Team Dutch and Colonial History

Research at the department of Environmental Biology

In developing cooperation with Indonesia, Leiden University focuses on projects that benefit culture, nature, society and economy, in Indonesia as well as in the Netherlands.

At Leiden University, your curiosity comes first. You’re given the space to explore what interests you and where your strengths lie. You learn to look at issues from different perspectives and work together on societal challenges that matter now and in the future. You do this in Leiden and The Hague:…

Do you want to go for a full academic programme? In that case, the next step after obtaining your bachelor’s is a master’s degree (MSc or MA) at a Dutch or international university. You will find that the Science for Sustainable Societies bachelor’s programme qualifies you for many master’s programm…

This lecture will be hosted on Thursday, 21 May 2026 at 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm.

NestWatch uses smart birdhouses to research how the city affects the development of young birds.

Perec’s Lieux project consists of texts describing the author's places of memory, photographs, personal documents and ephemera collected in the street.

Both on a personal and institutional level, the staff of Leiden CADS collaborates with:

The Archaeology of Imperial Landscapes examines the transformation of rural landscapes and societies that formed the backbone of ancient empires in the Near East and Mediterranean. Through a comparative approach to archaeological data, it analyses the patterns of transformation in widely differing imperial…

Whispering Wind (Fluisterende wind), a sound artwork by Edwin van der Heide, is situated in the passage that cuts right under the P.J. Veth building of Leiden University.

Covering all seven countries on the isthmus, this volume presents the first collection of original linguistic studies on Central American Spanish varieties, which have long been neglected in Hispanic Linguistics.

Arie van Steensel and Ariadne Schmidt (eds.)

Projects in the department of Environmental Biology

In this minor programme, students will become familiar with the nature and scope of violence; the ways in which it impacts public order, and the ways in which society can respond to and, ultimately, prevent violence.

Across the early modern Atlantic world, news and information were commodities just as valuable as sugar, tobacco or cotton.

How are night spaces imagined, produced, experienced and narrated by migrant communities in Europe? This research project considers this question in eight European cities: Aarhus, Amsterdam, Berlin, Cork, Galway, Lisbon, London, Rotterdam. Authorities have historically wrestled with the issue of night-time…

This project aims to answer the following questions: how did the landscape and geography of the local surroundings of Chalcis impact medieval to early modern productivity, habitation, mobility and interaction in a wider sense? And where are such changes and continuations still visible in the landsca…

Colonialism Inside Out: Everyday Experience and Plural Practice in Dutch Institutions in Sri Lanka (c. 1700-1800)

The Faculty of Humanities has two advisory groups for Diversty & Inclusion: one for staff members and one for students.

In the interdisciplinary introductory courses taught by experts from both universities you will gain a sound basic knowledge in the field of Industrial Ecology. Further on in the programme, you can follow specialisation courses that fit in with your personal interests. You will delve into important…

New Approaches to Understanding the Eastern Mediterranean during Byzantine and Ottoman Times

This project applies a social-historical approach to examine and contrast various groups of African-American slave refugees who sought freedom within North America between 1800 and 1860. It innovatively distinguishes between different “spaces of freedom” for runaway slaves, namely sites of formal, semi-formal,…

What was the function of the Dutch Protestant Church in Sri Lankan society? Why did people relate to the Church and how did conversion influence their life course?

Investigating the emergence of complex societies in Chalcolithic Cyprus.

On the 24th of November Aditi Mukherjee successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Bones hold a wealth of information about a person’s life, revealing details about where they came from, how old they were when they died and what diseases they may have had. Scientists can use this data to piece together aspects of an individual's life, offering valuable insights that can help address…

In the master’s programme in Archaeology, you can follow courses on the archaeology of Europe, deepening your understanding of the continent’s long history.

Aesthetic formations and cultural repertoires give meaning to our reality in ways that are never neutral. Focusing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and its global interlocutors, this project brings together a team of scholars from Leiden University who bring in inter-disciplinary, inter-area…

At Campus The Hague, the University works closely with diverse parties and institutions in the city.

Being a better neighbour to the nature around you

Rural cult places were of central importance in the non-urbanised areas of ancient Samnium, in central southern Italy. Their development, roles and functions in ancient society, however, remain important research questions. New excavations at one of these sanctuaries, the rural temple of S. Giovanni…

Global Challenges lie at the centre of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Bachelor programme at Leiden University College (LUC). Here, you will develop a many-sided, multi-layered, problem-solving, can-do attitude towards the problems the world faces today.

This project contests the assumption of criminologists that gender differences in recorded crime are static over time and that women are in general less likely to commit a crime than men.

Leiden University has had a campus in The Hague for over 20 years and sees the city as its second hometown.

Deadline: 26 June 2026.

Browse the latest articles and issues of Inter-Section.

Construction has now begun on MORE8: 141 rental homes for a broader group, with a supermarket and cafés.

Wouter Eekhout, our data magician, came in 3d place in the ‪#‎LinksSDGs‬ - Natural language processing and data visualization challenge.

The contributions in this volume seek to highlight the atypical features of the Hanse, and place them in a wider context of common roots, influences and parallel developments.

This book presents a new perspective on skateboarding, centred on the senses, skill acquisition, embodiment, and the concept of

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