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…

Leiden University social scientists have shown that customised intervention pays off. A new fundamental research-based approach in children who are in danger of going off the rails has delivered spectacular results.

Sharia Incorporated: A Comparative Overview of the Legal Systems of Twelve Muslim Countries in Past and Present

Human and animal cells are very complex: very different chemical processes are going on at the same time, but they are separated from each other because the cells are divided in compartments. These compartments may also have a profound effect on the potential efficacy of therapeutics, because the drug…

This thesis describes the importance of being able to control the selectivity of potential drug candidates.

This thesis describes how different colours of light affect various aspects of the growth and development of Arabidopsis and tomato plants⁠.

PhD defence

This book examines how Muslim communities in the Netherlands perceive and experience extremism, counter-radicalisation policies, and Islamophobia.

Promotor: Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink Co-promotor: Dr. B.E. Snaar

Research on papyri has provided new insights into the history of the origins of Islam. Petra Sijpesteijns’s book,'Shaping a Muslim State', is based on these ancient Arabic letters and documents. Her new research on a Viennese collection of untranslated papyri is expected to produce more discoveries.

In October, LUCIS and NIMAR will host a two-day workshop in honor of the 50th anniversary of Islam Observed, Clifford Geertz' comparative study of Islam in Morocco and Indonesia. Send in your proposal and get a chance to share your work in Rabat this fall.

We are happy to announce that GARDEN VI will be held February 23rd, 2019 at the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo (DAIK). The conference is jointly organised by the DAIK, the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo and the American University Cairo!

The Leiden University Shii Studies Initiative (LUSSI) is hosting a two-day online conference on Islam and Evolution.

Promotor: M. Franx, Co-Promotor: I.F. Labbé

Leiden’s Institute for History has an exceptionally strong expertise in premodern European history in its global context, with specialists whose interests cover virtually the whole continent.

Facts, Fears and the Future of Islamic Rules on Family Relation in the West

In the period between the First and the Second World War, many Muslim intellectuals came to Europe. What impact did they have on each other’s, as well as on European thinking, and how were they in turn influenced? Leiden Islam expert Dr Umar Ryad has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to investigate…

Songbirds as vocal learners learn their songs and song preference from social tutors⁠. Tutor choice for both song and preference learning are important to characterize for understanding individual learning performance and cultural transmission of song⁠.

Egyptian temple culture was thought to be declining in the Ptolemaic era, after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. Nothing could be further from the truth, says Egyptologist Carina van den Hoven. Temple culture was very much alive and kicking. PhD defence 16 February.

In early medieval England, there was an interest in the history of the Roman Empire and kings adopted such imperial titles as 'imperator' or 'basileus'. How can we explain this interest and what functions did imperial ideas and the reception of the classical world serve in early medieval England?

Did early farmers deliberately use animal manure on their fields?

Religion, Philosophy, and the Pre-modern World

From ca. 1540 to 1600, thousands fled the war-stricken Southern Low Countries to the British Isles, Germany, and the Northern Low Countries. Research on this displacement crisis, central to the formation of the Netherlands and Belgium, reflects 21st-century debates on migration and language: language…

Aristocratic dynasties have long been regarded as fundamental to the development of early modern society and government. Yet recent work by political historians has increasingly questioned the dominant role of ruling families in state formation, underlining instead the continued importance and independence…

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo is an academic centre providing services for scholars and students from the supporting universities.

The Dutch and English East India Companies were formidable organizations that were gifted with expansive powers that allowed them to conduct diplomacy, wage war and seize territorial possessions. But they did not move into an empty arena in which they were free to deploy these powers without resista…

This research project is an integral part of its mother-programme NEXUS1492 ERC Synergy Project directed by Prof. Corinne Hofman. Overarchingly, it aims at understanding and bridging from the archaeological perspective the late pre-colonial and early colonial history of the Southeastern Caribbean macroregion…

At our regular panel discussions we bring together scholars and other experts to discuss a current topic that captures the interest of the general public as well as academics.

What performance criteria does a new technology have to fulfill in order to be added to the list of future energy options and what constraints exist in terms of broad market penetration?

Marietje Beemsterboer defended her thesis on 12 June 2018 (in Dutch)

The World of a Mid-Eighth-Century Egyptian Official

ASLU 28 Michalis Karambinis (2015)

In this paper, Andrea Malaya M. Ragragio and Myfel D. Paluga recast new light on the historical tattooing of the “Pintados,” or the the name by which the inhabitants of the Visayas Islands (in the central Philippines) were called by Spanish documenters in the sixteenth century. This is one of their…

The article investigates the origins of Indo-European languages in Asia by 65 coupling ancient genomics to archaeology and linguistics.

Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

My ERC Starting Grant, funded with €1.5 million for 5 years as part of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, is focused on building the early warning system WARN-D to reliably forecast depression in young adults before it occurs. Why depression, and why prediction?

Southern Crossings: Indian activists and the Afro-Asian movement in the early Cold War era

By the end of the sixteenth century, stories about the Revolt in the Low Countries (c. 1567-1648) had begun to spread throughout Europe. These stories had very different authors with very different intentions.

Humanities, Institute for History

This month, the NISIS publication “Islamic Studies in the Twenty-first Century: Transformations and Continuities” was published by Amsterdam University Press. This volume brings together contributions of various speakers at past NISIS Autumn Schools, providing an overview of important issues in the…

At LUCIS we offer a varied programme of scholarly meetings (conferences, workshops) which reflect our multidisciplinary and comparative view on Islam and Muslim societies in past and present.

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.