For three millennia, carved sculptures were ubiquitous among ancient peoples in the Americas. Sculpted in stone, metal or wood, they developed into the well-known totem poles, colossal Olmec heads, royal Maya stelae and golden Inca statues.

Subproject of

The role of religion in the identity construction of LGBTQIA+ folks

What are the main issues leading to polarisation and division? What is the role of social exclusion in these processes? How can we inform and design better policies to safeguard young people from falling prey to intolerance and polarisation? The DRIVE project, led by Leiden University in The Hague,…

How do inclusion and exclusion affect people?

Priya Swamy defended her thesis on 27 October 2016

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. Meike de Goede tells about the book 'Between Tides' by Valentin Mudimbe. The novel, little known beyond the circles of Africanists and…

This programme examines cultural space, national identity and the politics of tangible and intangible heritage in Islamic Central Asia.

A mere day after setting foot ashore in the Bahamas on October 13th 1492, Christopher Columbus notes the broad foreheads of the inhabitants of the Americas. These permanently altered cranial shapes are deliberately created through the application of pressure to the head of the infant in the first years…

Are there general principles or values that should govern our actions as moral agents and/or as political subjects?

Tom Buitelaar assesses how 'agency' is addressed in peacekeeping studies and identifies gaps.

How can we solve value conflicts?

How did nineteenth century scholars evaluate each other and each other’s work through more or less informal practices of peer review?

This third issue of Ex Novo gathers multidisciplinary contributions addressing mobility to understand patterns of change and continuity in past worlds; reconsider the movement of people, objects, and ideas alongside mobile epistemologies, such as intellectual, scholarly or educative traditions, rituals,…

Museums are powerful and influential institutions in their ability to shape knowledge and contribute to our identity. What we preserve and how we present our collections and heritage is closely connected to our identity and culture. In the multidisciplinary Museums, Heritage and Collections, you'll…

Explore the MSc in Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Development at Leiden University: study governance and diversity, choose elective seminars, complete a thesis and optionally an internship.

What is the iconography of propaganda specifically as it relates to the historical development of political ideologies in modern Egypt and how was/is this propaganda disseminated among creative fields such as cinema, art, monuments, architecture, and literature?

Leiden’s Institute for History has an exceptionally strong expertise in premodern European history in its global context, with specialists whose interests cover virtually the whole continent. We have a strong track record in leading larger research teams and work together with colleagues across Europe…

In our HANDS!Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies, we run projects pertaining to sign language linguistics with a focus on Africa. In addition, we are running projects on sign language teaching, tactile signing, deaf people’s experiences with the legal system, and deaf history.

‘It is a fantastic sum of money,’ enthuses classicist Professor Ineke Sluiter. ‘It gives me not just an award, but a task as well. And in all honesty, I prefer it that way.’ She is already brimming with ideas about what she will do with her Spinoza Prize.

This project creates a comprehensive audiovisual documentation of the Sanye language, the sociolinguistic situation, and cultural practices of the Sanye (Dahalo) community in coastal Kenya.

Daniel Soliman defended his thesis on 15 September 2016.

In the South African context, certain iconic images have been a dominant source for public understandings of historical events. The emphasis given these images tends to overshadow the historical value of other more personal photographic sources – like studio or amateur photography. This project looks…

Research in Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science focuses on the dynamics and the interaction of political institutions, individual decision-making, and collective behaviour.

Debates on political legitimacy in Dutch parliament in the 1880s, 1930s, and 1960s

In my research, we developed a method to distinguish knots. A knot is a mathematical depiction of the everyday knot that occurs in ropes and cords.

Promotores: R. Cramer, A.K. Lenstra, Co-Promotor: B.M.M. de Weger

This study investigates how two social and political developments, in the UK and Germany, impacted on the experiences of minorities and the attitudes of majorities vis-à-vis tolerance in those two countries. The results provide a thought-provoking picture of the views of minority and majority groups…

A growing global concern is that automated recognition systems may exacerbate and reinforce existing biases that different societies have with respect to gender, age, race, and sexual orientation. Questions around the consequences of automated gender recognition are particularly poorly understood and…

Representing Japanese Colonial 'Heritage' in Taiwan

A comparative study of colonialism and rural settlement in first millennium BC west central Sardinia

On Wednesday 21 May Adrian Perkasa successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Article 10 (2) opening words and (b) of the Trade Mark Directive entitles a trade mark owner to object to infringements of his trade mark by a mark that is 'identical with or similar to the trade mark and used in relation to goods or services which are identical with or similar to those for which the…

Landscape history, representation and identity in the Grenada islandscape

This subproject examines how memories of flight and persecution shaped new social and religious identities in the Netherlands.

An interdisciplinary cultural analysis of how the Hindustani double migration informs contemporary processes of identification and problematises the juxtaposition of tradition and modernity.

Taking as a point of departure the Italian American community in Boston and its process of collective remembrance surrounding Saint Anthony’s Feast, we address the limits and potential of montage.

This study focused on how households' food consumption and waste were adapted to lifestyles during COVID-19.

This project examines the meaning of this historical place, and the way it has been used by the political institutions that have had their seat there.

Reactions and reaction times in cognitive tasks.

The funerary textile tradition from the Osmore Valley, South Peru, and its social-political implications (2005)