LCCP has a research seminar that meets once a month. It is devoted to discussion of work in progress, but it also hosts guest speakers from other universities presenting their current or ongoing work.

The LCTP organises a variety of events, including a speaker series with guests from The Netherlands and abroad, a regular lunch time research colloquium for graduate students and staff, and reading groups on texts of interest to members of the group.

Leiden University Centre for Intercultural Philosophy (LUCIP) is housed in the Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University.

Are you fascinated by the past and do you like to challenge yourself? In the Dutch-taught Bachelor's programme History at Leiden University you will approach the past with a sharp and analytic view and you will learn to look at the past from a completely new perspective. study the history of the ancient…

Staff members and affiliates of the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities are involved with a variety of digital research projects. Some of them are featured below:

The researchers and students at the Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society at the Faculty of Archaeology study the role of the past in modern societies. They want to find out more about the relationships between the past and the present, and the role that heritage plays.

For a long time it has been thought that habitation and landscape organisation only changed significantly from the Roman Period onwards. However, many developments were already started long before Julius Caesar's Roman armies arrived in the southern Netherlands.

Bone research provides plenty of detailed data about the health of a person or a group. This data is not only used to reconstruct the past but also to fight disease today.

This centre brings together the research of the members of the Institute of Philosophy and affiliated academics whose work focuses on the history of philosophy broadly conceived. Research interests range from ancient to near-contemporary philosophy in various regions of the world, and cover all subdisciplines…

Leiden University has been an attractive destination for scholars ever since 1575. Our staff members welcome international colleagues to campus to discuss issues from the past, and how we should presently understand the past. ‘Leiden Conversations in History’ is a series of dialogues between historians…

With the emergence of new methods and technologies such as improved DNA analysis and big data, archaeological research has changed radically in recent decades. The researchers from the Department of Archaeological Sciences at the Faculty of Archaeology use new scientific knowledge to answer fundamental…

Representing Japanese Colonial 'Heritage' in Taiwan

The Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society focuses on the relationships between past and present, the role of heritage in society, and how heritage can contribute to the improving quality of life and our (future) environment.

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

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

LUCIS funded several research programmes to boost interfaculty and interdisciplinary cooperation and to widen the involvement of LUCIS members.

The research focuses on the understanding of symbolic stratigraphy of the land (through time) from the worldview of the People of the Rain (one of the Indigenous Peoples of southern Mexico), by studying contemporary cultural heritage in communities of the Mixtec Highlands.

This research project, that started in September 2008, aims to explore how personal and public memories of the Dutch Revolt in the seventeenth century evolved and interacted to create new political and cultural identities for the societies that eventually were to become the kingdoms of the Netherlands…

During the Tackling Heritage sessions, we bring together people at different stages of their academic trajectory, primarily from Leiden University's Cultural Anthropology department but also beyond. Through collective reading, discussion, and collaborative experiments, we take an anthropological approach…

This dissertation examines how we can reconstruct physical activity by looking at variations in the shape of muscle attachment sites ( ‘entheses’) on the human skeleton. It evaluates two post-medieval contexts; rural Middenbeemster and urban Aalst.

The cry for decolonization has echoed throughout the museum world. Although perhaps most audibly heard in the case of ethnographic museums, many different types of museums have felt the need to engage in decolonial practices. Amidst those who have argued that an institution as deeply colonial as the…

Migration is the talk of the town. On the whole, however, the current situation is seen as resulting from unique political upheavals. Such a-historical interpretations ignore the fact that migration is a fundamental phenomenon in human societies from the beginning and plays a crucial role in the cultural,…

The Leiden Human Evolution Collective (LHEC) is a network of researchers from Leiden University, LUMC, and Naturalis with an interest in human evolution. The collective brings together existing expertise in Leiden to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in research, teaching, and public outreach.

On Thursday 29 January 2026 Uğur Derin successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Each year, this award spotlights a standout bachelor’s graduate whose thesis truly rises above the rest. Here you’ll learn how the selection works and where to find the talented students who claimed the title in previous years.

Practical applications for the reconstruction of the past

How did our academic community position itself in relation to a system that deprived people of their freedom? What role did the university, as an educational institution, play with regard to colonialism and the system of slavery? How can we best engage with and manage our special collections?