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).

Nadine Akkerman's book Invisible Agents is the very first study to analyse the role of early modern women spies. The book foregrounds the agency of early-modern women, offering a corrective to the gender bias implicit in modern historiography.

The Dutch Center for Travel Writing Studies s a scientific center that develops and coordinates initiatives to promote research into travel writing. It actively seeks contact with external (scientific and social) partners to collaborate on issues surrounding cultural / national identity, cultural contact…

The prehistory of communication metaphors

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

The fragmentary is everywhere: we encounter fragments in social media (Tiktok, Twitter), in personal memories from our childhood, and in traditions from our cultural heritage.

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research has awarded dr. Lucien van Beek a Veni grant. This grant offers young researchers the possibility to develop their innovative ideas for a period of three or four years. The awarded research proposal focuses on the Ancient Greek dialects' contribution…

The project ‘Diversifying Ancient History’, sponsored by the JEDI Fund from the Faculty of Humanities, aims to thoroughly revise the first-year curriculum of Ancient History. Through these innovations, the course will cater the needs of the present generation.

The Homer reading group is a ProParte sub-group.

The foundation of the ‘Leids Papyrologisch Instituut’ took place on 19 January 1935. Prior to then, the founders – J.C. van Oven (1881-1963, Roman Law), B.A. van Groningen (1894-1987, Greek) and M. David (1898-1986, Legal History) – had already been teaching Greek papyrology at Leiden University.

The project focuses on an intriguing aspect of André Chénier’s poetry, which has not received much attention in scholarship: Chénier’s indebtedness – in the form of translation, adaptation, borrowing, reference – to Hellenistic poetry; it interprets the role of this indebtedness in his poetical and…

Fiction is more effective than autobiographical non-fiction when it comes to conveying the sensation of enforced solitary confinement. That is the conclusion of writer and lawyer Maarten Asscher in his study 'Het uur der waarheid. Over de gevangenschap als literaire ervaring' (The Moment of Truth: Imprisonment…

In the master’s programme in Archaeology, you can follow courses on the archaeology of the Mediterranean, deepening your understanding of this fascinating region. From the many faces of ‘Hellenism’ to the early rise of the Roman Republic, to the voyages of European Crusaders in medieval times. The archaeology…

This thesis discusses the development in Proto–Indo–European, Latin and Romance of a word–formation pattern which the most adequate terminology in use dubs ‘verbal government compounds with a governing first member’; I use the shorthand ‘pickpocket compounds’.

Indigenous Pasts and the Roman Present

Three researchers of Humanities have been awarded with a VIDI research grant. With a VIDI they can spend five years researching the topic they submitte. The grant amounts to a maxium of eight hundred thousand euros.

How is social cognition shaped by our knowledge of language and stories?

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.

Overview of the most important papyrological websites

Current status and future prospects

Which plants in the Mediterranean garden were already known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and how were they utilized?

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 library of the Papyrological Institute is the most complete facility for papyrological studies in the Netherlands.

At the invitation of the Centre for Early Christianity and Its Reception (CECIR), Peter Liebregts, Full Professor of Modern Literatures in English (LUCAS), visited the University of Kent in Canterbury from March 17 to 20, to give a lecture and a masterclass.

Multiple identities of elites and ‘commoners’ viewed through the lens of crafting from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Ages in Europe and the Mediterranean

In the History of the Roman Emperors, what does Herodian’s method of composition consist of and how does it relate to his writing intention, particularly in terms of political and moral idea(l)s?

The research project examines the site-specific event within the field of installation art and choreographic practices.

On 13 September 2023 Eline Scheerlinck successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The Centre is the proud home of several research programmes.

This project is about a funerary altar with a Latin inscription for Q. Petronius Turnus. It was found in Rome and dated to the first century CE. It became part of the collection of Baron van Westreenen, and is now in Museum The House of the Book in The Hague.

Joost van den Vondel is considered to be the greatest Dutch poet and playwright of his time, but he certainly wasn’t the most popular. The 17th- and 18th-century public preferred to watch ‘Spanish theatre’. University lecturer Olga van Marion has written a book about this, together with Frans Blom (University…

What can papyri teach us about antiquity? Students of papyrology in Leiden try to answer questions about life in antiquity aided by papyri from our collection.

Subproject of

Experience, Narrative, and Criticism in Ancient Greece pursues a new approach to ancient Greek narrative beyond the taxonomies of structuralist narratologies.

This Festschrift in honour of Cary J. Martin

The Impact of Mobility and Migration in the Roman Empire assembles a series of papers on key themes in the study of Roman mobility and migration.

The academic staff of the Leiden University Institute for History.