This study employs a comparative perspective to identify generic and specific qualities of petitions and petitioning. It charts the chronological development of petitioning practices over centuries. The interdisciplinary approaches provide range of conceptual and methodological expertise for reade…

Providing a valuable overview of regionalism throughout the entire continent, Regionalism in Modern Europe combines both geographical and thematic approaches to examine the origins and development of regional movements and identities in Europe from 1890 to the present.

The aim of this study is to specify the strategic function of stance adverbs when qualifying a standpoint in an argumentative discussion.

In order to be able to develop effective medicine and treatments to prevent or cure autoimmune diseases or cancer we need to understand the mechanisms how they arise and what drives their course.Unravelling the fundamental molecular mechanisms influencing the onset and course of diseases such as allergies,…

From corpus pragmatics and metapragmatics to accountability and intentions, and from conversational structure and im/politeness to the role of emotions in utterance interpretation, the short articles collected here represent not just the wide scope of Michael's own work but also a snapshot of the field,…

Squatters and autonomous movements have been in the forefront of radical politics in Europe for nearly a half-century—from struggles against urban renewal and gentrification, to large-scale peace and environmental campaigns, to spearheading the antiausterity protests sweeping the continent.

The idea that socially anxious people avoid eye contact because they are not interested in other people needs to be changed. They take their information from other physical sources, such as people's hands. This is the finding of Leiden psychologist Mariska Kret whose research has been published in…

The territories that would make up what is today the Republic of Zambia officially became British in 1891. However, this did not equate to an on-the-ground presence of colonial authority capable of affecting the destiny and daily lives of people.

VVI Research Meetings 2023-2024

In countries with complex domestic situations, citizens have little opportunity to exercise influence on governance and policy. Leiden academics research these situations and share their insights with the public, such as in Nigeria for instance. This enables the people and their communities to improve…

What categories exist in the languages of pastoralists? Do these semantic concepts reflect universal or languagespecific tendencies? What (environment? culture?) governs the similarities (or the differences) attested crosslinguistically in cattle colour systems?

The research aims to understand how did Cuban and Dominican landscape encapsulate historical conceptual transformations about human –nature spiritual interaction after the Spanish conquest? More specifically, what are the present day cultural associations with Cuban and Dominican natural landscape?…

El Chorro de Maita, Cuba

The aim of this PhD dissertation project is to study the effect of private foreign investment outside the realm of economics in the context of a colonial structure in Indonesia between c. 1910 and c. 1960.

This book is about the archaeology of indigenous peoples who thrived across the Caribbean, the Guianas, and the Lower Amazon basin just before the European invasion, and who also remained central to the early history of conquest and colonization.

Trajectories of social life in the yucayeque (community) of El Cabo, Higüey, Dominican Republic, AD 800 to 1504

Surveying Indigenous Peoples’ culinary practices prior to the advent of European invasions in the Greater Caribbean

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.

Paisaje, cerámicas e interacciones

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 effectiveness of (booklet or online) self-help programmes for people with somatic stressors and depressive symptoms? What works best for whom? How to improve motivation and adherence?

Dementia is widely considered a progressive condition associated with changes in cognitive capacities, which promotes the idea that people with dementia need to anticipate end-of-life care preferences. There is a growing body of interventions meant to support advance care planning (ACP) for people with…

What can languages spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands today tell us about the histories of its various population groups?

How did colonial law work to turn people into property? This project argues that colonial ideas about households and domestic authority were critical to legal processes of enslavement in the early modern Dutch empire. Using colonial court records from Dutch Brazil, Suriname, and the Moluccas, the project…

Past, Present and Future of Nubian Communities in Sudan

Carina van den Hoven defended her thesis on 16 February 2017.

The aim of the project is to unravel the genetic and contact relations between the indigenous languages of Mesoamerica (Mexico and western Central America) and the Middle Andes region (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia), as part of a larger endeavor to understand the historical process of the peopling of the Americas…

Estudio arqueológico de la primera ciudad española en la Tierra Firme de América: Santa María de la Antigua del Darién

Mei-Wen Chen defended her thesis on 29 June 2016

In this book chapter, Andrea Malaya M. Ragragio and Myfel D. Paluga unpack the indigenous category

On 13 December 2023 Alf Farabi successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Prehistory of Amazonia seen from the kitchen

On 29 April 2023, Jan Aart Scholte and co-researcher Hortense Jongen presented their research on legitimacy in multistakeholder global governance to the Board of Directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Brussels.

On 4 May 2023, Jan Aart Scholte presented the co-authored report 'Global Governance: Fit for Purpose?' to the International Organisations Partnership of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) at the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) in Geneva.

Endangered languages can survive if they are taught properly to new speakers, such as people with a migrant background. This is what Professor by Special Appointment Felix Ameka will say in his inaugural lecture on 30 September. Dutch people can do their bit by being less ‘polite’ to people whose mother…

Mexico, between 500 B.C. and A.D. 900

Nuran Buket Cengiz defended her thesis on 13 June 2017

Presents a novel philosophical account of psychedelic experiences, arguing that they can be induced by means other than psychedelics — such as meditation and yoga.

This project focuses on two Mayan languages in contact: Awakateko and K’iche’. With the aim to create a database to be accessible to researchers, students, and indigenous activists interested in Mayan languages, this project will train Mayan speakers on transcription, translation, and analysis of…

Projects in the department of Environmental Biology

We found that, next to the effectiveness of the intervention, it’s also very likely that the intervention is cost-effective compared to attention only.