This work analyzes ritual practices and knowledge related to the Mesoamerican calendar with the aim of contributing to the understanding of the use and conceptualization of this calendar system in the contemporary K’iche’ community of Momostenango, in the Highlands of Guatemala.

Promotor: P. T. de Zeeuw, Co-promotor: N. Neumayer; G. van de Ven

In educational settings such as museums, universities and schools, white, male, able-bodied and rational subjects still dominate. Although there has been a lot of theoretical work on processes of in- and exclusion through racialization, sexualization, and disabilization, we still know very little about…

Leiden University’s President of the Executive Board, Professor Annetje Ottow, has been reappointed for a second term by the Board of Governors.

Unlike most city histories, this book focuses exclusively on the city’s connections with colonialism and slavery.

So-called

Playing the piano with your forearm, plucking the strings, sawing through the piano: pianist Luk Vaes's doctoral dissertation covers all the techniques of play for which a piano is NOT designed. His defence ceremony will consist of three concerts and a public defence. 'Musicians were using the interior…

How do old and new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) relate to new social and political movements in Central Africa? What does this tell us about Africa and the Information Age?

Leiden University has a new Executive Board. Since 8 February 2021, Annetje Ottow has been the new President and Hester Bijl the new Rector Magnificus of the Board, while Martijn Ridderbos has continued in his role as Vice-Chairman.

On 10 November Guanmian Xu successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The first comprehensive and authoritative history of work and labour in Africa; a key text for all working on African Studies and Labour History worldwide.

This special issue of Media History (22-3/4, 2016), co-edited with Helmer Helmers (University of Amsterdam), develops a new perspective on the early modern communication revolution. It discusses news as a specific kind of information – by its nature continuous, unreliable, and diffuse – which needed…

Today, globalization makes us all aware of how closely we are connected to, and often dependent upon, the actions of people who are distant from us. Human migration and economic liberalization have confronted local communities with changes happening on a global level. How can we devise ways to share…

Eschatology played a central role in both politics and society throughout the early modern period. It inspired people to strive for social and political change, including sometimes by violent means, and prompted in return strong reactions against their religious activism.

Why are professors still warning their students against dogmatism, prejudice, pedantry, and other centuries-old vices? What explains the persistence of these scholarly vices across the ages?

This book examines the history of The Netherlands in a way that connects global processes to local developments.

Volume I of The Cambridge History of Strategy offers a history of the practice of strategy from the beginning of recorded history, to the late eighteenth century, from all parts of the world.

ChatGPT, the text-generating chatbot, has recently become available for anyone to use. Is this artificial intelligence (AI) tool a threat to our teaching?

This COIn Grant 2025 awarded project allows Leiden University researchers and students to do research on the world’s largest corpus of digitized Ottoman language periodicals and books.

This is a difficult time. Above all, for all those directly involved in this horrible case – unacceptable behaviour by a professor and his removal from the University – the case we went public about on 18 October and that has been reported in the media. This is painful and tough for the complainants…

From William Shakespeare to Marilynne Robinson, A Literary History of Reconciliation is the first study to examine representations of interpersonal reconciliation in work of literature across a long-term period, from the early seventeenth century to the present day, focusing on how these representations…

Being a Slave brings together scholars and writers who try to come to terms with the histories and legacies of European slavery in the Indian Ocean.

If we need funding for a project, equipment or research at the university, we automatically think of the Dutch Research Council or other grant providers. But more and more researchers are managing to connect with people who care about the university.

Several Dutch universities have said they do not want foreign student numbers to grow any more in some of their degree programmes. They are reaching maximum capacity. We are also alert to this in Leiden, but I see many positive aspects to the intake of international students.

We asked a lot of everyone last year. The Personnel Monitor showed that the workload was high in 2022 and Covid took its toll. I therefore think everyone deserves some downtime. Time away from the daily grind.

Nature and History, Towards a Hermeneutic Philospohy of Historiography of Science

This project studies the roles of prehistoric foragers in past ecosystems to establish the character of past “natural” landscapes and enhance the management of current ones.

The second major collection of papers from the Bridging the Unbridgeable project.

On the 11th of October, Micheal Swanton succesfully defended his PhD-thesis and graduated. LUCL congratulates Micheal on this great result.

An in-depth history of Large Language Models—and what their ubiquity, disruption, and creativity mean from a wider sociopolitical perspective.