25 September 2025

The Faculty of Archaeology will participate in the PhDs in the Humanities grant program 2026. The official call will probably be published by NWO in November. The previous 2025 NWO PhD in Humanities information is helpful.

Procedure

Only applications that are selected by both the Faculty Boards of FdA (Archaeology) and FGW (Humanities) are allowed to submit to NWO. The proposals will therefore be assessed in two selection phases at Leiden University:

1) Pre-selection Faculty of Archaeology early December 2025:

The FdA Research Committee assesses and ranks the proposals on behalf of the Board. The Research Committee will determine the ‘top three’ that will continue to the next selection phase.

2) Selection Archaeology/Humanities early January 2026: 

The selected ones from FdA can incorporate feedback and will then have to resubmit early January 2025. From all the pre-selected Archaeology and Humanities proposals (last year 14 in total) a Humanities/Archaeology Committee will subsequently determine the four who will be allowed to submit to NWO on behalf of Leiden University. The NWO deadline will probably be in the last week of February/first week March 2026.

Deadline

Deadline for the pre-selection phase by the Faculty of Archaeology is Friday the 14^th of November, 2025, 11.59 a.m. Send your application to researchcommittee@arch.leidenuniv.nl. Applications received after the deadline will not be considered.

For all candidates who submitted previously, will have one final submission opportunity left. From this year on, every candidate will have a maximum of two submission opportunities. Note that the supervisor or promotor will ultimately have to submit the application and, hence, will be the formal applicant. For this FdA internal selection each supervisor (intended applicant) can be connected to max. two candidates.

FdA applications should consist of:

• a research proposal and CV written in English in the NWO-PhDs in the Humanities 2025 format (see here under the tab ‘prepare’. November the new call and format 2026 will come out. This new format will be required for the second phase for those selected).  The data management section, abstract for non-specialists and the budget form are not yet required; these will be needed for the next phase for those who will be selected.
• email (Dutch or English) of supervisor and promotor (albeit in CC) declaring willingness to support candidate & project.