Since the emergence of humankind people have maintained social contacts and traveled widely, establishing interaction networks in which goods are traded and ideas are transmitted, increasingly on a global scale.

This article discusses the degree of independence that is required for national human rights institutions to function successfully.

At the Humanities Hub, researchers can immerse themselves in the world of Digital Humanities, while students get the opportunity to develop their digital and media skills within the field of the humanities. The lab spaces of LUCDH, the Faculty of Humanities, and Journalism and New Media provide modern…

AI has huge societal and economic potential and is widely used. But it also brings challenges: how do we combine human values with AI, how do we make AI more transparent and understandable, and what can AI and human cognition learn from each other, for example about language learning?

Advanced biotechnology allows us to select or alter the genetic makeup of human embryos. What limits do we impose on biotechnological intervention in nature and the human body? And whose call is that?

The HARVEST project explores the dietary choices that our hominin ancestors and relatives made, by recovering information on what they consumed, and how factors like environmental variation, intrinsic biology, and development of food processing technologies could have influenced their decisions.

Our Master Law in European and International Human Rights Law (LL.M.) looks at the various human rights protection mechanisms from a comparative perspective

In this article, Tom Buitelaar proposes a systematic framework for analyzing the impact of individual characteristics of peacekeeping leaders on the behaviour of field-level personnel in UN peacekeeping operations.

The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.

This multidisciplinary minor addresses the fascinating question how we, modern humans, got to be the way we are. Who were our ancestors? How does our morphology, genetic makeup, brain and behaviour relate to that of other species? How does our evolutionary past affect our susceptibility to diseases?…

The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration provides a complete exploration of the prominent themes, events, and theoretical underpinnings of the movements of human populations from prehistory to the present day.

Why did 'character', 'habit', and 'virtue' serve as key terms in late 19th and early 20th-century scholarly correspondences, biographies, and obituaries? Why did scholars around 1900 display so much interest in the working habits and character traits of what they called the 'scholarly self'?

Human AI is where artificial intelligence and machine learning meet philosophy, cognitive science, and the creative arts. Examples of research questions in this domain are: 'Can an algorithm be creative by human standards?', 'Can creative processes, such as composing music or writing poetry, be modelled?',…

There is considerable need for improved skin models to develop safe and efficient drugs for skin delivery as well as for cosmetic and chemical product testing on the skin.

On 18 March 2020, Hoko Horii defended her thesis ‘Child Marriage as a Choice. Rethinking agency in international human rights’. The doctoral research was supervised by prof. A.W. Bedner and prof. G.A. van Klinken.

Arabic Humanities Blog

The Humanities Hub is a central location in Huizinga designed to strengthen the collaboration, connection and exchange of ideas in teaching and research on humanities in the digital world.

This case study-based textbook in multivariate analysis for advanced students in the humanities emphasizes descriptive, exploratory analyses of various types of data sets from a wide range of sub-disciplines, promoting the use of multivariate analysis and illustrating its wide applicability. Fields…

The Leiden Human Evolution Collective (LHEC) is a network of researchers from Leiden University, LUMC, and Naturalis with an interest in human evolution. The collective brings together existing expertise in Leiden to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in research, teaching, and public outreach.

It is well-known that humans have significantly transformed ecosystems since their adoption of agriculture. However, in a deeper past, prehistoric hunter-gatherers may already have altered and modified their niche in ways that had major impacts on ecosystems.

On 18 June 2019, Peter Kempees defended his thesis 'Hard power and the European Convention on Human Rights'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. R.A. Lawson and Prof. H. Duffy.

The LUMC iPSC Hotel offers the generation of research grade human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from different tissue sources using state of the art reprogramming techniques.

Correctly interpreting the patterns of fire evidence in the archaeological record will illuminate the origin of human fire use.

Humanities are needed to make sense of social issues. Watch or listen to the stories of our experts who tell about their research and the impact on society. Get to know the world at Humanities!

Disciplinary History and Epistemology

This project focuses on the study of Neanderthal and early modern human behavior, primarily on the basis of stone tools, fauna and spatial patterns

This volume is themed around the interdependent relationship between humans and the environment, an important topic in the work of Corrie Bakels

S.S. Kolipaka’s thesis questions and investigates the survival prospects of reintroduced tigers and their offspring’s in the human dominated landscape of Panna tiger reserve in India.

Lecture

On 25 May, Roxane de Massol de Rebetz defended the thesis 'Beyond the dichotomy between migrant smuggling and human trafficking: a Belgian case study on the governance of migrants in transit'. The doctoral research was supervised by Maartje van der Woude, Joanne van der Leun and Masja van Meeteren.

A Humanities degree gives you a solid start on the job market. Here you can find up-to-date information about Humanities graduates on the job market, as well as alumni stories.

From now on, you can listen to the intriguing stories of our staff any time you wish! On this page you can find out more about the new podcast series of the faculty of Humanities.

The lecture series 'Humanity in the Automated State' examines how AI and automated systems are transforming government and public administration and what it means to be human within these digitised institutions.

At LUCL, researchers aim to contribute to a comprehensive and informed perspective on the human past.

At LUCL, researchers aim to contribute to a comprehensive and informed perspective on the human past.

If we want to build robots and computer systems that are not only smarter but also possess more social skills, we first need to find out more about how humans interpret information. Max van Duijn and Tessa Verhoef conduct research at the intersection of cognitive science and AI.

Our in-house human skin equivalents contain all stratum corneum (SC) barrier lipid classes, but have a reduced level of free fatty acids (FAs), of which a part is mono-unsaturated. These differences lead to an altered SC lipid organization and thereby a reduced barrier function compared to human skin.…

uman skin equivalents (HSEs) are in vitro 3D-skin models that mimic many aspects of the native human skin (NHS) and can be a valuable tool.

The advanced insights obtained for the CNS PBPK model development are currently used to develop advanced mathematical models for drug distribution prediction in other body tissues protected by barriers, such as the gut. The gut PBPK model will be linked to drug effects for treatment of colon cancer.

Thesis focused on uncovering the underlying mechanisms of the lysosomal storage disorders Gaucher's disease using chemical tools, biochemical assays and lipidomics.

Are you keen to develop your digital skills and critical thinking? Then the Digital Humanities and Cultural Analytics minor might be something for you.

This third issue of Ex Novo gathers multidisciplinary contributions addressing mobility to understand patterns of change and continuity in past worlds; reconsider the movement of people, objects, and ideas alongside mobile epistemologies, such as intellectual, scholarly or educative traditions, rituals,…

The Summer of Islamic Humanities was founded in 2025.

On Wednesday 13 December, Melanie Fink defended her doctoral thesis ‘Frontex and Human Rights: Responsibility in “Multi-Actor Situations” under the ECHR and EU Public Liability Law’. The supervisors are Rick Lawson and Jorrit Rijpma from Leiden, as well as Manfred Nowak, and Stephan Wittich from the…

During the development of the Humanities Campus, as many 'green choices' as possibile are being made. This concerns the buildings as well as the surrounding area. Making the campus more sustainable is measured using the BREEAM.NL method.