At the Dies Natalis Willem Otterspeer, Professor Emeritus of University History, presented the fourth and final volume of Groepsportret met Dame, his series on the history of Leiden University. De 'Strategie van de Aanpassing' covers the period 1876-1975. Otterspeer talked about his book in a podcast…

The underwater world around present-day Indonesia has changed greatly in recent centuries as a result of human activity. University lecturer Johannes Müller has been awarded an NWO XS grant to map the history of the Indonesian ecosystems.

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…

This study is an attempt to reconstruct the muted violent past by breaking the monopoly of the Turkish state over the memory of the Armenian genocide.

How did you get to where you are now? This is a key question in the Academic Life Course board game, developed by and for academics. ‘In a normal working week we hardly ever talk about the career choices we make, but with this game, we do.’

As of 1 August 2017, Damian Pargas is the new Leiden University Chair of the History and Culture of North America.

The Institute for History of Leiden University seeks to expand its academic staff by appointment of a university lecturer with teaching and research expertise in the field of Medieval History. Deadline: 20 January.

The Department of Art & Culture, History, and Antiquity of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is seeking to appoint an Assistant Professor (tenure track) in Medieval History. Deadline for applications: July 5.

In the new board game Epoch – Early Inventors you explore the prehistoric landscape. You gather food and raw material to develop tools and skills, and you try to appease the gods. Dr Maikel Kuijpers was involved in its development from the start and he is very happy with the result. “There is a lot…

The project GRADIENTS investigates what it meant to be European in colonial Africa where identification as European often did not depend on skin colour and was understood on a spectrum with many gradients.

Fenneke Sysling has recently launched a podcast: Het Gemeten Zelf (in Dutch). This five-part podcast series explores the history of self-tracking.

The Yearbook for Dutch Book History publishes Dutch and English-language articles on the book history of the Low Countries in all time periods. For the 31st edition of the Yearbook, to be published in 2024, we welcome in particular contributions concerning the theme ‘Controversy’. Deadline: 1 March…

Volume 4 and 5 of the Leiden series 'Dutch Sources on South Asia' are now available, written by Markus Vink (vol.4) and Carolien Stolte (vol.5).

The production of history is a process of power. This is particularly relevant in Africa, where during both the colonial and the post-colonial era history has been written by hegemonic regimes. This historiography has in turn (re-)produced structures of domination, social exclusion and division.…

An article about our Mathematical Institute (MI) appeared on 23 June in the University newspaper Mare.

The Department of History and Art History externe link at Utrecht University is looking for a candidate for the PhD-project “The (R)evolution of Reconstruction: an analysis of digital facsimiles”. This project analyses the value of digital facsimiles for researchers, heritage institutions, and museum…

This thesis attempts to establish a dialogue between the modern and the medieval traditions in logic, by means of ‘translations’ of the medieval logical theories into the modern framework of symbolic logic, i.e. formalizations.

This project contests the assumption of criminologists that gender differences in recorded crime are static over time and that women are in general less likely to commit a crime than men.

Bernhard Rieger leaves University College in London to research European History after 1945 at Leiden University. He will start as professor of European History on January 15th 2018.

Alicia Schrikker, Director of Research at the Leiden University Institute for History shed light on the importance of preserving archives of natural disasters. Her lecture titled History, Memory, and Archives of Disaster looked at the 1883 Krakatoa eruption through archival records of the colonial government…

In Uprooting the Diaspora, Sarah Cramsey explores how the Jewish citizens rooted in interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia became the ideal citizenry for a post–World War II Jewish state in the Middle East. She asks, how did new interpretations of Jewish belonging emerge and gain support amongst Jewish…

Providing a valuable overview of regionalism throughout the entire continent, Regionalism in Modern Europe combines both geographical and thematic approaches to examine the origins and development of regional movements and identities in Europe from 1890 to the present.

The University of Groningen is looking for an Assistant Professor in Medieval History. The deadline for applications is: 14 February 2021.

Together with students and local residents, historians Ariadne Schmidt and Alicia Schrikker researched the Leiden Transvaal neighbourhood. They will present their findings on Thursday 20 October, at a specially organised mini-festival in the neighbourhood.

Erwin Muller, Dean of FGGA and Administrator of Campus The Hague, and Koen Caminada, Vice-Dean, share their thoughts on how ‘we’ as a faculty are doing based on three themes. A discussion about the balancing act between what is and what isn’t possible and the natural urge to continue to grow, the utility…

This programme aims to identify the intellectual contexts that were of importance for the architectural theory of the period, and especially to clarify the relation of architectural theory to primitivism.

The revolutionary organizations in Paris and Berlin around 1848.

The Executive Board has appointed Herman Paul (Institute for History) as Professor of History of the Humanities. He will take up the role from 1 January 2019.

Ten Leiden museums and heritage institutions have curated the online exhibition ‘Carel’s Universe’. They selected objects from their collections that symbolise retiring Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker and the research in Leiden. With direct references, playful associations and the odd nod and wink.

On 4 and 5 November 2021 an ICOG-workshop will be held on the cognitive turn in history. It is possible to attend this workshop online. The participants of the workshop are cultural and intellectual historians of the pre-modern periods and/or of the historiography of academia from a long-term perspective,…

What was the stringed instrument known in medieval and early Renaissance Italy as “cetra”?

Due to an overwhelming amount of enthusiasm for Touching Treasures: The History of Photography, another workshop will be organised on 13 May 2019, from 15.00 to 17.00. There, the Beyond Content thematic program will continue in the Vossiusroom at the Leiden Univerisity Library (UBL). The workshop will…

The Executive Board and Management Board of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency will meet from 13 to 15 December, with Rick Lawson as Acting Chair.

As of 1 April 2025, Lodewijk Govaerts will be standing down from the Board of Governors due to other commitments that will demand a significant part of his time and attention within the foreseeable future. Govaerts does not want this to affect his ability to fulfil his role on the Board of Governors…

Young Academy Leiden (YAL) will change its board this month and welcome seven brand-new members.

How is interdisciplinary collaboration faring at Leiden University? And has disciplinarity been completely abandoned? I’d like to reflect on some concerns among colleagues and on our plans for the future.

Numismatic research of Roman coin hoards in the Netherlands. The use of numismatic sources is incorporated in Claes’s research project “Dialogues of Power”. This project aims to analyse the legitimising dialogue between Roman emperors and their Germanic legions during the so-called “crisis of the third…

From colonial times through to the present day, large numbers of Javanese have left their homes to settle in other parts of Indonesia or much further afield. Frequently this dispersion was forced, often with traumatic results.

The Executive Board of Leiden University has asked the University Council to advise on its proposed decision to reactivate the person counters/sensors in due course. The Council will now look at this carefully before the Board makes a final decision. The advice of the University’s participation body…

How did British scholars and scientists in the period of discipline formation envision, experience and resist scholarly temptations?

Sarah Cramsey was appointed professor by special appointment of Central European Studies at the Institute of History on 14 September. 'I am keen to incorporate different scholarly approaches into my work and raise the profile of Central European Studies in Leiden.'

The Executive Board of Leiden University has appointed Dr Alicia Schrikker as Professor of Dutch History in the World, effective 1 January 2026. The chair is based at the Institute of History (Faculty of Humanities).

What can we learn from how maritime conflicts were managed in the past? What significance did Maritime Conflict Management have in shaping the standards of diplomacy and international law in pre-modern Atlantic Europe (1200-1600)?

The aim of this project is to study the influence of Longinus’s treatise ‘On the sublime’ on practice and theory of architecture and theatre in seventeenth-century Paris and Amsterdam.