Until recently, the role of external information processing in intelligence has rarely been investigated quantitatively or experimentally. A group of researchers from Erasmus University Rotterdam, Leiden University, GGZ Rivierduinen, and University of Edinburgh measured in a new way how and when people…

What was the stringed instrument known in medieval and early Renaissance Italy as “cetra”?

At Leiden University you can choose from 16 English-taught bachelor’s and 250 English-taught master’s programmes. We enjoy an excellent worldwide reputation accumulated over more than four centuries. Today we’re consistently highly placed in major rankings, such as The Times Higher Education, QS and…

Indigenous Latin American artifacts have attracted the interest of Europeans since the earliest moment of contact between Europeans and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The ERC-funded BECACO project uses an innovative multidisciplinary framework to investigate the provenance of ethnographic and…

The World Politics Major at Leiden University College The Hague examines the big ideas and the powerful forces – political, military, economic, social and cultural – that shape the world at every level, from the global to the local and everything in between. Political conflict is a key driver of many…

In this opinion article published in World Development, the authors present five research and policy priorities. While it is clear that ‘pluriversal’ designs need to guide the way forward (Kothari et al 2019), defining a set of key pillars can provide direction and purpose across this pluriversality.…

1000 Years of World History in 100 Old Maps.

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…

In Humanity’s End As A New Beginning, Emeritus Professor Mineke Schipper reflects on myths about ‘the end’.

Who had a say in making decisions about the natural world, when, how and to what end? How were rights to natural resources established? How did communities handle environmental crises? And how did dealing with the environment have an impact on the power relations in communities?

What forms does Muslim religiosity take in daily life? What is the relation between representations of Islam and Muslims by scholars and the views that exist in the ‘real world’?

This book examines the history of The Netherlands in a way that connects global processes to local developments.

A portrait of the complex historical process of over 500 years of European colonialism in the New World.

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…

This book published by Oxford University Press discusses religion and trade in world history.

Imagining the Americas in Print contains eleven essays, seven of which have been published before and four of which are new.

Sheltering is an immediate human need and determines well-being andhealth.

During the period 500–1000 CE Egypt was successively part of the Byzantine, Persian and Islamic empires. All kinds of events, developments and processes occurred that would greatly affect its history and that of the eastern Mediterranean in general. This is the first volume to map Egypt's position in…

Keynote lecture

The Department of Archaeological Sciences seeks to achieve the highest standards of excellence in science-driven education and archaeological research across the globe and across all periods.

Archaeozoology is the study of faunal remains that are recovered at archaeological sites.

In early medieval England, there was an interest in the history of the Roman Empire and kings adopted such imperial titles as 'imperator' or 'basileus'. How can we explain this interest and what functions did imperial ideas and the reception of the classical world serve in early medieval England?

The Persian Empire (539-330 BCE) was the first world empire in history. At its height, it united a territory stretching from present-day India to Libya - and it would take 2,000 years before significantly larger empires emerged in early modern Eurasia. This territorial sweep is both a source of fascination…

Are there general principles or values that should govern our actions as moral agents and/or as political subjects?

This book examines the critical role of information and knowledge in early modern Europe's global pursuits, exploring challenges in trusting distant information, the development of doubt in intercultural encounters, and the impact of misinformation.

The historiography of the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944 is dominated by the personal clash between the principal negotiators, Harry Dexter White of the United States and John Maynard Keynes of Britain.

Archives were a common target during the Second World War, and hundreds suffered damages. Among these archival losses, the losses to medieval manuscript collections stand out.

Carl Li defended his thesis on 30 June 2015

On 9 June 2020, Maral Darouei defended her thesis 'Managing a sustainable career in the contemporary world of work: Personal choices and contextual challenges'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.I. van der Rest.

Machine Learning is becoming a more and more substantial technology for industry.

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

Cigdem Oguz defended her thesis on 13 June 2018

Lecture

This dissertation studies the construction of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a cultural icon in American memory, particularly by FDR himself.

Bacteria caught red-handed, deeply frozen just as they were about to cause Lyme’s disease. Ariane Briegel is wildly enthusiastic about the wonders she observes thanks to three elements: a freezing technique, a camera-equipped microscope, and AI. ‘It’s fascinating. Every single cell is different.’

Dr. Gruni published an article on the impact on sustainable development in the EU Common Commercial Policy of recent Opinion 2/15 CJEU on the Global Trade and Customs Journal.

Episode 1: The Golden Horde in a Global Perspective: Imperial Strategies. This project intends to challenge the conventional way of considering the nomadic state organizations and the role of Nomads in world history.

De Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2018 have been published and this year for the first time the subject ‘LAW’ has been included. Our faculty is ranked number 20.

The United Nations’ fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. The Centre for Innovation at Leiden University feels the responsibility to tackle this need. Our mission is to drive innovation…

The main question addressed in this thesis is how we can best conceive the contrast between a priori and empirical truths.

Migration is the talk of the town. On the whole, however, the current situation is seen as resulting from unique political upheavals. Such a-historical interpretations ignore the fact that migration is a fundamental phenomenon in human societies from the beginning and plays a crucial role in the cultural,…

This book reveals how one publishing firm's editorial strategy helped to legitimate European colonialism in the early modern era.

While phenomenology and Yogacara Buddhism are both known for their investigations of consciousness, there exists a core tension between them: phenomenology affirms the existence of essence, whereas Yogacara Buddhism argues that everything is empty of essence (svabhava). How is constructive cultural…