici family as Roman rulers. How can we explain this practice?

Uniting an international consortium of scholars, the Skandapurāṇa Project comprises a team of researchers working in fields across the Humanities. We are creating a critical edition of a foundational work of purāṇic literature and, in doing so, tracing the dynamics of a textual tradition to better understand…

With her background in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leonie Siepmans brings a unique perspective to the corporate world. Find out what an anthropologist does in a big company.

This project, South American population history revisited: multidisciplinary perspectives on the Upper Amazon (SAPPHIRE), investigates population dynamics in western South America on the basis of traces in the geographical, genetic, archaeological, ethnological, and linguistic record.

How do we navigate the continuously developing landscape in research integrity, ethics, and open science? Anna van 't Veer and Eiko Fried discuss the underlying principles and values of science with all psychology units in their Responsible Scholarship workshop.

What was the relationship between women and modern media in different parts of Asia in the 20th century? Under what historical and social conditions did women achieve prominence in popular music in Asia?

In The Golden Mean of Languages, Alisa van de Haar sheds new light on the debates regarding the form and status of the vernacular in the early modern Low Countries, where both Dutch and French were local tongues. The fascination with the history, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary of Dutch and French…

How can theories about modern disinformation help to understand how Roman documentary fictions functioned?

This project investigates the globalization and cultural mediation of palliative care practices, policies and discourses.

Prof. J. (Jos) Schaeken, Professor of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Cultural History, will be the interim Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 1 March 2025. He will succeed the present Vice-Dean, Mirjam de Baar, who will complete her second term on that date.

From 2020 to 2023, Professor Miguel John Versluys and his research group will participate in an international consortium co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union in the framework of the international project “Alexandria: (Re)activating Common Urban Imaginaries”. This ERC project…

Court cases that get out of hand are enacted again and again, according to PhD candidate Tessa de Zeeuw. De Zeeuw: ‘Even if the court comes to the correct judgement, from a legal point of view, the issues that appear in a case such as that of Lucia de Berk continue to

Benjamín Maldonado, Orestes Kyrgiakis, Roos Capel and Iskra Cvitković are the new student members of the Programme Committee (OLC). The board advises the Executive Board and the Faculty Board about educational matters, such as the determination of the Course and Examination Regulations and the evaluation…

An Honours Class about the ostensibly unrecognisable worlds of insular Southeast Asia teaches students a fundamental piece of wisdom:

In October, Sophie Starrenburg was elected as a member of the Coordinating Committee of the ESIL Interest Group on the International Law of Culture. She will work alongside Giovanni Carlo Bruno (Italian National Research Council), Andrzej Jakubowski (Polish Academy of Studies), and Lucas Lixinski (University…

We are pleased to invite abstracts for a conference on ‘Advancing Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights in a Polarised, Digitalised, and Unequal World’ to be held at Leiden University on 4 and 5 September 2025, in collaboration with Netherlands Network for Human Rights Researh (NNHRR).

After an extensive content analysis of the coalition agreement, a sharp fall can be seen in the focus on education & culture, science & technology and defence. This is the conclusion of university public administration professors Gerard Breeman and Arco Timmermans. They compared the content with all…

Are there cross-cultural principles of law?

Prof. dr. Marcel Cobussen will take part in a research network project in London.

Anthropologist Sander Hölsgens explores how skateboarding philosophy can revolutionise education by embracing failure, fostering creativity, and building supportive learning communities. Read his research on The Conversation.

Leiden University 2016 thesis awards were awarded to Kaspar Pucek (History), Mariska Meijer (Bio Medical Sciences) and Paul Kozowyk (Archaeology).

This study documents and translates the Saa (Zapotec) cultural heritage of the Bene’ Ya’a/En’ne I’ya peoples, the Zapotec inhabitants of the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca.

This PhD project investigates specific types of allusions used by Russian native speakers, namely references to classical Russian literature. The research includes the analysis of 1) how native speakers use allusions, 2) what type of discourse allusions are frequently used, and 3) how we can implement…

This project investigates properties of quantity expressions across languages from the perspective of how quantity is represented in the human brain.

Conference

Intensive 5-day programme on the world-famous Antwerp-based printing and publishing house founded by Christopher Plantin in 1555. International experts will discuss how it developed the production and distribution of religious books and related illustrations and prints in the following centuries.

This project looks at the Ancient Greek language from the perspective of the ordinary writer. A large corpus of more than 60.000 Greek texts on papyrus, from private letters to petitions and contracts, offers an excellent opportunity to study the Greek language as written by non-literary writers in…

MPs in the Netherlands are first and foremost motivated by their direct environment, i.e. the parliamentary and partisan institutions.

Cynthia van Vonno, political scientist at Leiden University, explains why individual MPs vote according to the party group line.

Chinese materia medica (CMM), comprising a diverse array of natural substances from plants, animals, and minerals, has been integral to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) throughout history. This study investigates the dynamic evolution of CMM, noting shifts in species for improved therapeutic effects…

The past decade, against the backdrop of a fragmented political landscape, has witnessed the greatest changes to the Netherlands since the aftermath of the Second World War. The labour market, the housing market, the energy market, the bank system, the pension system, the healthcare system, to name…

Archaeologist Quentin Bourgeois received an NWO Vidi grant to investigate the emergence of a pan-European culture in the third millennium BC. ‘We see ideas being shared across the entire continent in pre-literate societies. And not only that, for a thousand years, the same cultural ideas persist.’

When are you (sexually) mature? A KNAW grant will enable associate professor Rafal Matuszewski to organise an interdisciplinary workshop on this question.

Cultural Anthropologist Erik de Maaker published, together with Monica Janoswki (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), Stories across Borders: Myths of Origin and Their Contestation in the Borderlands of South and Southeast Asia in Southeast Asian Studies (SEAS).