Training a robot in a real-life environment is more or less impossible. Computer scientist and psychologist Roy de Kleijn switched to training in a simulated, virtual one instead. ‘You do have a reality gap, but the more precisely you train the robot, the better it is in practice.’ His inspiration:…

This abrupt climate change of 8200 years ago (the so-called 8.2k calBP climate event) has received wide attention among natural scientists, also because of today's rapid climate changes and their impact on our own society. The archaeological implications, however, have not been investigated so far.…

Reworking Culture: Relatedness, Rites, and Resources in Garo Hills, North-East India provides intimate insights into the lives of hill farmers and the challenges they face in day-to-day life. Focusing on the ongoing reinterpretation of traditions, or customs, the book critiques the all too often taken-for-granted…

LUCIS organiseerde op woensdag 4 maart een speciale avond over journalistiek in Irak. Journaliste Judit Neurink en programmamaker Sakir Khader vertelden over hun ervaringen en recente werkzaamheden in het land. De avond stond onder leiding van Wendelmoet Boersema (politiek redacteur van dagblad Trou…

The International Course on Water Use and Management in Cagayan Valley The Philippines (2011-2015)

This book asks what it means to think globally about world politics. In an attempt to contextualise the recent ‘globalising turn’ in International Relations (IR), it takes stock of more than 30 years of efforts at addressing IR’s Eurocentric limitations, and explores what ‘thinking globally’ means in…

The debate about Africa’s changing relations with the world has rapidly evolved over the past decade. The initial emphasis on China’s role in Africa has given way to a more diversified approach, acknowledging that other emerging global players have also become important.

Political scientists Huib Pellikaan and Niels van Willigen (Leiden University) use and elaborate on the theoretical insights from game theory in order to understand nuclear security in changing environment. Now that the relations between the US and Russia have deteriorated and smaller nuclear states…

Political scientists Marijn Nagtzaam (Leiden University) and Patrick van Erkel (University of Antwerp) investigate how electoral rules affect intra party preference voting. Focusing on the effect of two specific rules—the option to cast a list vote and on a single versus multiple preference vote—and…

Reijer Passchier, universitair staatsrecht en hoogleraar digitalisering en de democratische rechtsstaat aan de OU, waarschuwt in HP/De Tijd hoe weinig controle we werkelijk hebben over kunstmatige intelligentie, terwijl machtige bedrijven steeds meer invloed krijgen op onze democratische samenleving…

When and how was alphabetic writing introduced to Greece and the wider Mediterranean region?

Society has an impact on what is viewed as heritage. Susanna de Beer investigated how heritage can be made enduring by making use of it in the present. Lars de Kruijf, student of Dutch and Journalism New Media, spoke with Susanna de Beer.

This project involves research into the oeuvre of the Sundanese sculptor Iko, who has worked for the Catholic mission in Java and has carved sculptures for a chapel and church in Ganjuran. The images were designed by the Catholic layman Jos Schmutzer and are characterized by a fusion in style and symbolism…

D.P. Kok defended his thesis on 10 October 2017

Playing a musical instrument is generally considered to be a complex human behaviour involving the integration and coordination of a broad range of human functions such as perception, imagination, memory, information processing, emotion, communication, and dexterity.

Forgotten Lineages explores the paths through which generations of formally enslaved and their descendants gradually forgot their past of enslavement under Dutch and British imperial rule and became local subjects in Sri Lanka and South Africa. It explores why and how forgetting rather than memory became…

This critical edition covers the first two parts of De secundis intentionibus by Hervaeus Natalis (14th century).

Organisations such as the EU are of enormous benefit to the member states, but the inhabitants of the member states are often unaware of this. Leiden researchers investigate whether international organisations such as the EU or ASEAN are able to influence global politics.

This project seeks to develop a conceptual framework and provide empirical evidence on academic leadership that builds a fairer world and fosters trust in polarised times.

Archiving Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeological Fieldwork Data from the Eastern Mediterranean (600-2000)

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok, Co-Promotor: W.A. Kosters

This monograph by dr. Kim Beerden compares Greek divination to divinatory practices in Neo-Assyrian Mesopotamia and Republican Rome.

