Friday 25 September, 2015 marks the official launch of Leiden University's Central and East European Studies (CEES) Center.

In the study of West-East relations, difference often takes centre stage. This holds for both culturalist and postcolonial perspectives. By contrast, in my investigation of Netherlands-Iran political relations in the 1960s and 1970s, I will focus on the role of SIMILARITY. What lay at the root of the…

In November, Somalia was the latest country to join the East African Community (EAC). This follows the Democratic Republic of Congo's accession to the regional intergovernmental organisation in March.

Innovating objects in a Eurasian center of the Late Hellenistic period.

NWO-ALW has funded the project Climate impact on human evolution: age calibration of the ICDP Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP), led by PIs Cor Langereis and Guillaume Dupont-Nivet (Utrecht University).

What should a confederal constitution for the EAC look like? What are the legal challenges for making the African Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) work? And what insights can be drawn in this context from the successes and failures in the EU?

In this region researchers at LUCL have specific expertise in studying Austronesian and Papuan languages. China is another important region where Leiden linguists conduct research.

On the 17th of September, Jermy Balukh successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Jermy on this achievement!

The rationale, construction, and function of the imperial capitals of Assyria

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’.

The Assyrian Empire was the first state to achieve durable domination of the Ancient Near East, enduring some seven centuries and, eventually, controlling most of the region. Yet, we know little about how this empire emerged from a relatively minor polity in the Tigris region and how it managed to consolidate…

Huda Abi-Fares defended her thesis on 10 January 2017.

Political scientist Nicolas Blarel (Leiden University) analyses the background and implications of India’s prime minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel.

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi admires Israel’s achievements, but structural differences between Indian and Israeli national security situations, differences in the leaders’ worldviews and the absence of a common enemy inhibits stronger strategic rapprochement, argues political scientist Nicolas…

Traces of a Colourful Past

This dissertation is a study of archaeological remains left behind by nomadic communities in the Black Desert, situated in the northeast of modern Jordan.

This thesis explores several aspects of these Early Old Babylonian Amorites.

Volume 4 and 5 of the Leiden series 'Dutch Sources on South Asia' are now available, written by Markus Vink (vol.4) and Carolien Stolte (vol.5).

How have Muslims imagined the world before Muhammad? Stories about pre-Islamic times feature across all genres and periods of Arabic literature, and while many writers have derided the pre-Islamic past as disorderly paganism, others celebrate its memory as a time of Arab nobility and fine literature.…

On 21 April 2021, Armin Cuyvers lectured students and staff of the University of Nairobi on EU law and comparative regional integration.

China-watchers are still grappling with the wide-ranging implications of the Hong Kong national security law. Has Beijing really abrogated the legally-binding Sino-British Joint Declaration after just 23 of the agreed-upon 50 years?

On Thursday, May 16, Leiden University Libraries is organizing a workshop on early photography of the Middle East. In the workshop, curator Maartje van den Heuvel shows photos of three adventurous Dutch nineteenth-century travel and photography pioneers. They created beautiful photos and photo albums…

The Hague Journal of Diplomacy calls for paper proposal submissions. Accepted papers will be included in the journal's special issue on Japanese diplomacy under the broad theme of 'Japan between the West and the East'.

The Archaeology of Imperial Landscapes examines the transformation of rural landscapes and societies that formed the backbone of ancient empires in the Near East and Mediterranean. Through a comparative approach to archaeological data, it analyses the patterns of transformation in widely differing imperial…

This volume sees the publication of fifty-six early Old Babylonian letters from ca. 1880 BCE. They were found by legendary Iraqi archaeologist Taha Baqir in 1941 at the site of Tell ed-Dēr, ancient Sippar-Amnānum, in central Iraq.

In this book, Vanessa Newby provides the first detailed examination of credibility’s essential place in peacekeeping.

Three Dutch research institutes - including the Leiden University’s KITLV - will conduct a follow-up study on the use of violence during the Dutch East Indies war of decolonisation (1945 – 1950). The government has designated 4.1 million Euros for this study.

A selected group of unpublished amulets from various collections in the world will be studied and edited.

On the 8th of September Yun-An Olivia Dung successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Two open letters are currently circulating among civil servants in the Netherlands calling for the Dutch government to take a different stance towards Israel. Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law in Leiden, says in a national radio broadcast that this is an unusual and unique…

“Winner CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award 2016” A Cultural History

Reconstructing Later Prehistoric Societies in Northern Iraq (ca. 7000-3000 BCE)

Debate

LiTechAe: Percussive stone tools related to stone masonry techniques seen through experimentation and use-wear analysis.

Why is there no Northeast Asian security architecture? Assessing the strategic impediments to a stable East Asia. In this article, published in 'The Pacific Review', the authors Wang (Peking University) en Stevens (Leiden University) discuss the reasons why.

This beautifully illustrated volume investigates the social life of objects moving between the Middle East and the West, revealing the range of agencies and subjectivities involved in their trade and reuse.

This PhD research sets out to unravel and explain the socio-structural and cultural impacts of oil-industrialization on the local Bakhtiari community in general and the industrial laborers it provided in specific.

Throughout history, a large portion of the world's population has lived under imperial rule. Although scholars do not always agree on when and where the roots of imperialism lie, most would agree that imperial configurations have affected human history so profoundly that the legacy of ancient empires…

This project aims to open up the pre-Islamic linguistic history of Arabia through the systematic study of the Thamudic inscriptions within a digital humanities framework.

The 2011 disasters precipitated widespread concern among heritage scholars about the fate of Tohoku’s cultural properties, tangible and intangible. Damage to not only buildings and landscapes but also ‘formless’ heritage, some worried, could weaken social infrastructure and thus slow or undermine re…