Are you thinking about studying Religious Studies? Learn more and watch the programme presentation.

The MA Religious Studies at Leiden University is designed to equip students with the tools and knowledge required for studying, interpreting, and analysing religion as a diverse (human) phenomenon. With its world-class scholars and access to exceptional research collections, the programme offers the…

What moves an individual, a society or a culture? How does religion relate to politics, economics and morals? Religion is everywhere and often plays, unnoticed, a large role in the daily lives of yourself and others.

Religion permeates our world and remains highly influential across all domains of human society, including politics, culture, and economics. Religion also plays a critical role in everyday life as it provides meaning, motivation, and social support for billions of people. The master Religious Studies…

Religion permeates our world and remains highly influential across all domains of human society, including politics, culture, and economics. Religion also plays a critical role in everyday life as it provides meaning, motivation, and social support for billions of people. The master Religious Studies…

Mathilde Mechling defended her thesis on 28 january 2020.

This dissertation focuses on a new field of artistic research in which a visual artist takes on the role of researcher. The main research question is whether performance art integrated in an ecumenical service, combined with artistic directions from the artist, can enhance the religious experience of…

Program for postgraduate research master seminar 'Current Issues in Religious Studies and Western Esotericism' 2024–2025 is online

Linda Stuckrath Gottschalk defended her thesis on 6 April 2016.

Jifeng Liu defended his thesis on 2 February 2017

This study investigates and analyses didactical approaches in theory and practice of both scholars and expert teachers in Religious Education/Life World Orientation (for secondary level) in their role as Identity Agents in order to discover and develop didactical key components contributing to religious…

This project explores the religious lives of a Surinamese Hindu community practicing in Amsterdam at the Sri Radha Krishna Mandir from an interdisciplinary perspective.

This study discusses the position of the monasteries in pre-1950s Tibetan societies and how that position was informed by Buddhist monastic ideology.

Thirteen Centuries of Creed, Conflict and Coexistence

Religious Studies at the University of Amsterdam organises a postgraduate seminar on current issues in religious studies and western esotericism. You can find the programme for the year 2023-2024 below.

The presence of religious idioms in people’s responses to vulnerability and misfortune is not unique to Aceh, or to Indonesia. Yet the scale of the tsunami coupled with the historically deeply ingrained presence of religion in Acehnese everyday life has magnified religious discourses on misfortune,…

Religions involve belief in the unbelievable: in evil spirits causing disease, in souls surviving death, and in gods punishing wrongdoers and blessing the just. Cognitive studies suggest that humans are predisposed to speculate about fate and divine agency, but support from so-called ‘plausibility structures’…

A selected group of unpublished amulets from various collections in the world will be studied and edited.

Jasmijn Rana demonstrates in the article 'Secular-religious self-improvement: Muslim women’s kickboxing in the Netherlands' that young Muslim women who kickbox develop agentive selves by challenging gender norms and living out their religious subjectivities.

Henk Versnel's work on ancient religion has been seminal. For his 80th birthday, a group of scholars assembled to celebrate and analyze his oeuvre.

This project will lead to a critical edition and annotated translation of the Niśvāsamukha, the opening book of the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā.

The role of religion in the identity construction of LGBTQIA+ folks

Recently, studies have shown the similarities and differences in sources of meaning between religionists, ‘nones’ and atheists (see several studies of Schnell and others). The present study that will be conducted in three European countries tries to clarify the relationship between meaning giving and…

How has interreligious encounter in Ogbómòsó created multiple religious belongings and identities among individuals and groups?

This study elucidates a critical facet of modern global Buddhism that has escaped the attention of the scholarly community by exploring the life, teachings and influence of Master Wuguang 悟光上師 (1918-2000).

They might not have had Twitter, but they did have brochures (pamphlets), the Roman Catholics and ‘modern’ Protestants between 1840 and 1870. In these, they launched a passionate attack on each other’s ideas. Ineke Smit has catalogued the brochures from the collection of the University Library and outlined…

The programme focuses on the medieval dynamics of intellectual life in the Rhineland and the Low countries, nowadays divided over five countries (Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands) but one cultural region in the later Middle Ages.

Abdessamad El Amraoui defended his thesis on 6 Mai 2015.

This project receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101054849 (PURANA).

This study describes religion in Java.

Khadija Kadrouch-Outmany defended her thesis on 16 September 2014.

Religion and ethnicity are inextricably linked in discourse within and about Central Asia. One common narrative suggests that as a result of differences between historically sedentary and nomadic populations, ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks are naturally more religious and more likely to radicalise than their…