The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences provides its ca. 5000 students with a thorough education in the social and behavioural sciences. The student population is very diverse and international in nature.

In 2024, many of our students and staff won great prizes and secured important research grants.

From 1 January 2024, Bart Barendregt will be appointed as vice-dean of Research on the FSW board. This is a new role.

In a recent publication in Nature Sustainability, an international team led by Josephine Chambers from Wageningen University, and including Marja Spierenburg from the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University, have developed a practical tool for researchers and…

The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences brings together high-quality research and outstanding mono- and multidisciplinary teaching.

Archaeological and Anthropological perspectives

Annually the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology awards the Speckmann prize for the best Fieldwork NL report, as well as the most accomplished master’s thesis.

Announcement of a new publication by Janneke Verheijen, lecturer at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology.

Lecture, Research Seminar

Erik de Maaker, B. Ramila, Maaike Feitsma, Mayke Groffen, Ellen Haeser, Rachel Lee, M. Karthika, Leonie Sterenborg and Sanne van den Dungen

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies is now available. This more than 850-page book offers methods how to study sound as well as how through sound and listening (new) knowledge can be gained.

A dental anthropological approach to foodways, health and disease, and crafting in the pre-Columbian Caribbean.

Western thought has often dismissed shadows as fictional, but what if fictions reveal original truths?

Publications from the Project 0100 team members.

PhD defence

We complete this thematic issue’s contribution on skill, food, and sustainability with a team report based on ethnographic research which focuses on reskilling for sustainability in multiple European locations and involving diverse social actors and stakeholders. The Food Citizens? project (2017-2024)…

This chapter introduces interactive documentaries (also known as i-docs) in digital and audiovisual anthropology. Interactive documentaries allow an audience to actively engage with an interface in order to experience the content. For example, opening Miranda Dahlin’s Exiliados: Mexican Asylum in El…

How do videos, movies and documentaries dedicated to indigenous communities transform the media landscape of South Asia? Based on extensive original research, this book examines how in South Asia popular music videos, activist political clips, movies and documentaries about, by and for indigenous communities…

It is well known that photography means writing with light. However, the meaning of “with” can be ambiguous. Film can be exposed outside of the camera. Historically, people have done so to render visible other forms of radiation than what we call light. In mid-2013, Andrew Littlejohn took several rolls…

Links to related organisations, institutes, journals and archives.

Depending on the research area you are charged with bench fees or not.

If you want to continue your academic education, the logical next step after obtaining your bachelor’s degree is to follow a master’s. You can do so in a university inside or outside the Netherlands, including several options right here at Leiden University!

In this minor programme, students will become familiar with the nature and scope of violence; the ways in which it impacts public order, and the ways in which society can respond to and, ultimately, prevent violence.

How can the emergence of primary justice systems be facilitated and furthered?

More than half of the Indonesian population lives in cities. What does this mean for public health? How sustainable are these megacities? This is the subject of the ‘Urban Transitions’ Summer Academy on West Java. This summer course is also the kick-off for a renewed interdisciplinary partnership…

A banker who puts making money second and makes a profit nonetheless. A farmer who stops ploughing and using insecticides but still has a good harvest. A new white paper by Leiden-Delft-Erasmus and Naturalis Biodiversity Center shows how the meeting of disciplines provides solutions to climate change…

People in motion. This is the theme of the Voice4Thought festival taking place in Leiden from 21 to 25 September. Debates, songs, art, workshops, a conference for school pupils. It's all about the encounter.

A number of European countries have started evacuating their citizens and there is a threat of military intervention by neighbouring countries: the situation in Niger is deteriorating rapidly. A military coup has thrown the country into turmoil, partly aided by social media.

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

In January 2020, Marja Spierenburg joined the FSW as the new Professor of Anthropology of Sustainability and Livelihoods. Let’s get to know her. ‘All my research is basically about nature conservation. I look at areas like national parks, but also at measures aimed at increasing the sustainability of…

Fieldwork photographs of Meike de Goede, Catherina Wilson and Mirjam de Bruijn (with African Studies student Vera Bakker) have been selected for the LeidenGlobal Photo Exhibition Heritage on the Move, which will travel around the different Faculties of the University in the coming months.

Strengthening the cooperation between Moroccan, other African, and Dutch institutions for higher education. This was the focus of a two-day seminar at NIMAR (Netherlands Institute Morocco) in Rabat in July, during which scholars of the African Studies Centre Leiden interacted with colleagues from NIMAR…

Mirjam de Bruijn and camerman Sjoerd Sijsma have been travelling through Chad and Cameroon. The Arab spring hasn't arrived there yet, but the effects of internet and mobile telephony show in everyday life. Mirjam and Sjoerd look for counter voices: young people who try to change these countries in their…

Special visit of seven ambassadors of the Arabic-speaking world to the University Library

Mirjam de Bruijn has received a funding from the Research Council of Norway for the research project called 'Decoding Digital Media in African Regions of Conflict (DDMAC)'. The project is a collaboration with colleagues from Oslomet and Simula, Norway, Utrecht University, University of Addis Abeba,…

Leiden Asia Departments

Overview of the Asia Programmes offered at Leiden University.

Bones contain information about people’s lives such as where they came from, their age at death and which diseases they suffered from. Researchers can deduce a lot from them about a person’s life and about human evolution. This generates leads that could help solve present-day problems, such as how…

The emergence of metalwork deposition during the Bronze Age in Northwest Europe, c. 2300-1500 BC

Here you find the admission requirements to apply for the international bachelor’s programme in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology.

Sustainability issues are often highly complex problems, which can only be understood if you combine knowledge on both natural systems and the communities which need to deal with the issues. Throughout your 3-year Science for Sustainable Societies programme, you learn to analyse complex sustainability…

Leiden University has been promoting studies on Latin America and the Caribbean for a long time.

For the Netherlands, like many other European countries, the nineteenth century was a period of strengthening national identity. Anne Petterson describes how 'the ordinary people' of Amsterdam expressed their patriotic feelings differently from how the elite had hoped. PhD defence 24 January.

Every year, in the last month of the Islamic calendar, millions of Muslims from around the world come together in Mecca to perform the Hajj, the pilgrimage that all capable Muslims should perform at least once in their lives. In 2013, the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden organised the exhibition…

Our library contains around 23,000 books, journals and historical documents under the care of a specialized librarian.

In our teaching, we give all our students the opportunity to learn about sustainability themes and issues, where possible ones that tie in with the content of their degree programme.

Leiden University offers its students a wide range of bachelor's, master's and minors that explore sustainability or climate. Here, you find an overview of those programmes in the academic year 2020-2021.