Manuscripts that look like a comic book, that's how you could describe the manuscripts of the Dongba people from China. The manuscripts are one of the last examples of a so-called pictographic script that can only be interpreted by Dongba priests, shamans, who have knowledge of the ancient Dongba cu…

Leiden University, together with the Open University and Universities of the Netherlands, will take up residence in the Spui building at Grote Marktstraat 48-50/Spui 3 in downtown The Hague from 2025. The partners signed the leases on 7 November.

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been able to acquire an exceptional two-volume Miao album. The acquisition was made possible by the Rombouts Fund for Chinese collections. The extraordinarily well-preserved work contains 70 full-page paintings on silk, depicting non-Chinese peoples in the area…

The Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship program offers the opportunity to three scholars to spend up to three months conducting research using the Southeast Asian and particularly the Indonesian special collections at Leiden University Libraries.

‘What if we switch off all the lights one evening? That idea crossed my mind from time to time. And when I mentioned it to a taxi driver one day, he said: “Oh, you mean: lights out, stars on!” That’s not completely true, of course, because the stars are always on, but his phrase summed up the idea n…

Last July, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Minister of Education, Culture and Science and Annetje Ottow, President of Leiden University's Executive Board, opened the new front office of the Leiden University office in Jakarta. The office - located on the grounds of the Dutch embassy - has a dual role. Firstly, it…

The submission deadline for applications to Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Scaliger Institute fellowship programmes has been set for 1 April 2022. The Scaliger Institute, the special collections research centre of the UBL, supports scholars in any field of study and from anywhere in the world to…

Dr. Els Jacobs (chairman) Prof.dr. Gabriëlle van den Berg Prof.dr. Dirk van Delft Dr. Gijs van der Ham Drs. Jan de Klerk Vincent Mentzel Dr. Rosalien van der Poel (treasurer) Dr. Roger Tol (secretary) Administrative secretary: Drs. Martijn Storms (Curator Maps and Atlases)

In November, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) welcomed the first Lingling Wiyadharma Fellows in the Special Collections reading room. Fellows Chin Nyuk Tin, Evi Fuji Fauziyah and Arman AZ are all working on different research projects, yet their goals are the same: building bridges between Southeast…

The Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship program offers the opportunity to three scholars to spend up to three months conducting research using the Southeast Asian and particularly the Indonesian special collections at Leiden University Libraries. The Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship was made possible by Mr…

Library

Modern Arabic titles in the catalogue of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) can now also be consulted in original Arabic script. Taking away the need to transliterate titles, has made searching for Arabic source materials in the catalogue much easier and more efficient for users.

From Galileo Galilei to Albert Einstein and from Anna Maria van Schurman to Anton de Kom: only a selection of the 25 authors who's books and ideas had extraordinary historical impact, in some cases even to this day. Leiden University Libraries and the National Museum of Antiquities jointly present the…

With support of several publishers and private foundations, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Scaliger Institute welcome around 15 to 20 Fellows and guests per year to consult and research materials from our Special Collections. The Scaliger Institute received many applications this year from…

Course, Digital Skills Workshop

Network meeting

Two Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) have been placed in front of the University Library in memory of the Jewish Cosman family. At the time of the Second World War, they lived in one of the houses where the library is now located.

Ever since its foundation, Leiden University has turned its gaze outwards to other cultures, languages and forms of academic practice. It is only natural, therefore, that we as a university have four institutes abroad: the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV-KNAW)…

Library, Research

From time to time, manuscripts that have remained hidden for centuries turn up in library collections and archives. In the archives of the 17th-century Bibliotheca Thysiana at the Rapenburg in Leiden, kept in the Leiden University Library, Rotterdam researcher Erik-Jan Bos discovered a hitherto unknown…

Over 600 manuscripts and early prints have been made digitally available by Leiden University Libraries (UBL) via the Europeana platform. In the project 'The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages’ (ARMA), seven European heritage institutions added 30,000 digitised medieval items to Europeana’s database…

Academics regularly face threats, intimidation and abuse. The Universities of the Netherlands (UNL), the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) therefore launched the WetenschapVeilig platform on 7 November 2022.

Het schilderij van Rein Dool waarop voormalig bestuurders van de Universiteit Leiden zijn afgebeeld, is verhuisd naar de Receptieruimte van het Academiegebouw.

Education, ICT, Library, Research

In collaboration with the The Hague Historical Museum and photographer Dagmar van Weeghel, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) is the first to present a retrospective exhibition of the photographic oeuvre of Alexine Tinne (1835 – 1869). New research into her life and work is the reason for a reappraisal…

Library, Research

Symposium & Workshop

Are maps objective or do they convey hidden messages that you would miss at first glance? A map is always a simplification of reality. Mapmakers reduce, distort and select. This allows the reader to be guided literally and figuratively. Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Museum Volkenkunde jointly…

The Yemen Amsterdam Library, or Maktabat al-Yaman al-Amstirdāmīyah, of eminent Yemen specialist Dr C.G. Brouwer has now been fully integrated in the collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL). Books and other documents from the collection are now available for loan via the UBL Catalogue.

The Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies is delighted to announce that Dr Farouk El-Hosseny will join the teaching staff as Visiting Assistant Professor of International Law.

Close to twenty thousand pages of new material have been added to the online collection of unofficial poetry journals from China in the Leiden Digital Collections. Produced “outside the system,” these journals are hugely influential yet very hard to find. To address this paradox, Leiden University Libraries…

From Soledad Acosta de Samper and Albalucía Angel to Hazel Robinson Abrahams and Amalialú Posso Figueroa. During the Symposium & Workshop Experience and Voice: Library of Colombian Women Writers, we focus on books written by Colombian women writers from different historical periods. The symposium and…

Three enormous maps of China, created during the reign of three different emperors of the Qing dynasty, have now been made available in open access and are downloadable via Leiden University Libraries’ (UBL) Digital Collections. The rich maps are an early example of academic collaboration between the…

Starting January 18, the online exhibition Images of the Indonesian War of Independence, 1945-1949 can be viewed via the UBL website. The exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) and Leiden University Libraries…

Over hundreds of thousands of years, our region witnessed the comings and goings of various types of hominin. This depended on the temperature as ice ages alternated with warmer periods. In ‘De eerste mensen in de Lage Landen’ (‘The First Humans in the Low Countries’) Leiden archaeologists Yannick Raczynski-Henk…

Dutch troops, judges and politicians collectively condoned and concealed the systematic use of extreme violence during the Indonesian War of Independence. Historians have now shown how this could happen. ‘It was scandal management rather than prevention,’ says Leiden historian and research leader Gert…

There is a reasonable chance that you came to this reading list through a social medium. Now it's our job to keep your attention. We are going to do our best. There are so many distractions; from notifications on your phone, to another screen near you, that may also be screaming for attention. Every…