In the summer school 'Medieval Religion' students will be challenged by specialists in the field of medieval religion to position and develop their own research in relevant scholarly and cultural contexts. The instructors will give masterclasses from their own specialties. Deadline for registrations:…

LUCIS is directed by Nathal Dessing, who is advised by a steering committee.

Chaider Bamualim defended his thesis on 9 September 2015

Is the American government behind the attacks on 11 September 2001? Could it be that the white contrails emitted by planes in the sky are actually ‘chemtrails’: chemicals that are deliberately being spread amongst us? And did the Dutch intelligence service order the murder of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn?…

LUCIS is an interfaculty knowledge centre offering a multidisciplinary and comparative view on Islam and Muslim societies.

Religion, Class, and the Postwar Development of the Dutch Welfare State. Dennie Oude Nijhuis.

Punching Back is a detailed ethnographic study that demonstrates that young Muslim women who kickbox develop agentive selves by challenging gender norms, challenging expectations, and living out their religious subjectivities.

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

ERC Starting Grant: The Van Manen Project. This five year project (2023-2028) is made possible with an ERC Starting Grant. It aims to (digitally) reunite all parts of the Van Manen Collection. This enables us to study it as a whole, helping us to understand the process of collection formation. More…

At the Institute’s Council meeting of last December the Institute’s biannual prize for teaching was awarded. The award is named after Carla Musterd, a former, highly valued, member of staff, who was famous for her unflinching dedication to teaching standards and excellence.

Religion and ethnicity are inextricably linked in discourse within and about Central Asia. One common narrative suggests that as a result of differences between historically sedentary and nomadic populations, ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks are naturally more religious and more likely to radicalise than their…

On 15 July 2019 Hans-Martien ten Napel started a new series on freedom of religion or belief for the London School of Economics research-led interdisciplinary Religion and Global Society Blog.

A KIEM grant was recently awarded to a diverse group of Leiden researchers, aiming to organise an interdisciplinary conference with the title ‘Ancient Religions and the Materiality of Danger’ in 2026. The topic of the conference marks a shift towards the study of the role of objects.

Kalsang Gurung is the first Tibetan to obtain his PhD in Leiden. He carried out research into the accounts of Shenrab Miwo, the founder of the Bön religion. Gurung demonstrates that these accounts do not reflect historical reality. PhD defence: 31 May.

Noah Millman defended his thesis on 26 May 2015

Jochem van den Boogert defended his thesis on 18 November 2015

What is the impact of Ramadan on patients with a bipolar disorder? What does it mean to be sensitive to psychiatric patients' religious beliefs? Driss Moussaoui, a Moroccan psychiatrist, talks about this in a video interview with Leiden University's Islam Centre LUCIS.

In this dissertation, the life account is constructed of of the founder of Bon Religion, Shenrab Miwo.

LUCSoR will be represented at the upcoming American Academy of Religion (AAR) conference by Dr. Corey Williams (Assistant Professor) and Sasha Sabbah-Goldstein (PhD Candidate). The conference takes place from 19-22 November 2016 in San Antonio, USA.

LUCSoR will be represented at the upcoming American Academy of Religion (AAR) conference by Dr. Corey Williams (Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Global Christianity) and Bas van Rijn (former BA and MA student). The conference takes place from 18-21 November 2017 in Boston, USA.

The University of Groningen is organizing a summer school on the topic of Medieval “Lived Religion” this summer. In this interdisciplinary summer school Masters and PhD students will be challenged by leading specialists dealing with textual and material sources of medieval religious cultures. They will…

This work analyzes ritual practices and knowledge related to the Mesoamerican calendar with the aim of contributing to the understanding of the use and conceptualization of this calendar system in the contemporary K’iche’ community of Momostenango, in the Highlands of Guatemala.

On 8 October 2021 (15.00-17.00) Prof. Dr Lena Liepe (Linnaeus University, Sweden) will hold a lecture entitled: "Exhibiting the Sacred: Holy Matter in Museum Displays".

This project looks at the current practices of marriage law in Indonesia. It examines the often ambiguous views different groups hold of marriage, from local villagers in Bengkulu to women’s activists in Jakarta, and how these relate to the development of national law on the one hand and local practices…

Professor Peter Bisschop, lecturer in Sanskrit and Ancient Cultures of South Asia, has been awarded a grant by the NWO Free Competition to fund his research into the rapid growth of Saivism in the sixth and seventh centuries in South and Southeast Asia. The research project, entitled ‘From Universe…

Professor Peter Bisschop, lecturer in Sanskrit and Ancient Cultures of South Asia, has been awarded a grant by the NWO Free Competition to fund his research into the rapid growth of Saivism in the sixth and seventh centuries in South and Southeast Asia. The research project, entitled ‘From Universe…

The latest issue of NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion debates dr. Markus Altena Davidsen’s vision for the future of religious studies in the Netherlands. Comparison, theory formation, and valorization are among the elements that Davidsen urges scholars of religion to prioritize in order…

Three students in Elpine de Boer’s class “Practicing Religious Studies” have been working together on a “Leren met de Stad” (“Learning with the City”) project with community centre Morschwijck, located in Leiden. The students were asked by the organization Incluzio to investigate to which extent cultural…

Inspired by a critical reconsideration of current monolithic approaches to the study of Greek religion, this book argues that ancient Greeks displayed a disquieting capacity to validate two (or more) dissonant, if not contradictory, representations of the divine world in a complementary rather than…

A new paperback edition of Brian Heffernan's book Freedom and the Fifth Commandment. Catholic priests and political violence in Ireland, 1919-21 was published by Manchester University Press in September 2016.

Key publications of the Computational Drug Discovery group

What is the impact of religion and its discourse on the lives of queer people in countries where LGBTQIA+ individuals are not accepted? University Lecturer Eduardo Alves Vieira wants to know just that. With an NWO-grant, he will take a closer look at the inclusive religion movement in Brazil.

In the context of the summer school "Medieval Religon" prof. Christopher M. Bellitto (Kean University) will give a keynote lecture on June 26th: "Politics and Religion in the Middle Ages and Today: Thoughts of an American Medievalist". This lecture is also open to those interested who do not participate…

How has interreligious encounter in Ogbómòsó created multiple religious belongings and identities among individuals and groups?

Taking as a point of departure the Italian American community in Boston and its process of collective remembrance surrounding Saint Anthony’s Feast, we address the limits and potential of montage.

Mining the unusually rich diaries, memoirs, and poems written by Netherlandish Catholics, Judith Pollmann explores how Catholic believers experienced religious and political turmoil in the generations between Erasmus and Rubens.

After the KHMW Brouwer Thesis Prize for History, Vicente Fischer de Miranda Rodrigues has also won the Cornelis Thiele Prize of the Dutch Society for Religious Studies.

The Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (co)organises various events during the year.