This book provides an exploration into the historical transformations of women's interactions with state police in the Western world from 1800 to 1950.

Generations of Leiden students and academics have done archaeological research into the early medieval history of Oegstgeest. This makes this old settlement one of the best-documented sites from that era. In a new book, Leiden researchers take stock.

Located in the small Kingdom of Commagene at the upper Euphrates, the late Hellenistic monument of Nemrud Daǧ (c. 50 BC) has been undeservedly neglected by scholars

This volume, featuring sixteen contributions from leading Roman historians and archaeologists, sheds new light on approaches to the economic history of urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, with a particular emphasis on the imperial period.

A Companion to Cities in the Greco-Roman World offers in-depth coverage of the most important topics in the study of Greek and Roman urbanism. Bringing together contributions by an international panel of experts, this comprehensive resource addresses traditional topics in the study of ancient cities,…

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.

How do urban residents in Brazil and the Netherlands (The Hague and Leiden) perceive the cultural benefits of urban forests? How are these benefits spatially distributed across cities? How do socio-demographic factors shape these perceptions, and do these differences vary between countries?

LiTechAe: Percussive stone tools related to stone masonry techniques seen through experimentation and use-wear analysis.

How does contemporary art and culture represent nuclear contamination in post-nuclear landscapes?

Why is Crossnational and Cross-cultural agents such as Henrich Carloff and Willem Leyel important when studying Early Modern expansion?

Promotor: Prof.dr. R. Verpoorte, Co-Promotores: N.R. Mustafa, A.E. Schulte

This special issue of Contemporary Levant critically explores, at a micro and macro level, the structural role and religious, cultural and political interactions of the Greek-Orthodox, Melkite and Syriac communities in late Ottoman and Mandate Syria and Palestine.

The Cinematic Santri explores the rise and course over the last ten years of cinematic practices among a younger generation of NU associates (Nahdlatul Ulama), the largest traditionalist Muslim group in Indonesia and elsewhere.

Below you will find an overview of all PRE-Classes provided by the various programmes of Leiden University. For each section, you can find a description of the content and more specific information about the requirements for participation in the Class.

When we read a text, we think we know who wrote it, but in the early modern period, manuscript production was often a collaborative or ‘socialised’ enterprise involving secretaries and scribes who physically wrote what the author dictated.

On 25 November 2020, Sara Arendse defended her thesis 'De uiterlijke verschijningsvorm in het strafrecht'. The doctoral research was supervised by prof. C.P.M. Cleiren and prof. J.M. ten Voorde.

Publication on the excavations at Roman fort Matilo in Leiden

The threat of totalitarian domination; the rise of bureaucratic expertise; the resurgence of nationalisms and xenophobia; the claims of religion in secular societies; and the importance of robust legal and political institutions: these are among the main issues that mark—or specters that haunt—the 20th…

Martijn Junte defended his thesis on 21 September 2017

Leidse milieuwetenschappers doen onderzoek naar microplastics, bestrijdingsmiddelen en bemesting. En binnenkort naar lichtvervuiling en nieuwe materialen uit de nanotechnologie.

This research project from Leiden University looks at the opportunities and threats that flow from the existence of institutional and normative diversity in the area of fundamental rights for the effective protection of those rights in a pluralist world.

Insults have a stronger effect on people from honour cultures because their honour is at stake. Escalations can be prevented if their sense of honour is left intact or if the perpetrator expresses sincere regret Leiden psychologist Said Shafa has found.

Synthetic hydrogels that mimic the natural extracellular matrix in the biophysical and biochemical cues it provides to cells are in high demand, however the cell phenotypes as they are observed in vivo in numerous cases have yet to be attained.

This book concerns cultural production in contemporary Latin American cities: chaotic cities where the ideal of order has become fragmented and the walls of the lettered city have become porous. New and multifarious urban trajectories—intersecting, colliding, superimposing—trace the image of the postmodern…

Exploring the language of the lower classes in the nineteenth century

Although official law generally conceives of personal injury victims as individual rights holders, the actual experience of physical injury and its consequences is relational. Indeed, many researchers in the global North as well as the global South have contended that the very concept of the Self should…