Material Culture, Settlements, and Landscapes from the Mediterranean to Western Asia

With Brill, LUCIS publishes a peer-reviewed book series, “Leiden Studies in Islam and Society” (LSIS), aimed at an international academic audience.

This programme starts from the idea that cultural discourse is one of the main engines of intellectual history and the history of ideas.

The Indonesian Experience after the Fall of Suharto

This research cluster is a part of the Institute of Political Science’s research programme ‘Institutions, Decisions and Collective Behaviour’. Its members study the design and functioning of Dutch political institutions as well as attitudes and behaviour of political elites and citizens.

The |0100| Project studies the discourses, practices and imaginaries of Islamic information society’s most debated component- Artificial Intelligence- using multimodal and mixed methods and comparing and contrasting narratives and imagery of AI-religious-futures in Muslim Southeast Asia.

Islamic Thought and History (ITH) is a peer-reviewed book series that publishes new approaches to Islamic thought and the history of ideas in the Islamic civilisation.

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the Islamic State's use of images taken by drones, drawing on a dataset of ISIS propaganda images from October 2016 to December 2018.

The |0100| Project studies the discourses, practices and imaginaries of Islamic information society’s most debated component- Artificial Intelligence- using multimodal and mixed methods and comparing and contrasting narratives and imagery of AI-religious-futures in Muslim Southeast Asia.

In this paper, Sibgatullina and Abbas aim to illuminate the complex connections between the European right-wing movements and Islam and discusses how the adoption of Muslim identity may function as a politically strategic opportunity for European conservative forces.

This book offers a new direction for the study of contemporary Islam by focusing on what being Muslim means in people’s everyday lives.

Reconfigurations of Practice, Community and Authority in Contemporary Aceh

From the formative period of Islam to the contemporary world, Muslims have negotiated changing modalities of being Muslim.

In Women and Property Rights in Indonesian Islamic Contexts, eight scholars of Indonesian Islam examine women’s access to property in law courts and in village settings.

This new article by Bassant Hassib and James Shires is part of a special issue for Journal of Cybersecurity, based on a selection of contributions from THe Hague Program for Cyber Norms' 2019 Conference.

This programme examines cultural space, national identity and the politics of tangible and intangible heritage in Islamic Central Asia.

Press freedom in Indonesia is still under pressure, despite the demise of Soeharto’s regime in 1998

This research deals with the royal houses of the Vijayanagara Empire and four of its successor states: Ikkeri, Tanjavur (under both the Nayaka and Bhonsle rulers), Madurai, and Ramnad. This study is thus concerned with dynastic politics and imperial legacies in south India between the 14th and 18th…

Political scientist Luzia Helfer (Leiden University) empirically tested claims about media-politics relatiopns using unique data from experimental studies with elected politicians and political journalists in Switzerland and the Netherlands.

How did courts navigate reform, revolution, warfare, and restoration between 1780 and 1830?

The project will clarify that in the search for these new means the treatise On the sublime of ps.-Longinus played a crucial role. However, the project will also place the theatre performances in a broader social and political perspective. These public events and the theatre performances suggest that…

How do the pathways of Dutch converts to Islam involved in jihadist movements differ from those of Dutch converts who are not, in terms of their life prior to Islam, their conversion experience and the form of involvement with the Islamic community after conversion?

Articles are published in Open Access at no cost to the author.

This project studies how Islamic charitable networks in seeking to address global needs position themselves as universalist projects, entangled with Western humanitarianism and neoliberal welfare regimes. It seeks to understand how and to what extent contemporary transnational Islamic charitable networks…

This project examines the meaning of this historical place, and the way it has been used by the political institutions that have had their seat there.

University Lecturer Ahab Bdaiwi:

The Swahili coast has a long-standing history of transoceanic Islamic connections dating back to the 25th century. Yet, print, has changed the world – not only ours. This project unravels unique forms and archives of intellectual history emerging from within South-South connections. In East Africa Indian…

Islam is a religion as well as a cultural practice that takes on a diversity of forms, some of them contradictory. This has always been the case, and it is becoming increasingly apparant in the modern world through migration, globalisation and the digitial media. The minor Islam: Religion and Society,…

Knowledge of Muslim societies is essential to function in a globalised world and to fully understand our own Dutch society. Leiden researchers explore the languages, cultures, religions, legal systems and history of Muslim societies and in this way contribute to a centuries-old tradition.

Islam is often studied as a distinct and uniform phenomenon that is or should be kept private, and stands apart from any other human activity, be it in the field of economics, law or politics.

The Leiden Islam Blog offers a platform for scholars and publicists from Leiden and beyond to share their research and opinions with a broad audience.

Islamic Thought in History (ITH) is a peer-reviewed book series that publishes new approaches to Islamic thought and the history of ideas in the Islamic civilisation.

In this article, Meier & Nadler suggest that while non-citizen enfranchisement boosts participation across all citizens, citizens with immigration backgrounds are more reactive to the NCV rights in terms of higher turnout. In this way, the paper adds a critical nuance to individual-based explanations…

Southeast Asia is a term to denote a collection of at present eleven nation-states with an enormous diversity in languages, cultures and religions. Muslims can both take a majority and a minority position.

Comparative and Dutch Politics is one of the three organisational clusters of the Institute of Political Science.

As Lila Abu Lughod pointed out in 1989, North Africa has been one of the geographical ‘zones of prestige’ for the development of canonical approaches and crucial theoretical debates regarding the comparative study of Islam.

The Leiden | Islam interview series contains short documentary-style videos including interview flashes with leading scholars in the field of Islam and Muslim societies. With this series, LUCIS aims to show the value of unconventional insights related to Islam and Muslim societies, and to relate them…

Understanding the history of Islam and Muslim societies sheds a clear light on the complex and changing social structures of the Middle East, including the current trouble spots whose effect spreads all the way to Western Europe.

This handbook is aimed at a wide readership interested in developing an understanding of the political, economic, and social complexity of Eastern Europe. It covers Central Europe, the Baltic republics, South Eastern Europe, and the Western Balkans, as well as all the countries of the former Soviet…

On 13 September 2023 Eline Scheerlinck successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Systematic investigations into religious precepts, worldly rules of law and legal practices in the Muslim world show clearly how these societies deal with justice and injustice. Sharia, the Islamic ‘legal system’, plays an important role in this context.

Jochem van den Boogert defended his thesis on 18 November 2015

This dissertation offers a reconstruction of the propositional contents of the writings of Karl Popper, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt while bringing these into discussion with their performative meanings, such as polemical forms of reasoning, analogical and metaphorical uses of language, and hidden…

Political scientist Matthew Longo (Leiden University) takes a detailed look at the evolution of border security in the United States after 9/11. Far from the walls and fences that dominate the news, he reveals borders to be thick, multi-faceted and binational institutions that have evolved greatly in…

This project explores how Muslim authorities and writers use Russian to transmit Islamic contents, and whether this leads to a specific

Muslims have lived in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe for centuries. Their arrival in Western Europe, the two Americas and Australia is however relatively recent. Studying how Muslims relate to their Western environment (and vice versa) and the mutual influences of Western and Islamic philosophies…

Thanks to its early civilisation and continuous mix of influences, the Muslim world has a rich and varied culture. The study of material culture, books, stories, films and increasingly television series teaches us about the structure of modern-day Muslim societies.

The Institute organises Arabic courses for universities, but also for companies, international organisations and individuals.