A rejuvenated Naturalis opens its doors to the public on Saturday 31 August. Many researchers from Leiden University also work at the Naturalis research centre. Their workplace has also undergone a major facelift, and museum visitors can now watch their every move.

This project investigates diversifying and democratizing heritage through practices of “home-making”. We propose to research ‘home-making’ as a non-binary practice of combining memories of roots and routes, dwelling in the present, and desires for the future.

Authentication Processes in Ethnographic Museums

Learn about current approaches and ethical issues in heritage management and experience some of these in daily practice.

North, Middle and South America together constitute the single largest area in World Archaeology that is taught as a single focus. It is also the only major world area that saw societies develop from hunter-gatherers to early empires entirely independent from developments in Eurasia & Africa. It is,…

Prehistory of Amazonia seen from the kitchen

On 23 juni 2019, Zygimantas Juska defended his thesis 'The Role of Collective Redress Actions to Achieve Full Compensation for Violations of European Union Competition Law'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. T.R Ottervanger.

The material and intellectual presence of Egypt is at the heart of Western culture, religion and art from Antiquity to the present. This volume aims to provide a long term and interdisciplinary perspective on Egypt and its mnemohistory, taking theories on objects and their agency as its main point of…

In this article, Sophie Vériter examines the EU’s unprecedented ban on Russian state media following the invasion of Ukraine, using securitisation theory

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 role of material culture in early colonial encounters in the Caribbean

On Tuesday 7 December, Wouter Kalf gave a lecture on how All Knowlegde starts with intuïtions for the Studium Generalis series co-hosted by the Museum de Lakenhal. The lecture was in Dutch.

Replicas of artworks by world-famous artist and political activist Banksy are being exhibited at several locations in Amsterdam without the permission of the anonymous graffiti artist. Dirk Visser, Professor of Intellectual Property Law, says this is ‘clearly copyright infringement’.

Grasseni's contribution to this special feature on food cultures, food systems, and agriculture in Europe builds upon her ongoing project Food citizens? Collective food procurement in European cities: solidarity and diversity, skills and scale.

The overarching goal of this thesis is to set the foundations, but also make the first essential steps towards establishing a comprehensive, mesoscopic, hydrodynamic theory of epithelial tissues. The stage is set by an exhaustive study of topological defects in passive p-atic liquid crystals, singularities…

This book reveals how one publishing firm's editorial strategy helped to legitimate European colonialism in the early modern era.

What practical steps can we take to resolve cross-border claims to looted art and prevent illicit trafficking in cultural goods? That's what the European Parliament asked Leiden legal scholar Evelien Campfens. Her advice: develop a registration system, issue art with a ‘passport’ and set up a European…

Lecture

ACPA alumna Dr. Itandehui Jansen is currently working on a new experimental film. The project researches sustainable filmmaking approaches, while exploring Indigenous Futurisms through film practice. The project is a continuation of Jansen’s research for the AHRC scoping project Sustainable Materials…

What is the iconography of propaganda specifically as it relates to the historical development of political ideologies in modern Egypt and how was/is this propaganda disseminated among creative fields such as cinema, art, monuments, architecture, and literature?

A technique originally developed for satellite imaging can now be used to recover pictographic texts from underneath the surface of a five hundred year old Mexican manuscript.

How can archaeological datasets reveal the interplay between past indigenous understandings of the surrounding world and resilient and sustainable ways of life in the Isthmo-Colombian Area?

What are the immediate and lasting effects of the colonial encounters on indigenous Caribbean cultures and societies and what were the intercultural dynamics that took place during the colonisation processes? How can the study of indigenous Caribbean histories contribute to a more sophisticated awareness…

Natalia Grincheva (2020). Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-8153-6999-8, 164 pp., £27.99 (paperback).

Private collectors John Steegh and Harrie Teunissen from Dordrecht have donated their entire collection of maps, city plans and atlases to Leiden University Libraries (UBL). In almost 40 years they brought together circa 17,000 map sheets and 2,300 atlases and travel guides. Especially the thematic…

On a thursdaymorning our students were guided around a new exhibition in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. This exhibition displayed photographs and documents from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Western Arabian Peninsula.

What socio-cultural transformations did indigenous communities in the Lesser Antilles undergo from the late precolonial to the early colonial period in response to Amerindian­ European-African cultural encounters? How did Amerindian populations realign themselves in response to the colonisation…

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.

Archaeology in Leiden encompasses the study of societies, cultures, and human behaviour from the past, aiming to reconstruct and revive them. With our mix of education and research you lay a strong foundation for an international career in archaeology or heritage management.

The Collective Experience of Empathic Data Systems (CEEDs) consortium developed novel integrated technologies that support experiencing, analysing and understanding of very large datasets.

Combining cutting-edge quantitative approaches with more traditional book history approaches, this new book offers the first history of medieval manuscript destruction in England from the medieval period to the present.

As of February, Pepijn Reeser steps down as the project director of the Taalmuseum (the Language Museum). Exhibition designer and project manager Tessa Askamp takes over his role.

Investigating domestic crafts and subsistence activities through experiments and material analysis

Memory and Identity is one of the six research themes of the LUCAS Modern and Contemporary cluster.

This Conference volume unites a wide range of scholars working in the fields of history, archaeology, religion, art, and philology in an effort to explore new perspec-tives and methods in the study of primary sources from premodern South and Southeast Asia.

On Saturday October 16, the special exhibition ‘Shared Sky: Canvases of the Universe’ opens in the Old Observatory in Leiden. The exhibit takes a cultural look at the starry sky by Aboriginal Australian and South African artists, and features colorful artwork that explores how these Indigenous cultures…

Contemporary Maya Calendars

The exhibition Leiden celebrates – 450 years of parades at Museum De Lakenhal shows how parades and society have changed through the centuries. Alumnus and historian Danielle van Goethem worked on the exhibition. She gives a preview.

Like many others, Ruurd Halbertsma has had a rollercoaster of a year. His museum, the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO), was closed for a long while because of the lockdown. Visitor numbers picked up again from September, but it the next few weeks will be tense now the hospitals are full again. Halbertsma:…

There is a growing demand throughout the world for ways to understand and preserve cultural heritage. Heritage has a crucial role to play because it strengthens societies and promotes understanding among cultures. Leiden expertise in the area of heritage spans the whole world.