This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections and interactions between a variety of artistic expressions and society. It focuses not only on objects (artistic, literary, cinematic, and medial), but also on practices (aesthetic, political, and cultural).

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to French writer Annie Ernaux (1940). In an explanation, the Swedish Academy praises Ernaux 'for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory'.

This dissertation examines how Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Fécamp designed, produced, and read books over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

From indigenous space to colonial setting. Archaeological investigations at El Chorro de Maita in Cuba wins prestigious prize.

How to understand the simultaneously dis- and reappearance of letters in contemporary culture, and how does this Neo-Epistolarity relate to media-technological change?

Minims are letters that are made up of short, vertical pen strokes, such as 'm', 'i', 'n' and 'u'. In Gothic script, there is often little distinction between letters composed of minims. Assistant professor of medieval literature Krista Murchison has written an article in History Today on the hidden…

This project studies travel writing about the Dutch East Indies written between 1800 and the end of the Second World War. By analyzing both Dutch travel texts and Indigenous travel texts in Javanese and Malay, it presents a new, double-voiced perspective on (the historiography of) the Dutch colonial…

Reading & Panel Discussion

On 1 May, Casper de Jonge will be appointed Professor of Greek Language and Literature. ‘Greek literature did not come from Athens alone: authors from Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor also wrote in Greek.’

Recently, Carlotta Rigotti participated in the ViolenceStop project, a collaboration between Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) and the Central University “Marta Abreu” of Las Villas (Cuba).

Stéphanie Noach, PhD within LUCAS, received a Fulbright grant to conduct research for her PhD project 'Dark Matters. Recasting Darkness with Contemporary Latin American Art' at the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at Harvard University.

After the Second World War almost three million people emigrated from the Netherlands to countries such as Canada and Australia. The government information was anything but objective, Professor by Special Appointment of Dutch Studies/Dutch Literature Ton van Kalmthout concludes in his inaugural lect…

PhD defence

The fragmentary is everywhere: we encounter fragments in social media (Tiktok, Twitter), in personal memories from our childhood, and in traditions from our cultural heritage.

Russian literature is awash with disputes, riots and intense political debates. In the new Dutch podcast Schandaal en Controverse in de Russische literatuur, senior lecturer Otto Boele and film maker and journalist Kay Mastenbroek discuss the most talked-about Russian books published in the past two…

From 6 to 9 May the Law's pluralities conference was held at the Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen. Highly interdisciplinary in the areas of literature, art and law.

From 17 to 19 September, the University of Granada organized the 27th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (SELIM).

'Consider languages in their shared context.' That is the message of Professor and Arabist Beatrice Gründler, who will receive an honorary doctorate from Leiden University on 8 February. ‘I would like people to learn that Arabic history has a close connection with Europe.’

Whether implicitly or explicitly, we all have ideas about how the law is supposed to function, whose interests it should represent, and what role it should play in society. This project explores the ways in which these questions are addressed in the works of the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus…

Nadine Akkerman's book Invisible Agents is the very first study to analyse the role of early modern women spies. The book foregrounds the agency of early-modern women, offering a corrective to the gender bias implicit in modern historiography.

Conference

It was not light, but its absence that caught Stephanie Noach's attention a few years ago. With her research on darkness in art, she aims to show how darkness can question and sometimes even undermine colonial imagery.

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.

Leiden University has been promoting studies on Latin America and the Caribbean for a long time.

Three researchers at LUCL have been awarded a VENI-grant by NWO.

A special find has been made in the Alkmaar Regional Archive: a number of 17th-century book bindings contained pieces of parchment from a manuscript from the 11th century. The original manuscript may have belonged to a princess who fled England after the Norman Conquest.

Lecture

Every month a member of the Institute for History tells about a book that inspired him or her. Afterwards, the pen is passed on to another colleague. This month dr. Robert Stein tells about the book 'La Vérité sur l'affaire Harry Quebert' by Swiss writer Joel Dicker. It is not so much the whodunit that…

Lunch Lecture (and reading)

Lecture

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

This project investigates how the first generation of Dutch printed books (the incunabula, 1473-1501) affected late medieval spirituality, religious practice and visual culture in the Low Countries.

It was long thought that the early development of Japanese children's books served mainly as a propaganda tool of the state: the literature was supposed to have been written to shape children into perfect citizens. PhD student Aafke van Ewijk nuances this image. Children's book writers wanted to have…

Joost van den Vondel is considered to be the greatest Dutch poet and playwright of his time, but he certainly wasn’t the most popular. The 17th- and 18th-century public preferred to watch ‘Spanish theatre’. University lecturer Olga van Marion has written a book about this, together with Frans Blom (University…

Lecture, Lunch Time Talk

Lecture

At the invitation of the Centre for Early Christianity and Its Reception (CECIR), Peter Liebregts, Full Professor of Modern Literatures in English (LUCAS), visited the University of Kent in Canterbury from March 17 to 20, to give a lecture and a masterclass.