On Tuesday 3 December 2024 Shuang Liu successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Apply now for the LUCIS Summer School on Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim world, which will take place from Tuesday 15 August until Friday 25 August 2017 in Leiden. The deadline for applications is Friday 16 June 2017.

Leiden Asia Departments

For a long time, even many researchers thought that guide dogs were a relatively modern invention. An accidental encounter with archival material showed university lecturer Krista Milne that guide dogs helped their blind owners as far back as the Middle Ages. Milne now has received an NWO XS grant to…

Three lecturers from Leiden University have been awarded a €100,000 Comenius Teaching grant within the Senior Fellows programme. A further two lecturers have been awarded a €50,000 grant within the Teaching Fellows programme. The grants will enable the lecturers and their project teams to realise an…

English Language and Culture is a multi-faceted programme in which you’ll study the language in all its varieties, from Old English to the many different pronunciations currently in use. You’ll also study British, American and Canadian literature in their cultural-historical context.

This project will study the cultural meaning of the mythological figure of Orestes within the ancient Greek imagination, as it emerges from various literary sources from the archaic and classical periods.

The FutureMED Postgraduate Programme, a collaboration between Leiden University's MA in International Relations (Faculty of Humanities) and the Alwaleed Centre at the University of Edinburgh's MSc in the Globalised Muslim World, offers a postgraduate student exchange experience focused on the Mediterranean…

A new special issue on translation and the cultural Cold War sheds light on the understudied and yet important role of translation in cultural transfer.

One of the ways of understanding another culture better is to examine what people experience when they read a text, or look at an image. Leiden experts have a lot of knowledge in this field, for example on culture in ancient Japan.

This PhD subproject concentrates on 16th-century ichthyology and takes Gessner’s Historia piscium (1558) (further HP) as its point of departure and focus.

In early medieval England, there was an interest in the history of the Roman Empire and kings adopted such imperial titles as 'imperator' or 'basileus'. How can we explain this interest and what functions did imperial ideas and the reception of the classical world serve in early medieval England?

To be eligible for French Literature and Culture at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

Funded by NWO, 'Futuring Heritage: Conservation, Community and Contestation in the Eastern Himalayas' explores how environmental conservation initiatives in the Eastern Himalayas intersect with the cultural expectations of ‘indigenous’ ethno-linguistic minorities. Focusing on human–more than human relationships…

It is with profound sadness that we have learned of the passing of our colleague and friend, Dr Harold M Hays. Harold passed away on Wednesday 20 November, in his sleep, as a result of heart failure.

Egypt serves as a strategic gateway to Africa and the Middle East. For that reasons, Luc Sels, President of the Executive Board and a delegation visited the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) at the end of April. This resulted in new agreements on research and student exchanges.

Uncovering ancient Arabian inscriptions feels like pioneering detective work, says Arabist Michael Macdonald in a video interview with Leiden Islam Centre LUCIS. 'First you have to learn the alphabets that they're written in, and then you have to try and work out what they say.'

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

Research projects which are assisted by the NVIC in the field of Arabic studies.

The physical features of twelfth-century manuscripts from the Flemish abbey of Ter Duinen – such as script, page layout, and reading aids – show how their readers organized, interpreted, and transmitted knowledge.

This project seeks to integrate scientific research and practical knowledge in the study of the mechanisms that make dialogue an effective tool for communication, teaching, and thinking.

What does it mean to perceive smell? This question fascinated poets and playwrights of the early modern period (ca. 1500–1700): their work abounds in references to and evocations of smell sensation and of specific scents. POEM maps the ways in which early modern writers put the language of smell – or…

Erik-Jan Zürcher, professor of Turkish languages and cultures, returns his Turkish medal to protest against the repressive regime of Erdogan's government.

On 19 July Erik-Jan Zürcher, professor of Turkish languages and cultures, made a TV appearance in Nieuwsuur to talk about the actions Erdogan took after the failed coup.

This project investigates the transposition of natural historical material, knowledge and vision, between different media (collection, scientific drawing, academic texts, the visual arts and/or literature) – a transmission that happens in the borderline between the traditional, emblematic worldview…

LUCDH is creating a community of LU scholars researching in Digital Humanities. A selection of their DH Projects are listed on this page. If you are an Affiliated member and would like your project listed here or would like to be an Affiliated member, please email us at lucdh@hum.leidenuniv.nl

Collaborative and Mediated Authorship in Early Modern English Manuscripts

The focus will be on recent academic research in Literary Studies at the intersection with Digital Humanities. Lectures and interactive workshops will be given by experts in the field.

Lecture

The ethics of ghosts, spectres, and mediums in postcolonial literature

This project proceeds from the observation that since the second half of the twentieth century, forgiveness and reconciliation have become pervasive themes in western culture, both on a political level and in personal relations.

Modern receptions of Graeco-Roman Antiquity are important ideological markers of the ways we envisage our own twenty-first-century societies. An urgent topic of study is: what kinds of narratives – sometimes controversial – about Antiquity do people create for themselves at this moment in time, and…

Experience, Narrative, and Criticism in Ancient Greece pursues a new approach to ancient Greek narrative beyond the taxonomies of structuralist narratologies.

From 1550 onwards, a great interest in the natural world developed across Europe. This interest was not only stimulated by a growing knowledge of local flora and fauna, but also by the import of numerous exotic animal and plant species. Think, for instance, of researches and collectors like Gessner…

Arabic and its Alternatives discusses the complicated relationships between language, religion and communal identities in the Middle East in the period following the First World War.

Overview of the most important papyrological websites

An exploration across thirteen essays by critics, translators and creative writers on the modern-day afterlives of Old English, delving into how it has been transplanted and recreated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

You can participate in community-building events, alumni sessions, and internship information meetings. Student associations also organise cultural and social activities.

The Genius of Invective is a peerless example of the breadth, depth, and complexity of the Arabic classical literary tradition. It was once one of the most popular works of Arabic literature, read across all regions from Mauritania to India, from Istanbul to Zanzibar. This volume marks the first English–Arabic…

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections between a variety of artistic and cultural expressions and their role in society from 1800 onwards.