Leiden University offers ambitious students the latest knowledge and the freedom to develop their own area of expertise.

This work represents the final results of several years of research within the Maya region. It deals with the relations between architecture and urbanism with landscape and astronomy.

Most of the vast Tibetan literature was authored by monks. They were Buddhists par excellence, educated in a system in which Indic- and Indian-inspired texts played a pivotal role. What they wrote was primarily religious or philosophical in nature, but also extended to ‘secular’ topics. Through the…

This dissertation sheds light on politics, education and linguistic identity by studying the case of the College of Jerusalem, founded by the Brothers of the Christian Schools.

Around the sixth and seventh centuries, South and Southeast Asia saw a great religious change: Saivism largely took over from Vaisnavism. We’re going to look at the way in which Saivism, the religion of the god Siva, presented itself with respect to Vaisnavism. In particular we’ll investigate the role…

The pre-master's is a bridging programme for students who have applied for the MA Religious Studies, but who, according to the Board of Admissions, still have deficiencies in their educational background. Once you have completed the pre-master’s programme, you will be admitted to the Master’s progra…

On 27 November 2019, David de Boer defended his PhD dissertation 'Religious Persecution and Transnational Compassion in the Dutch Vernacular Press 1655-1745'. For his research, he analysed several hundred pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals published primarily in the seventeenth-century Netherlands,…

This reflection for Critical Studies on Terrorism, explores two decades of the 'War of Terror' and what it means today.

Jeffrey Kotyk defended his thesis on 7 September 2017

The Faculty of Humanities is proud to launch its new D&I Calendar for the academic year 2023-2024. This calendar is an effort to build awareness and cultural understanding of important religious holidays and other special observances of the diverse groups within our academic community.

The Indonesian Experience after the Fall of Suharto

The project ‘Between the Holy Land and the World’ proposes a connected history of the Christian communities in the Near East (1900-1948) by means of a study of unpublished Franciscan and Dominican photographic collections.

On 25 October 2018, Tu Zhang defended her thesis 'Public Reason Secularism: A Defense of Liberal Democracy'. The doctoral research was supervised by prof. P. Cliteur.

Despite the wealth of historical literature on the Second World War, the subject of religion and churches in occupied Europe has been undervalued.

Punching Back is a detailed ethnographic study that demonstrates that young Muslim women who kickbox develop agentive selves by challenging gender norms, challenging expectations, and living out their religious subjectivities.

Markus Davidsen defended his thesis on 16 October 2014

On the 16th of June Patrtick Harrison successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Arabic and its Alternatives discusses the complicated relationships between language, religion and communal identities in the Middle East in the period following the First World War.

The multiple connections between emblematics and Natural History in the broader perspective of their underlying artistic, literary, political and religious ideologies.

From Apartheid in South-Africa to 9/11 in the United States: there is not a single culture that is not shaped by the memory of war or conflict. The minor Cultural Memory of War and Conflict focuses on how such memory cultures influence and shape societies today.

Study why and how, in countries around the world, people mobilize around ethnic, racial, religious and social identities, and explore the role of political institutions in mitigating conflicts that arise from such mobilization.

From the mid-19th century until the 1970’s, the Middle East witnessed the presence of various European missionaries who played a fundamental role in the birth and the development of humanitarianism. Since these Christian missionaries were well integrated in the local Middle Eastern societies via their…

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Who were the main artists and producers who generated new forms of popular music? What was the music like that was produced by artists in particular urban settings? How were particular lifestyles articulated to identify new audiences and what does this reveal about the way popular music contributed…

What would be the environmental performance of the Carbon4PUR technology at industrial scale in the future?

Worlds of sound is important for everyone who is interested in listening to music of the 20th century or for anyone involved in studying or performing contemporary music. The central question is how to interpret music in case the performer is not willing to depend on personal taste or conventions.

In my research I am concerned with the possibility of a politics of sexuality without reverting to identitarian conceptions of sexuality. In a reading of the work of the American author James Purdy, I propose to move towards a politicizing of the concept of narrative identity as developed by the French…

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

Truth is stranger than fiction. In 1997 Juan Maldaceña discovered a remarkable dictionary that translates equation for equation the physics of black holes in string theory into the more conventional physics of quantum mechanics of interacting particles. The remarkable possibility exists that…

This research aims to address the relationship between cinema and political thought in Latin America, in order to question a limited understanding of cinema politics, which has dominated the field of study since the middle of the last century, and to propose a different one that we will call politics…

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok, Co-promotor: F.J. Verbeek

This study tests whether behavioural problems at a young age are related to early reading and mathematics development.

The Central and Eastern European Studies Centre is an interdisciplinary platform of scholars of Leiden University. The Centre’s mission is to bundle together, strengthen and disseminate existing research into the history, politics, and culture of the region, spanning the new member states of the EU,…

On Tuesday 19 December 2017 Anneloes Kuiper-Slendebroek defended her doctoral thesis 'Rechter over Grenzen' which deals with the application and interpretation of international law in Dutch private law. Supervisor is Martijn Polak, co-supervisor is Jeroen van der Weide.

The Leiden Children's Rights Observatory is an open access online database of case commentaries, written by international experts on children’s rights, referring to the decisions of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on…

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This thesis focuses on the role of chemokine receptors CXCR3 and CCR2 in the inflammatory process and infection control using the zebrafish model.

This research intents to redefine the limits of the electric guitar.

The aim of current study was to develop a dried inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) formulation with minimal loss during the drying process and improved stability when compared with the conventional liquid IPV.

Anja Groten investigates matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D)*.

The position of child victims, globally and in Liberia and their right to physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration covered by art. 39 CRC.

Liposomes hold great promise for peptide-based personalized cancer vaccination, especially when administered intradermally. However, current liposome preparation methods are very time consuming (resulting in long development times per formulation), whereas personalized cancer vaccination requires very…

The Centre is the proud home of several research programmes.

The present volume focuses on the political perceptions of the Hajj, its global religious appeal to Muslims, and the European struggle for influence and supremacy in the Muslim world in the age of pre-colonial and colonial empires.

With regard to governance, policies and law, many Muslims and Muslim countries recognise the possibility that Islam has something important to say about the way society is to be ordered, governed, and regulated.

Dating back more than 400 years, Leiden University has the oldest continuous chair of Arabic outside the Arabic-speaking world. Today the MENA region is studied at Leiden from before the coming of Islam up to today from a wide array of disciplines. And Arabic is studied within the diverse linguistic,…

Chaider Bamualim defended his thesis on 9 September 2015

Sharia Incorporated: A Comparative Overview of the Legal Systems of Twelve Muslim Countries in Past and Present