The Hague Diplomacy Podcast aims at bringing the themes of the journal's research off the page, and onto the discussion table. Each episode will feature a guest who will share their insights and personal experience within their practice of or research on diplomacy. Available via SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts…

The wave of restitutions expected after French President Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 promise to return stolen art to Africa has hit legal and political roadblocks. But while former colonial powers are shying away, it seems 'New World' countries have started doing more to repair crimes against First Natio…

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.

What can we learn from how maritime conflicts were managed in the past? What significance did Maritime Conflict Management have in shaping the standards of diplomacy and international law in pre-modern Atlantic Europe (1200-1600)?

On Thursday 16 June, a seminar will be held on 'Public Prosecution Services and the Rule of Law in Europe' with the subtitle 'Conceptions and Misconceptions on the Required Level of Independence in a Transnational Context Conference theme and objective'.

This special issue of Media History (22-3/4, 2016), co-edited with Helmer Helmers (University of Amsterdam), develops a new perspective on the early modern communication revolution. It discusses news as a specific kind of information – by its nature continuous, unreliable, and diffuse – which needed…

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.

LUCIS affiliated members are researchers outside Leiden University who are actively involved in the study of Islam and/or Muslim societies and who regularly participate in LUCIS activities. LUCIS affiliate membership offers possibilities to cooperate with LUCIS as well as network opportunities. Contact…

On average, Dutch breeding birds have become more numerous in the period 1980-2010. The common species have even done better than birds in other European countries. Farmland birds are an exception: they declined sharply both in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe.

Why is Arabic poetry relevant for our understanding of the Arabic-speaking world? Arabist James Montgomery explains this in the first video interview of the Leiden | Islam interview series produced by Leiden Islam Centre LUCIS. 'If there is anything which is going to make the situation worse, it is…

Mahmood Kooria shows in his dissertation that Islam often adapts to the regional context. PhD defense 14 December.

In this top-rated course, you will learn how the European Union prepares and decides on policy, and how policy is transferred to member states and implemented by various authorities. It discusses the challenges of the European multi-level governance structure and the main causes of policy failure or…

The Centre is the proud home of several research programmes.

Programme management of research programme “Strengthening knowledge of and dialogue with the Islamic/Arab world”

How was the Scholarly Self cultivated in professorial families of the humanities, in German-speaking Europe between 1860 and 1930?

The premier LUCIS lecture series, running since 2021. Each year, two eminent scholars visit Leiden to deliver landmark lectures in Islamic and Middle East Studies. This forum for presenting and discussing cutting-edge research brings together researchers, students, and other interested participants…

This volume of Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia focuses on how local communities in prehistory define themselves in relation to a bigger social world.

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

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

Until 2019, LUCIS hosted one annual lecture, inviting an eminent scholar to give a large-scale lecture in one of the finer halls at Leiden University. Because of their success, we now organise four larger lectures every year, entitled LUCIS Keynotes.

Shiʿi Islam

Bij Amsterdam University Press verschijnt 'Imams in Western Europe. Developments, Transformations and Institutional Challenges' onder redactie van Mohammed Hashas, Jan Jaap de Ruiter en Niels Valdemar Vinding, een publicatie waarin tal van zaken met betrekking tot imams in Europa behandeld worden. De…

One way for governments to conduct foreign policy and promote national interests is through direct outreach and communication with the population of a foreign country. This is called public diplomacy. Historians such as Helmer Helmers and William T. Rossiter have shown that printed media were already…

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

Haunted Europe offers a comprehensive account of the British and Irish fascination with a Gothic vision of continental Europe, tracing its effect on British intellectual life from the birth of the Gothic novel, to the eve of Brexit, and the symbolic recalibration of the UK’s relationship to mainland…

LUCITH runs a number of initiatives and programmes. Below you will find a list of initiatives and activities by the Centre for Islamic Thought and History.

Every year, in the last month of the Islamic calendar, millions of Muslims from around the world come together in Mecca to perform the Hajj, the pilgrimage that all capable Muslims should perform at least once in their lives. In 2013, the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden organised the exhibition…

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

The trend of legal recognition for gay and lesbian couples is broadening. More and more rights are becoming available to same-sex partners – in more and more European countries. Leiden Law School and the French Institute for Demographic Studies publish detailed database and comparative analysis.

This study describes religion in Java.

The 9th Network Europe Conference in Edinburgh was held at June 2017 in Edinburgh and organized by the Europa Institut Zurich. The contributions of the conference are now published.

This project intends to provide an integrated linguistic assessment of the hypothesised migration route of the Tocharians.

This book explores the links between maritime trading networks around Europe, from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the North and Baltic Seas.

This book traces the emergence of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) from 1955 to 1963 amid the broader reshaping of the institutional architecture of post-war Europe. It considers the ill-fated Free Trade Area (FTA) proposal, the subsequent creation of EFTA, and the resulting division of Western…

Where does Europe begin and end? How have the European Union and its precursors decided which countries are eligible to join the community and which are not? Few issues are more hotly debated, more important for the course of European integration, or more consequential for individuals in and around…

Dr Moritz Jesse, European Institute at Leiden Law School, has been awarded a Jean Monnet Professorship. From November 2023, Moritz will teach bachelor's and master's courses as part of his ‘Migration, Integration, Non-Discrimination in the EU’ project [MIND-EU]. At a later stage, Jesse’s Jean Monnet…

This 25th volume in the series 'Islam in Africa', edited by Annachiara Raia, is a pioneering collection of poetry by the outstanding Kenyan poet, intellectual and imam Ustadh Mahmmoud Mau (born 1952) from Lamu island, once an Indian Ocean hub, now on the edge of the nation state.

'In Perspective' is the quarterly publication of the Faculty of Humanities in which we bundle some of our most high-profile stories. In Perspective is printed in limited quantities (currently only available in Dutch), spread amongst relations and partners and offered on coffeetables within our buildings.…

My current research focuses on criminality and gender interactions in nineteenth-century Europe. This project uses a comparative methodology to explain gender constructions in a criminal and in a court setting.

War and terrorism overshadow interest in the pre-Islamic heritage of the Arabic peninsula. The new Leiden Centre for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to make the general public more aware of the ancient history of this region.

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.

Immigrants in the Sexual Revolution. Perceptions and Participation in Northwest Europe. Andrew Shield

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 sixth issue of Ex Novo explores how ‘peripheral’ regions currently approach both the practice and theory of public archaeology placing particular emphasis on usually underrepresented regions of Eastern and Central Europe, the Mediterranean and beyond.

On young Muslims seeking to understand their place and make their way in a transformed world.