This collection of seventeen essays takes its inspiration from the scholarly achievements of the Dutch historian Jan Lucassen. They reflect a central theme in his research: the history of labor.

Read on these pages all about the history of Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands. The Academia Lugduna Batava was founded in 1575 and its motto is: Libertatis Praesidium ('Bastion of Freedom').

What is nationalism and how can we study it from a historical perspective? Writing the History of Nationalism answers this question by examining eleven historical approaches to nationalism studies in theory and practice.

This project focuses on urban commercial space in Roman Italy and deals with the impact of economic growth on urban communities in the late Republic and the Imperial period (200 BCE – 300 CE).

ASLU 28 Michalis Karambinis (2015)

The goal is to establish an intuitive search and querying service that allows researchers to quickly retrieve the most valuable digital resources, in order to allow them to integrate and synthesise the results into a coherent narrative of the past. The current focus of the project is to implement…

Wenxin Wang defended her thesis on 26 October 2016

This project examines the meaning of this historical place, and the way it has been used by the political institutions that have had their seat there.

This Collaborative Research Group acts primarily as a platform for discussion of historical issues related to the African continent, its place in the world and in African Studies.

Climate change, depletion of natural resources, loss of natural and cultural landscapes, and many other (ecological) sustainability challenges urge us to (re)evaluate human interaction with the natural world. This renewed environmental consciousness has invigorated not only scientists working on effects…

Are you thinking about studying History: Europe 1000-1800? Learn more and watch the programme presentation.

The bottom-up development of post-Roman northwestern Europe

The first comprehensive and authoritative history of work and labour in Africa; a key text for all working on African Studies and Labour History worldwide.

Since 2013, the National Natural History Museum of the Netherlands, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, is unearthing the largest bonebed of the horned dinosaur Triceratops discovered so far. In order to answer questions about sedimentology, taphonomy and palaeobiology, palaeontologists and geologists collaborated…

A Spatial Enquiry into the Urban Society of Rome’s Imperial Port-Town

Non-urban settlement organization and Roman expansion in the Roman Republic (4th-1st centuries BC)

Understanding the history of Islam and Muslim societies sheds a clear light on the complex and changing social structures of the Middle East, including the current trouble spots whose effect spreads all the way to Western Europe.

The third project, worked on by dr. Rina Knoeff, is a synthesising project directed at studying the Leiden anatomical collections as important parts of ‘public history’. It will use the results of the other projects in order to analyse anatomical collections (their focus, significant silences, audiences,…

This thesis attempts to establish a dialogue between the modern and the medieval traditions in logic, by means of ‘translations’ of the medieval logical theories into the modern framework of symbolic logic, i.e. formalizations.

This project traces how, why, and under what circumstances scholars invoked the trope of “dogmatism,” especially in controversies. Relevant controversies from various fields, periods, and countries will be subjected to in-depth rhetorical analysis.

Leiden University Library and related museum holdings in Leiden contain a body of materials showing the unique role of Dutch-Japanese trade relations as a node in the history of global flows of knowledge, materials and culture during the early modern period.

In Renaissance Florence, humanists wrote Latin poems fashioning their city as the new Rome, and members of the Medici family as Roman rulers. How can we explain this practice?

To safeguard the quality of research within Leiden University, a committee of external experts evaluates the University’s institutes once every six years according to the Standard Evaluation Protocol which is drawn up by the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), The Royal Netherlands…

On 10 November Guanmian Xu successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Estudio arqueológico de la primera ciudad española en la Tierra Firme de América: Santa María de la Antigua del Darién

How did the invention and implementation of the lightning rod change the perception of thunderstorms on a scientific, technical, religious and artistic level, in the Netherlands and beyond, during the period 1752-1830?

This volume, featuring sixteen contributions from leading Roman historians and archaeologists, sheds new light on approaches to the economic history of urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, with a particular emphasis on the imperial period.

TruLife applies lessons from the study of long-term urban traditions, exemplified by pre-Columbian Maya tropical cities, to present-day sustainable urban design.

This book argues that the combined literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence supports the theory that early-imperial Italy had about six million inhabitants.

In a podcast episode of 'New Books in History' Claire Weeda talks about her book 'Ethnicity in Medieval Europe 950-1250: Medicine, Power and Religion'.

A mix of data research, artificial intelligence and archaeology led to lively discussions on 31 January. On that day the unique event 'AI & Data Science @ Archaeology' took place in which the Data Science Research Programme (DSRP), SAILS and the Faculty of Archaeology joined forces.

Matthew Hobson is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC granted research project 'An Empire of 2000 Cities: urban networks and economic integration in the Roman empire', directed by Luuk De Ligt and John Bintliff (Archaeology).

1000 Years of World History in 100 Old Maps.

Dutch archaeologists are making three-dimensional virtual reconstructions of archaeological objects lost in the Syrian civil war.

Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

Welcome to the Leiden University Centre for Islamic Thought and History. The initiatives and projects undertaken here are under the auspices of the Leiden University Centre for Intercultural Philosophy. As a centre, we aim to promote the study of Arabic and Islamic thought and history, in all its different…

In Migration and Membership Regimes editors Ulbe Bosma, Gijs Kessler and Leo Lucassen bring together ten essays in an analytical framework which looks beyond the Transatlantic migration of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in a deliberate attempt to incorporate the experience of earlier periods…

By analysing neglected (continental) spy centres and integrating these groups of female intelligencers into the traditional, male-orientated historical narratives, this project will proceed towards a gendered history of early modern espionage.