In her teaching, University Lecturer of Ancient History Liesbeth Claes uses various digital tools. Using that experience and interest she started an innovation project in order to research which digital skills history alumni need on the labour market and how these skills can be implemented in the cu…

From 15 augustus 2014 onward, Leonor Álvarez Francés is appointed as PhD student on Raymond Fagels NWO project ‘Facing the Enemy. The Spanish Army Commanders during the First Decade of the Dutch Revolt (1567-1577)’

Migration and Mobility in the Early Roman Empire by Luuk de Ligt and Laurens E. Tacoma (Eds.)

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of…

In developing cooperation with Indonesia, Leiden University focuses on projects that benefit culture, nature, society and economy, in Indonesia as well as in the Netherlands.

The World of the Fullo takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with high-quality garments, of Roman Italy. Analyzing the social and economic worlds in which the fullers lived and worked, it tells the story of their economic circumstances, the way they organized their workshops, the…

Maral Jefroudi defended her thesis on 11 October 2017

'The World Upside Down. The Geographical Revolution in Humanist Commentaries on Pliny's Natural History and Mela's De situ orbis (140-1700)', in: Enenkel, K.A.E. & Nellen, H. (Eds.), Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (1400-1700).Humanistica…

As of 1 September 2015, Michiel van Groesen is Professor of Maritime History at Leiden University. He succeeds Professor Henk den Heijer, who retired and gave his farewell lecture at 25 September. Den Heijer held the chair from 2010 to 2015. Before coming to Leiden Van Groesen worked as Associate Professor…

This volume investigates how loanwords can prove past contact events, taking into consideration ten different regions located in the Philippines, Eastern Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and New Guinea.

Subproject of

Subproject of

Two statues of gorillas abducting women: they were what led PhD candidate Dick van Broekhuizen to write a new type of history of nineteenth-century sculpture. ‘If you view nineteenth-century art history from a less narrow perspective, the narrative changes completely.’ PhD ceremony on 21 June.

Subproject of

The first objective is to create a catalogue raisonée, i.e. a structured database that will store the main attributes of each town in a standardized format database, which will be freely accessible when completed; the second objective is to exploit theories and methods that can help us to understand…

This monograph by dr. Kim Beerden compares Greek divination to divinatory practices in Neo-Assyrian Mesopotamia and Republican Rome.

Fighting for the faith, caring for the sick, and praying for the soul of their benefactors were the main tasks of the military orders, who since the time of the crusades were well represented in the Netherlands in the Middle Ages, including the Frisian lands. Especially the Hospitallers and the Teutonic…

My current research focuses on criminality and gender interactions in nineteenth-century Europe. This project uses a comparative methodology to explain gender constructions in a criminal and in a court setting.

This year, the Leiden University Institute for History ranks #29 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. With this, the institute ranks as the second best in The Netherlands for the subject History.

Hanan Hammad and Eftychia Mylona give a master class focusing on conceptual and methodological challenges in writing histories of marginalized social groups.

How do we explain the fact that certain areas had many large cities, while other areas were studded with large numbers of small towns and yet other areas had very few urban agglomerations of any kind?

This is a good time for it to happen, in the opinion of Professor of Fatherlands History, Henk te Velde. The abdication of Queen Beatrix is a good starting point for celebrating 200 years of the Dutch monarchy, in 2013. Te Velde is a member of the National Committee for 200 Years of Monarchy: 'By standing…

This project investigates how early print media covered distant but urgent geopolitical conflicts, using newspapers from the Low Countries, north and south.

Systematisch geordend naslagwerk voor alle stadsrechten in Nederland

This dissertation explores how domestic political power struggles in Greece and Turkey during the Cold War engaged with the ongoing conflict in Cyprus and aims to demonstrate how socialist parties in Greece and Turkey struggled with the concept of the “nation” in battling for power and political positioning…

Different groups can have different memories of the same historical event. This can lead to conflict but does not have to. How is this, and how can countries and people reconcile with the past?

