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'?

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.

How can people and lions sustainably coexist?

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) will be working with the ‘PhDs in the Humanities’ funding instrument.

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.

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.

Political Science: National and International Politics is a broad study with a lot of depth. You will study political issues at the local, national and international levels, from a variety of perspectives. You will be taught by renowned, committed professors. In Leiden you will find a real student city…

A Humanities degree gives you a solid start on the job market, as shown by the employment survey among alumni who graduated from 2020 through 2024.

Islam exists in global history with its richly variegated cultural and social realities. When these specific cultural contexts are marginalized, Islam is reduced to an ahistorical religion without the ability to contribute to humanity. This limited understanding of Islam has been a contributing factor…

What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us About Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves, Menno Schilthuizen reports from the front lines of evolutionary biology, on a quest to make sense of the origins, workings and evolution of our and other species’ reproductive selves.

The Career Service Humanities offers assistance while you’re a student and for a year after you graduate! We can help you with:

On 17 January 2024 Ying Wang successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Large carnivore population is globally declining as a result of the fragmentation of habitat, large prey depletion and retaliatory killing by pastoralists.

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?

Recently, the PhD thesis of Lolu Danso Eweje appeared entitled ’Development of human skin equivalents to unravel the impaired skin barrier in atopic dermatitis skin’.

Graduates in Humanities possess talents that are highly valued in the job market.

Are you curious about why people are the way they are - and how they change? At Leiden University, you’ll explore social behaviour, ideas and cultures, from the past to the present and from local to global. From major cities to world religions, from philosophical questions to education and upbringing…

Are you curious about why people are the way they are - and how they change? At Leiden University, you’ll explore social behaviour, ideas and cultures, from the past to the present and from local to global. From major cities to world religions, from philosophical questions to education and upbringing…

Are you interested in the neurocognitive and biological roots of learning, behaviour and emotions in children? If so, the programme in Applied Neuroscience in Human Development might be the specialisation you are looking for.

What are the patterns and processes of human mobility in the pre-colonial circum-Caribbean as revealed by burial populations and what are the underlying motives and socio-cultural principles on both micro- and macro-scales?

Valentina Carraro explores the relationship between overlapping UN human rights institutions, specifically the treaty bodies and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR)

From self-driving cars to innovative drug development: artificial intelligence (AI) will fundamentally change our lives in many different ways. We study this technology at a deep and fundamental level. And we seek answers to questions about liability and privacy, for example. Our researchers from…

Are you curious about why people are the way they are – and how they change? At Leiden University, you’ll explore social behaviour, ideas and cultures, from the past to the present and from local to global. From major cities to world religions, from philosophical questions to education and upbringing…

Are you curious about why people are the way they are – and how they change? At Leiden University, you’ll explore social behaviour, ideas and cultures, from the past to the present and from local to global. From major cities to world religions, from philosophical questions to education and upbringing…

Human Rights at Risk brings together social scientists, legal scholars, and humanities scholars to analyze the policy challenges of human rights protection in the twenty-first century.

Members of our research team give different types of presentations and lectures.

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

The Digital Humanities and Artificial Intelligence minor in the 2024-2025 academic year with options of 15 EC or 30 EC packages.

Explores the relationship between technics and humanity, tracing the emergence of a bio-technical conception of existence in contemporary continental philosophy. Suny Press

We are delighted to announce that the Digital Humanities and Artificial Intelligence minor will be offered in the 2025-2026 academic year.

Festschrift for Prof. Dr Raymond H.A. Corbey in celebration of his 70th birthday

What are the humanities? As the cluster of disciplines historically grouped together as “humanities” has grown and diversified to include media studies and digital studies alongside philosophy, art history and musicology to name a few, the need to clearly define the field is pertinent.

This book explores how physicists, astronomers, chemists, and historians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries employed ‘epistemic virtues’ such as accuracy, objectivity, and intellectual courage. In doing so, it takes the first step in providing an integrated history of the sciences…

Large carnivores and humans, along with their livestock, have co-existed for thousands of years. However, human population growth and an increase in economic activities are modifying the landscape for large carnivores and their prey.

Responsible AI for science and a strong and resilient society.

Are traces of fire use detectable in ancient hominin genomes?

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.

This website showcases Leiden University’s contribution to the SSH Sector Plans.

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.

Promotors: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo, Prof.dr. H. Leirs (Univ. Antwerpen), Co-promotor: H.H. de Iongh

This PhD-research is conducted to test the hypothesis that Gutenberg and consorts developed a standardised and even unitised system for the production of textura type, and that this system was extrapolated for the production of roman type in Renaissance Italy.

On the 21st of June, Marieke Meelen succesfully defended her PhD-thesis and graduated. LUCL congratulates Marieke on this great result.

Efficiently responding to others’ emotions has great survival value, especially for social species, such as primates, who establish close, long-term bonds with group members. The closest living relatives to humans are the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Studying these species, and comparing them on the exact…

Are you thinking about studying European and International Human Rights Law? Learn more and watch the videos.

Physicists have studied the astrophysical neutrino signal as reported by the IceCube collaboration from a different angle with their ANTARES detector. The Milky Way centre was an obvious prime suspect to be a source, but this hypothesis is now only closer to debunked than confirmed. Publication in Physical…

Central in this thesis are the various forms the research-teaching nexus can take in the university, especially in the Faculty of Humanities. The importance of a strong relation between research and teaching is advocated by many academics, but debate is going on about the forms this strenghthened relation…

The P.J. Cosijn Research Fellowship is an initiative to give promising Research MA students of Leiden University with an interest in Anglo-Saxon Studies the opportunity to conduct research on Old English language and literature. The Cosijn Fellowships are part of the ERC-funded project ‘Early Medieval…