The interdisciplinary minor American Studies offers a survey of U.S. history, literature and culture from the establishment of the first colonies on the North American continent in the 15th century to the present.

The master’s programme in North American Studies at Leiden University takes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the United States, with a particular emphasis on examining key aspects of American history, culture, and literature.

Are you thinking about studying North American Studies? Learn more and watch the introduction video and the programme presentation.

Latin America is a region with an immense cultural diversity and a colorful, fascinating and sometimes complicated past and present. Get to know the culture, history and the Spanish or Portuguese language of Latin America and develop yourself into a valuable region specialist with a critical worldvi…

The master’s programme of Latin American Studies offered by Leiden University supports the teaching and research of the social, cultural, historical, and linguistic diversity of contemporary Latin America, a region of mind-blowing diversity and global impact.

The two-year interdisciplinary research master’s in Latin American Studies addresses cutting-edge debates on the social and cultural issues in present-day Latin America and the Caribbean region.

Are you thinking about studying Latin American Studies? Learn more and watch the introduction video and the programme presentation.

From September 1, 2017, the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) will be awarding several four-year scholarships to complete a PhD in American History / American Studies.

Leiden University and the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) in Middelburg, previously the Roosevelt Study Center, will sign an agreement on 16 December 2017 confirming a strategic partnership.

It's easier to understand Trump's America if you have a sound knowledge of the country's history. Research on the US has been given an impetus with the renewed Roosevelt Institute for American Studies. The institute in Middelburg reopened on 20 April with Leiden University as a key partner.

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.

The NWO-funded Vidi project “American foreign policy and liberalism” challenges the idea that the United States has created and sustained a “liberal international order” since World War II. It instead explores the ways in which illiberal ideologies – such as those underpinning racial hierarchy at home…

This book explores how public health concerns and political agendas influenced each other in the US over the past century.

How to related figures of savages to conceptions of history?

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

This dissertation studies the construction of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a cultural icon in American memory, particularly by FDR himself.

The ASA Board of Directors notes that, serving for almost a decade, the editors transformed History in Africa “into a peer-reviewed journal that not only engages a broad range of historical issues but commands respect throughout the field.” The award will be presented during the African Studies Association…

On December 18th, Viktorija Kostadinova succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Viktorija on this great result.

In the 60s and 70s, Black Power groups were also active in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This is what PhD candidate Debby Esmeé de Vlugt has discovered.

Study information

How was FDR's image constructed—by himself and others—as such a powerful icon in American memory?

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A comparative anthropology of commercial insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

Håvar Solheim started his PhD at the Institute for History and the Centre for Study and Documentation of Latin-America, Amsterdam (CEDLA) April 1st 2011.

Drawing on the analogical lessons of the Great War, this article uses applied history to analyze how the four parallels discerned can help us make sense of contemporary Sino-American rivalry

The presents thesis investigates the extent to which Chinese, Dutch and American speakers of English are mutually intelligible. Intelligibility of vowels, simplex consonants and consonant clusters was tested in meaningless sound sequences, as well as in words in meaningless and meaningful short sent…

Archaeology

Mexico is currently facing an unprecedented social and political crisis, with expanding criminal and political violence, rampant impunity and crumbling political institutions. Next to the daily report of anonymous victims of violence, last summer in Central Mexico at least 15 citizens were executed…

Through a lens that examines the intersection of ageing, gender, class, and migration, this project addresses the “care deficit” in European countries and the employment of migrant women from Latin America to fill this deficit.

Through a lens that examines the intersection of ageing, gender, class, and migration, this project addresses the 'care deficit' in European countries and the employment of migrant women from Latin America to fill this deficit.

Study information

This book explores how changes in the patterns of cooperation and conflict among states, regional actors and transnational non-state actors have affected the rise of emerging global powers and the suggested decline of US leadership. Scholars, students and policy practitioners who are interested in the…

This project, South American population history revisited: multidisciplinary perspectives on the Upper Amazon (SAPPHIRE), investigates population dynamics in western South America on the basis of traces in the geographical, genetic, archaeological, ethnological, and linguistic record.

If you’ve graduated from the programme and you want to further your academic education you can continue with a master’s programme. It will earn you the title of Master of Arts (MA) and significantly increase your chances of finding a position at academic level.

Promotor: G.R. de Snoo Co-promotor: C.J.M. Musters

This study addresses and explains the issue of negative descriptions of the Arab Other in modern Iranian thought.

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.

The chief aim of this study is to explore how classical Persian poetry and the Persian mysticism that is interwoven with the poetry have been used in the new politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially during the Iran-Iraq war.

The First Americans exhibition in the National Museum of Ethnology showcases the resilience and creativity of native Americans. Striking artworks, fashion and prints show that the past is never far away. Artist Jacob Meders was inspired by 16th-century prints from the Leiden University Library. The…

On 3 December 2019, Hanna Bosdriesz defended her thesis 'Furthering the fight against impunity in Latin America: the contributions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to domestic accountability processes'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. L.J. van den Herik and Prof. M.A.H. van…

As of 1 August 2017, Damian Pargas is the new Leiden University Chair of the History and Culture of North America.