This book addresses the definition of history and how people are influenced by it.

Osteoarchaeology is a rich field for reconstructing past lives in that it can provide details on sex, age-at-death, stature, and pathology in conjunction with the cultural, social, and economic aspects of the person’s environment and burial conditions. While osteoarchaeological research is common in…

This book addresses the definition of history and how people are influenced by it.

Are you thinking about studying Global Order in Historical Perspective? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

The specialisation Global Order in Historical Perspective of the master’s in International Relations at Leiden University focuses on examining the historical processes and practices in the making of global order.

Which fungi live in Leiden University’s historic buildings and collections, and how can their impact on heritage and human health be understood and managed?

The history of sign languages of deaf people is severely understudied. The historical linguistics of sign languages offers a fundamentally new perspective on the history of human languages. This project addresses the dearth of knowledge about historical sign language linguistics through a large-scale…

This project investigates how sign languages change and spread over time, and how this is influenced by their transmission history.

Johannes Boer's research intends to question the way explicit knowledge is applied in order to restore and perform music from the past with the intention to get as close as possible to its original meaning.

What makes a good historian? When historians raise this question, as they have done for centuries, they often do so to highlight that certain personal attitudes or dispositions are indispensable or studying the past. Yet their vieuws on what virtues, skills or competencies historians need most differ…

Conference, Workshop

How did disability become a global concern? In this project we will identify the contribution of international agencies, governmental and non-governmental organizations and, just as importantly, disabled people themselves, to the IYDP and by showing the connections, interactions and entanglements between…

Conference, Workshop

When researching languages in historical context, our goal is to understand the nature of linguistic variation in the past, and explain the extent to which the socio-cultural context of bygone times contributed to shaping linguistic variation and change.

Knowledge and culture subproject 3:

Lecture, Faculty Lecture

Historical Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and society in its historical dimension. This is the first textbook to introduce this vibrant field, based on examples and case studies taken from a variety of languages.

How and to what extent the historic house (re-)constructs identity through image-making in China.

This thesis investigates the historical development of Japanese pitch accent.

Travel back in time and learn about how the University has changed over the centuries.

The study of language in change.

The topic of Historical Linguistics and Philology at LUCL is language change in its broadest sense.

From September 2024, the existing departments of History and Medieval Studies will join forces and launch CEU’s new Department of Historical Studies. Our research and teaching are recognized for their innovative approach to graduate education, and our international faculty offers expertise that extends…

How did institutions and structures operate throughout the Muslim world from the earliest history of Islam into the early modern period?

Memory, Imagination, and Mimetics in Contemporary Composition and Historical Performance

On 24 and 25 April 2025, the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam — home to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) — hosted an interdisciplinary workshop organized by dr. Rafal Matuszewski, an ancient historian at the Institute for History in Leiden.

The current study focuses on Walpole’s social network and the language as contained in the letters of the network members.

What is the origin of educational ideas, e.g., the idea that intervention in infancy has long-lasting effects on development.

Historical geo data are gaining in importance. Provided that they are exactly geo referenced, they can be stored into a GIS and thus be combined with all kinds of maps (topographical, pedological, etc.) and datasets. This makes it possible to analyze historical developments in space and time on a detailed…

Through extensive archaeological and documentary research, this study aims to provide a detailed analysis of the maritime cultural landscape of St. Eustatius over the past four centuries. It focuses on bridging the gap between the marine and terrestrial worlds and demonstrates that in order to truly…

In this project the already developed parcel based historical GIS (HISGIS) for the Dutch province of Friesland (Frisia) will be extended with a series of crucial datasets and map layers.

This book, edited by Joost Augusteijn, Constant Hijzen and Mark Leon de Vries, explores how democratic regimes have dealt with anti-democratic forces in society, from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century.

The emissions of the Chinese industrial sector alone comprise 24.1% of global emissions (7.8 GtCyr−1 in 2015). This makes Chinese industrial emissions of unique national and international relevance in climate policy. This study reports a literature survey that quantitatively describes the evolution…

The map application includes information from old and new buildings archaeological projects. This makes it possible to investigate whether water facilities (wells, cisterns) and waste facilities (cesspits, sewers) were the privilege of Leiden’s wealthy elite in the late 16th and 17th centuries or whether…

In this paper for Defence Strategic Communications, Alastair Reed and Jennifer Dowling seek to show the importance of historical narratives to propaganda by identifying and exploring five ways in which such narratives are exploited to reinforce the extremists' 'competitive system of meaning'.

This PhD project investigates the historical and sociolinguistic factors that have influenced the emergence of local sign languages in Mozambique. It examines how these factors have shaped the Deaf signing community and contributed to the development of a national sign language that incorporates borrowings…

Chinese materia medica (CMM), comprising a diverse array of natural substances from plants, animals, and minerals, has been integral to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) throughout history. This study investigates the dynamic evolution of CMM, noting shifts in species for improved therapeutic effects…

This paper explores whether multilateral surveillance and policy coordination under the ES was based on a path-changing or a path-dependent mechanism

How did the life course, with all its biological, social and cultural aspects, influence the lives, writings, and art of the inhabitants of early medieval England?

On December 5th, Matthias Pache succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Matthias on this great result.

When are you (sexually) mature? A KNAW grant will enable associate professor Rafal Matuszewski to organise an interdisciplinary workshop on this question.

The project aims to explore Eurasian elk's role in the ecosystems of the past and its relationship with humans through analysis of its distribution and habitat in the Netherlands.

Linguistic research on a unique collection of Dutch letters allowed us to gain access to the every-day language of people from various walks of life. Private letters by men, women and even children have been elaborately explored in the Letters as Loot researchprogramme, initiated and directed by prof.…