For a long time it has been thought that habitation and landscape organisation only changed significantly from the Roman Period onwards. However, many developments were already started long before Julius Caesar's Roman armies arrived in the southern Netherlands.

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.

During the project, this page will be updated with various written and audiovisual research outputs.

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

This is the first reference work to describe the history of embroidery throughout Central Asia, the Iranian Plateau and the Indian Subcontinent from the medieval period through to the present. It offers an authoritative guide to all the major embroidery traditions of the region and a detailed examination…

This series provides a venue for scholarly work—research monographs and edited volumes—that advances our understanding of the history of slavery and post-slavery in any period and any geographical region. It fills an important gap in academic publishing and builds upon two relatively recent developments…

Neil Young and Philosophy, edited by Douglas L. Berger, explores the meanings, importance, and philosophical dimensions of the music, career, and life of this prolific singer/songwriter over the past five decades.

If you’ve graduated from the programme and you want to further your academic education you can continue with a master’s programme. It will earn you the title of Master of Arts (MA) and significantly increase your chances of finding a position at academic level.

The 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities differs markedly from other forms of international human rights law: it not only protects the rights of individuals but also addresses interpersonal relations and social structures. How did the convention attain this broad…

Dutch and Colonial History

Surreal Geographies recovers a forgotten archive of Holocaust representation. Examining art, literature, and film produced from the immediate postwar period up to the present moment, Kathryn L. Brackney investigates changing portrayals of Jewish victims and survivors.

Insights in diet, climate and ecology

Shiʿi Islam

In this working paper, Dr. Joris Larik provides an analysis of the governance and dispute settlement mechanisms under the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol.

This lecture will be hosted on Wednesday, 6 May 2026 at 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm.

The life of a researcher is not easy, as many a scientist will confirm; but doing fieldwork in an environment of conflict and violence is extremely compex, attests the account of Dr Roland Ziébé, veterinarian in Cameroon and researcher at both the Leiden Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) and…

Studying one another’s languages and cultures fosters understanding between groups of people, which leads to more equality, along with increased economic, administrative, and cultural cooperation.

Met groot plezier heeft de Universiteit Leiden van 1 tot 4 november het X Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Hispanistas del Benelux (AHBx) georganiseerd, met het thema Transhispanismos: contactos y contagios (Transhispanismes: contact en besmetting). De AHBx is een platform in de Benelux dat…

What's it like to participate in the Leiden Leadership Programme? Alumni share their experiences: 'You learn things about leadership and can immediately put them into practice.'

As a practice in which human beings were held captive for an indefinite period of time, coerced into extremely dependent and exploitative power relationships, denied rights (including rights over their labor, lives, and bodies), often vulnerable to forced relocation by various means, and forced to labor…

The protection of civilians (POC) in armed conflict has become a core strategic objective for the United Nations system and for UN peace operations in particular. The UN, however, is not the sole actor engaged in POC.

Museum Temporalities analyzes how museums relate to time. It explores the hidden temporal assumptions and practices that define museums. How might these assumptions help us to better understand and address museums’ often problematic and painful relationship to the colonial past?

The unique geographic and temporal breadth of research at Leiden allows us to stimulate a shift from the classical Weberian mode of scholarly production that views historical development and modernization as emanating from Europe and the West to a multi-polar perspective that allows for more nuanced,…

A neolithic settlement on the Dutch North Sea coast c. 3500 CAL BC.

This special issue focuses on emerging trends in the implementation of the WPS agenda. In reviewing the resolution 20 years since the passing of Resolution 1325, Newby and O'Malley have highlighted the gaps in implementation.

The aim of this research is to understand the linking of crises for the combination of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Netherlands Institute in Morocco (NIMAR) is an institute of the Faculty of Humanities of Leiden University, with a nationwide remit, located in Rabat, Morocco. NIMAR has four tasks.

Mobility, Globalisation, and Interculturality is one of the six research themes of the LUCAS Modern and Contemporary cluster.

Examining mediation and moderation.

On the 16th of June, Ndokobai Dadak successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Ndokobai on this achievement!

At LUCL we study almost all aspects of a wide range of African languages. From phonology to anthropological linguistics, from theoretical syntax to urban youth languages, we study it all.

Piecing together the urnfield mortuary process in the Lower-Rhine-Basin, ca. 1300 - 400 BC

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda arising from United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 has reached a critical juncture in its short 20-year history. Despite comprising ten resolutions designed to bolster the agenda and expand its scope and normative power, serious challenges to the…

This collaborative research group (CRG) facilitates the synergies of researchers engaged with African languages and documentation of texts conducted in East Africa, paying particular attention to ‘endangered archives’ and ‘endangered languages’.

On young Muslims seeking to understand their place and make their way in a transformed world.

The main question I want to answer is about the mutual influence between the cultural and settlements changes that occurred between the Bronze and the Early Iron Age in Margiana and the management of water resources.

This project explores how Muslim authorities and writers use Russian to transmit Islamic contents, and whether this leads to a specific

This dissertation aims to provide insight in ethnic prejudice in Chinese-Dutch children and the ethnic socialization context they are exposed to through three social-contextual factors, i.e., parents, children’s books, and the COVID pandemic.

On 10 January 2013, Quentin Bourgeois (Cum Laude) graduated with his thesis on the origin of barrow landscapes. Side Stone Press published his dissertation

LUCAS members are experts in the fields of literary history and theory, film and media studies, and art, architectural, and book history. Members of LUCAS teach in a wide variety of Bachelor's, Master’s, and Research Master’s Programmes.

Climate adaptation strategies frequently include the sourcing of heritage, encompassing landscapes, built environments and cultural practices. However, effective climate change governance requires taking seriously the stakes of local communities and the power relations that structure heritage initia…

Using object assemblages to reconstruct activities, modes of deposition and abandonment at the Late Bronze Age dunnu of Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria.

In this policy brief, Dennis Broeders, Els De Busser and Patryk Pawlak discuss attribution of in cyberspace from three different perspectives: criminal law, international law and policy. Published together with EU Cyber Direct.

Join the Pipe is a project committed to reduce plastic waste and to provide people both in the Global South and in the Global North with drinkable water.

Get to know us through our online and in-person events for prospective students!

The project examines the political conflict in the Red River Valley of Louisiana between the majority-black Republican Party and the overwhelmingly white Democratic Party by studying the composition and actions of each party.

Both play and politics have the potential to create worlds in which new rules apply, meanings are created, and possibilities emerge for collaboration, strategy and creative solutions. In this sense, play and politics have always been very much alike. But what happens to this kinship in a post-digital…

How was the racial landscape of citizenship and democracy in antebellum America characterized, and how did free Black populations in various states navigate such landscapes?

The Archaeology and Epigraphy of Jordan’s North-Eastern Desert and Beyond