On Wednesday 25 June 2025 Dechun Zhang successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

LIAS aims to advance the globally conscious vision of area studies, both within and outside the academic community. Focusing on Asia and the Middle East, the institute is a meeting place of multiple fields of inquiry, theories and methods, historical periods, and areas.

LIAS aims to advance the globally conscious vision of area studies, both within and outside the academic community. Focusing on Asia and the Middle East, the institute is a meeting place of multiple fields of inquiry, theories and methods, historical periods, and areas.

Why follow the Middle Eastern Studies programme? Because it will improve your insight, expertise, and understanding of the region, the central debates and issues, and its interconnections with other regions, global issues, and processes. And why at Leiden University? Because thanks to our experts, expertise,…

A project aimed at understanding the complicated process of religious transformation in one of the centres of the early Muslim world.

Op 2 juni verscheen ter gelegenheid van ‘900 jaar Utrechtse stadsrechten’ een stripboek van het Utrechtse stripcollectief "De Inktpot" over een paar eeuwen middeleeuwse Utrechtse (familie)geschiedenis. Als inhoudelijke adviseurs waren daarbij de mediëvisten Kaj van Vliet en Martine Meuwese betrokken…

Nearly eight decades after the liberation of Auschwitz, we continue to learn more about how the Holocaust “happened” in central and eastern Europe. In Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey’s History MA Research Seminar “New Approaches to the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe,” a dozen Leiden students read what…

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

The MA Neerlandistiek/Dutch Studies at Leiden University provides you with an international view on the Dutch language and culture. You will be able to study the full breadth of Dutch studies: from the Middle Ages to today.

This article examines how immigration from Central and Eastern Europe influences political support for Eurosceptic parties.

LIAS aims to advance the globally conscious vision of area studies, both within and outside the academic community. Focusing on Asia and the Middle East, the institute is a meeting place of multiple fields of inquiry, theories and methods, historical periods, and areas.

Leiden University offers courses about papyri and papyrology for beginners and more advanced students (BA and MA), both based on texts in translation as well as in the original source languages, from Egyptian to Greek, Latin and Arabic.

To be eligible for Middle Eastern Studies (research) at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

Studies in Human Evolution is a series of the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University and The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig.

LIAS aims to advance the globally conscious vision of area studies, both within and outside the academic community. Focusing on Asia and the Middle East, the institute is a meeting place of multiple fields of inquiry, theories and methods, historical periods, and areas.

LIAS is comprised of three research schools with expertise in different areas:

The project seeks to come to an understanding of the archaeology of the desert and the ways in which its inhabitants engaged with their constraint, marginal environments through time. It compares and interprets site distribution and community organisation over a long time scale and across several different…

The Historia Naturalis Brasiliae Reconsidered

De Pagus Renensis van de 4de tot de 8ste eeuw na Chr.: Een archeologische synthese

Essays dedicated to Frans Wiggermann

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.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University with the American University in Cairo.

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

Utrecht University has a vacancy for a professor Middle Dutch literature and culture. Deadline for applications: 6 November 2021.

Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500 provides a comprehensive survey of this complex and varied formative period of European history, covering themes as diverse as barbarian migrations, the impact of Christianisation, the formation of nations and states, the emergence of an expansionist commercial…

One of our LUCIS members, Karène Sanchez, has been granted the Internationalisation in the Humanities grant for her project 'Engaging Europe in the Arab World: European missionaries and humanitarianism in the Middle East (1850-1970)'. Sanchez is cooperating with researchers from IEG Mainz and IISMM…

‘This trip gives you the chance to experience at first hand what you learn about in your study programme,’ says Lars Moll, third-year student of Middle Eastern Studies, and one of the students who joined the April excursion to Istanbul organised by Professor Hans Theunissen from Leiden's Department…

From 16 to 19 September 2021 a hybrid conference will take place on animation in the Middle Ages. This conference is a cooperation between the University of Bergen (Norway) and the A. Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw, Branch Campus in Bialystok (Poland).

On the 21st of June, Marieke Meelen succesfully defended her PhD-thesis and graduated. LUCL congratulates Marieke on this great result.

On an excavation site in Oegstgeest Leiden University archaeologists discovered a very rare silver bowl from the first half of the seventh century. The bowl is decorated with gold-plated representations of animals and plants and inlaid with semi-precious stones. The discovery suggests the existence…

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 Passion in Profession series features researchers who are specialised in Islamic, Middle Eastern and Central Asian studies. With the series, LUCIS aims to show what inspires them in their work by highlighting an object or concept that they feel passionate about.

Barbarism: from the 18th century to the present.

This book concentrates on the regulation of political parties in the EU post-communist democracies, and on Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, in particular.

ASLU (Archaeological Studies Leiden University) is a peer-reviewed book series produced by the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University.