Imaging and Imagining Palestine is the first comprehensive study of photography during the British Mandate period (1918–1948).

Amsterdam painter Dirk Valkenburg (1675–1721) produced some of the earliest depictions of Indigenous and enslaved people on Surinamese sugar plantations – idealized images that conceal the violence of colonialism.

Leiden University is home to over a hundred specialists studying the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. From 2017-2018 onwards, they will join forces to offer two new options for specialisation within existing MA programmes: Medieval Studies and Early Modern Studies.

This study offers a new view on public services in the early modern Low Countries and answers the following questions: who provided public facilities in urban communities and in which ways did public amenities change in the period between 1500 and 1800?

In early modern England, courts of law were working overtime. University lecturer Lotte Fikkers delved into the records of centuries-old court cases involving women. In Early Modern Women's Life-Writing and English Law, she reconstructs how the story they told in court differs from the one they wrote…

How did “free agents” (entrepreneurs operating outside of the myriad of interests of the centralized, state-sponsored monopolies) in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire react to the creation of colonial monopolies (royal monopolies and chartered companies) by the central states in the Early Modern…

Monday 29 January, the annual meeting of Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Safety and Security (LDE CSS) took place at Wijnhaven. The conference started with pitches of projects financed via seed money of LDE CSS. Followed by interaction in small groups to formulate research and education topics for the…

The University of Limerick (Ierland) is looking for a postdoctoral researcher to explore aspects of nonconformity and deviance in the early modern world of learning. Deadline for proposals: May 11.

Scientist looked for the genetic footprint of fire use in our genes, but found that our prehistoric cousins - the Neanderthals - and even the great apes seem better at dealing with the toxins in smoke than modern humans.

Two Vidi subsidies for Faculty of Archaeology.

An interdisciplinary and innovative research group combining History, underwater archaeology, GIS and wood provenancing methods.

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

This project examines the intriguing relationship between Greek literary criticism and Latin literature in Rome (first centuries BC and AD).

On 1 May, Casper de Jonge will be appointed Professor of Greek Language and Literature. ‘Greek literature did not come from Athens alone: authors from Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor also wrote in Greek.’

In a new article in the journal Scientific Reports, Leiden archaeologist Wei Chu and colleagues report on recent excavations in Western Romania at the site of Româneşti, one of the most important sites in southeastern Europe associated with the earliest Homo sapiens. The site gives an important glimpse…

This collaborative project aims to explore the history of the concept “barbarism” in Europe from the 18th century to the present, with a particular emphasis on the role of literature and art in the concept’s shifting functions.

What is the difference between a minister saying that something is possible or that it is not impossible ?

A source of inspiration for readers who are curious to understand how people move and convince each other

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…

Over the past few hundreds of years, the world has changed radically. However, cultural stereotypes from the 17th century are still alive and well today, and even academic researchers sometimes use terms coined centuries ago. Why do they do that? Herman Paul, Professor of the History of the Humanities,…

Radboud University is looking for a PhD researcher who will investigate the afterlife of medieval thought in early modern Europe through the study of concrete instances of intellectual transfer, for instance the appropriation of specific medieval authors or early modern revaluations of specific themes…

The central aim is examining gender differences in recorded crime, particularly in relation to interpersonal violence, in early modern Bologna.

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

Blood, Sweat and Tears: The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe

As a critical commemoration of its centenary, this book presents a mosaic of one hundred carefully curated fragments by expert authors, shedding light on politics, economy, society, culture, gender, and arts in a hundred years of Turkey.

Leiden University's Asian Modernities and Traditions research area will be presented on 9 September, in the form a conference. The keynote speaker is Professor Prasenjit Duara, Director of the Asia Research Institute of the Singapore National University. The title of his address is Sustainability and…

Sonic Modernities situates Southeast Asian popular music in specific socio-historical settings, hoping that a focus on popular culture and history may shed light on how some people in a particular part of the world have been witnessing the emergence of all things modern.

The Historia Naturalis Brasiliae Reconsidered

This publication aims at the analysis of the performance of a corpus of Fongbe stories that I collected in three villages in the south of Benin in 1976 and 1977. The corpus consists of 37 stories (57.000 words). The stories aim at children’s education.

De lichtheid van literatuur: Engagement in de multiculturele samenleving (The Lightness of Literature: Engagement in the Multicultural Society) is a plea for the social relevance of literature. The book delves into an age-old debate about literature and social engagement, which has recently been reinvigorated…

This study interrogates contemporary and historical uses of barbarism, arguing that barbarism also has a disruptive, insurgent potential.

Louis Verreth and Jeroen De Keyser recently published a critical edition of Francesco Filelfo’s Latin translation of the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum (Edizioni dell'Orso).

An investigation into how racial stereotypes were created and used in the European Middle Ages.

Studying Sumerian grammar in your free time: Bram Jagersma did it. He described centuries-old Sumerian using a modern method he devised himself. For this PhD research he was awarded the De La Court Award for Independent Research by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science (KNAW).

Individual traders should be at the forefront of the study of early modern world trade rather than institutions such as states and companies, argues Professor of Global Economic Networks Cátia Antunes. Inaugural lecture on 9 June.

The Patriot behind the pot tells the story of pottery, people and politics in the Netherlands during a time of great revolutions -revolutions both in a political and industrial sense.

The book on Turkey. A Modern History written by Professor Erik-Jan Zürcher, Professor of Turkish Studies, is now available in nine different languages. Arabic and Polish versions have now been published.

Recently, Hans-Martien ten Napel was in the news on the above subject several times.

Dialogue is a multi-dimensional communication mechanism whose processes can only be examined by means of an interdisciplinary approach.

The Modern Migration Policy Act aims to ensure that the admission of regular migrants is effective and manageable.

Historical geographer Marcel IJsselstijn developed a new approach that improves our understanding of how medieval cities were planned. He hopes it will help archaeologists, urban planners and designers address contemporary challenges.