This thesis seeks to examine the emergence of Persian novels and short stories during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).

Literature, Language, and Multiculturalism in Scandinavia and the Low Countries presents a ground-breaking comparative approach to the study of multicultural literature.

One of the three long-term research interests of our group concerns the Transformation of the Roman World (c AD 450-900).

This special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik (Brill, 2021) brings together articles that explore new digital ways of analyzing and annotating Old English vocabulary.

Are you thinking about studying Literature and Society. Europe and Beyond? Learn more and watch the introduction video and the programme presentation.

Beauty is a central concept in the Italian cultural imagination throughout its history and in virtually all its manifestations. It particularly permeates the domains that have governed the construction of Italian identity: literature and language.

Questions of justice are not only the concern of legal professionals, politicians and activists, they also permeate culture at large. Literature, Cinema, Music and Artworks often revolve around questions about rights, justice and fairness, raising a wide range of issues, such as: how do we understand…

The representation of death children in Dutch literature through time

What can a doodle tell us about the person who drew it? Erik Kwakkel is a Dutch book historian at Leiden University who searches for the secret meanings of doodles and scribbles in medieval manuscripts. He talks to BBC World Service about his passion for books.

The skin has recently gained attention within body studies for its many specific cultural and social associations, in addition to its biology. This project aims to examine the different layers of meaning and the functions invested in the skin in ancient Greece: how did ancient Greek literary and medical…

The University of Trento hosts the biennial conference of the International Reynard Society, taking place on September 25-28 2024. Deadline for paper/session submissions: December 31.

The transformation of the myriad of medieval kingdoms, principalities, local lordships, city-‘states’ and peasant ‘republics’ into ‘modern’ states, claiming some measure of sovereignty, remains one of the core themes of European history, because it gets down to the very root of the (idea on the) Europe…

Long-distance Trade in Early Medieval Landscapes (ca. 6th-12th centuries)

The eighth issue of the JLGC explores the diverse and interdisciplinary research on our multifaceted relationship with animals which is currently taking place, re-examining the relationship between humans and animals, and the definitions involved.

This project examines the intriguing relationship between Greek literary criticism and Latin literature in Rome (first centuries BC and AD).

The archaeology of food is in all sorts of ways ‘hot’. To illustrate this, recently the book Medieval MasterChef was published, focusing on cuisine and foodways in the Mediterranean and north-western Europe during Medieval and Post-Medieval times.

On October 9th, Peter Alexander Kerkhof succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Peter Alexander on this great result.

The recent rise in global migration movements and the simultaneous attempts to prevent migrations to the Global North in general and Europe in particular have produced numerous images and narratives that try to record and convey these events and their actors.

As Scaliger professor, Erik Kwakkel is responsible for the academic context of the complete Special Collections of the Leiden University Library. His inaugural lecture on 15 May will focus mainly on the section closest to his heart: Medieval books.

Classics alumnus Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer has won the Libris Literature Prize this year with his book La Superba. The Libris Literature Prize is one of the most prestigious awards in Dutch literature.

Erik Kwakkel, researcher at the Faculty of Humanities, has found an extraordinary manuscript in the University Library’s extensive collection of medieval books. The book in question dates back to the first half of the eleventh century and is made entirely out of waste left over from the production of…

Did you know that Arabic was for centuries the lingua franca in an area stretching from the south of Spain to the Chinese border? And that the Middle East under Muslim rule was the world’s beating heart of trade, but also of science and scholarship? Want to learn more? Then sign up for the new MOOC…

The Dutch Center for Travel Writing Studies s a scientific center that develops and coordinates initiatives to promote research into travel writing. It actively seeks contact with external (scientific and social) partners to collaborate on issues surrounding cultural / national identity, cultural contact…

Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

Cat Paw Tweet Goes Viral

The KB has launched a meme generator containing medieval imagery.

The Digital Medievalist has recently created a curated Zenodo community, called the Digital Medieval Webinar Repository (DMWR) to house recorded presentations on medieval topics.

Submit your paper, session or business proposal for the International Medieval Meeting in Lleida until 31 March 2023.

The registration for the Medieval Studies Day on 17 December 2021 is now open.

De lichtheid van literatuur: Engagement in de multiculturele samenleving (The Lightness of Literature: Engagement in the Multicultural Society) is a plea for the social relevance of literature. The book delves into an age-old debate about literature and social engagement, which has recently been reinvigorated…

On 4 November 2022, the University of Amsterdam will organize the Medieval Studies' Day! More information coming soon.

On 17 December 2021 the Medieval Studies Day will take place in Amsterdam. Keep this date free! More information will follow soon.

On 2-3 June 2023, the University of Bucharest organizes the conference 'Medieval accountability: normativity, numeracy, and rhetoric from the institutional to the domestic sphere'. Proposals of circa 300 words outlining the source material, methodology, and anticipated findings should be emailed to…

From as early as classical antiquity there has been an interplay between literature and medicine.

In this article, the authors summarise the literature on the effects of multilevel governance on governments’ policy responses to Covid-19.

The Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens announces the summer session focused on the study of Medieval Greek, from June 26 to July 27, 2023. The Library invites applications for a month-long Summer Session for Medieval Greek at the Intermediate to Advanced Level. The…

The Rise and Decline of an Iberian Bourgeoisie is one of the first long-term studies in English of an Iberian town during the late medieval crisis. Focusing on the Catalonian city of Manresa, Jeff Fynn-Paul expertly integrates Iberian historiography with European narratives to place the city's social,…

This research investigates the impact of socioeconomic developments on the physical condition of medieval populations in Holland and Zeeland between AD 1000 and 1600 through the analysis of human skeletal remains from three archaeological sites.

The theme of the Research School for Medieval Studies' Medieval Studies' Day 2022 (UvA, Amsterdam, 4 November 2022) is Reflections. We welcome 15-minute papers on topics connected to the theme, with a medieval focus, in all humanities disciplines. We particularly invite proposals from PhD students and…