The Leiden Ancient History specialization concentrates on the study of the economies, societies and cultures of the large empires of the Graeco-Roman world, starting with the empires of Alexander the Great and his successors. The appearance of these empires led to the development of an interaction network…

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the city of Batavia was supplied with produce by its hinterland, known as the Ommelanden. Bondan Kanumoyoso studied the history of the various ethnic groups that populated this area and in doing so has shed light on the structure of modern-day Indonesian society.…

City walk

City walk

City walk

Inspired by a critical reconsideration of current monolithic approaches to the study of Greek religion, this book argues that ancient Greeks displayed a disquieting capacity to validate two (or more) dissonant, if not contradictory, representations of the divine world in a complementary rather than…

A new paperback edition of Brian Heffernan's book Freedom and the Fifth Commandment. Catholic priests and political violence in Ireland, 1919-21 was published by Manchester University Press in September 2016.

This monograph by Robert Ross provides a detailed narrative of the Kat River Settlement in the Eastern Cape of South Africa during the nineteenth century.

Marion Anker is a junior curator at the Rijksmuseum, the National Museum of the Netherlands. She studied History in Leiden and Amsterdam. Together with her team, she organised the controversial exhibition ‘Revolusi! Indonesië onafhankelijk!’ What did studying History teach her?

History can be found in utensils and in interviews with ordinary citizens. ‘With the reconstruction of everyday life, an anthropological approach works better,’ thinks historian Jan-Bart Gewald. Inaugural lecture on 6 June.

This open access book explores the role of continuity in political processes and practices during the Age of Revolutions.

From the very beginning, the Islam has known an oral tradition. It was only two hundred years ago that Muslims starting writing about the history of Islam, on rocks or other hard materials. Arabic epigraphy (study of inscriptions) turns out to be an essential tool in historical genealogy research. Abdullah…

The changing status of anatomical collections from the early modern period to date.

The project’s overall goal is to improve Indonesia’s environmental legal framework and its implementation by strengthening the regulatory capacity of the government, and by enhancing the capacity of CSOs and scholars to hold the government accountable for its regulatory performance.

Legal education initiative of the Leiden University, the University of Groningen and Universitas Indonesia.

History lecturer Giles Scott-Smith is enthusiastic about the new pitch-to-peer programme (P2P), for which students have to make an original, creative assignment and evaluate one another’s work. This is part five in a series of articles about lecturers and innovation in teaching and learning.

A shepherd, but also a comparativist and historian with very broad interests. That is how Professor Philippe Buc describes himself. As of 1 August 2021, he will hold the chair of professor of Medieval History at the university. In an introductory interview, Buc introduces himself, his research and his…

From Galileo Galilei to Albert Einstein and from Anna Maria van Schurman to Anton de Kom: only a selection of the 25 authors who's books and ideas had extraordinary historical impact, in some cases even to this day. Leiden University Libraries and the National Museum of Antiquities jointly present the…

My research project focuses on the development of a popular national agency in late nineteenth century Amsterdam and the question how ‘ordinary’ citizens imagined ‘the Netherlands’ through the experience and use of their urban surroundings.

The project GRADIENTS investigates what it meant to be European in colonial Africa where identification as European often did not depend on skin colour and was understood on a spectrum with many gradients.

Why is Crossnational and Cross-cultural agents such as Henrich Carloff and Willem Leyel important when studying Early Modern expansion?

This PhD project studies immigrant groups in ancient Babylonia and aims at investigating their identities, socioeconomic status, and integration into an ancient multicultural society.

The central aim is to systematically study differences in crime patterns and social control between migrants and non-migrants in early modern Frankfurt am Main.

The figure of the barbarian has captivated the Western imagination from Greek antiquity to the present. Since the 1990s, the rhetoric of civilization versus barbarism has taken center stage in Western political rhetoric and the media. But how can the longevity and popularity of this opposition be accounted…