This dissertation studies the formation of the wage laboring class in the Iranian oil industry during the first decades of the 20th century.

Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

Thanks to its early civilisation and continuous mix of influences, the Muslim world has a rich and varied culture. The study of material culture, books, stories, films and increasingly television series teaches us about the structure of modern-day Muslim societies.

With Brill, LUCIS publishes a peer-reviewed book series, “Leiden Studies in Islam and Society” (LSIS), aimed at an international academic audience.

When people migrate, they leave an old environment behind and move to a new one. What exactly happens? How do the migrants feel? How does the host society respond to them?

From now on, you can listen to the intriguing stories of our staff any time you wish! On this page you can find out more about the new podcast series of the faculty of Humanities.

The |0100| Project studies the discourses, practices and imaginaries of Islamic information society’s most debated component- Artificial Intelligence- using multimodal and mixed methods and comparing and contrasting narratives and imagery of AI-religious-futures in Muslim Southeast Asia.

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural…

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural…

This NWO project, which is being be carried out in close cooperation with the universities of Oxford (contact: Prof. Robert Hoyland) and Princeton (contact: Prof. John F. Haldon) and the UMR 8167 (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS, University Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV, University Panthéon-Sorbonne,…

Arabist and papyrologist Petra Sijpesteijn has received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council for her research on the early Islamic Empire. The five-year ERC grant will fund the research project

This beautifully illustrated volume investigates the social life of objects moving between the Middle East and the West, revealing the range of agencies and subjectivities involved in their trade and reuse.

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’?

In this paper, Sibgatullina and Abbas aim to illuminate the complex connections between the European right-wing movements and Islam and discusses how the adoption of Muslim identity may function as a politically strategic opportunity for European conservative forces.

Political Islam is not new to the Middle East, but the appearance of ISIS has stretched the phenomenon to the extreme.

What is the history of the humanities? What does this new field look like? How does it relate to the history of science or to the history of individual disciplines (linguistics, history, media studies)? And how can you participate?

What made the early Islamic empire so successful and have we missed the story by neglecting crucial evidence? The 7th-century Arab conquests changed the socio-political configurations in the Mediterranean and Eurasia forever. Yet we do not really know how the Arabs managed to gain dominance of this…

How have Muslims imagined the world before Muhammad? Stories about pre-Islamic times feature across all genres and periods of Arabic literature, and while many writers have derided the pre-Islamic past as disorderly paganism, others celebrate its memory as a time of Arab nobility and fine literature.…

This programme examines cultural space, national identity and the politics of tangible and intangible heritage in Islamic Central Asia.

How did institutions and structures operate throughout the Muslim world from the earliest history of Islam into the early modern period?

‘Islam and Muslims are not something that happened to Europe; they are part of Europe. In fact, Islam is one the biggest constants in European history,’ argues Professor Maurits Berger in the new eight-part Matters of Humanities: History of Islam in Europe podcast series of the Leiden University Faculty…

Why does the history of dogmatism deserve our attention? This open access book analyses uses of the term, following dogmatism from Victorian Britain to Cold War America, examining why it came to be regarded as a vice, and how understandings of its meaning have evolved.

Do you want to discover a language and culture that is completely different from the Netherlands?

This study aims to provide a long time perspective of human landscape manipulation. Studying the roles of prehistoric foragers in past ecosystems is of great importance to establish the character of past 'natural' landscapes and to enhance the management of current ones.

On 13 September 2023 Eline Scheerlinck successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

What are the humanities? As the cluster of disciplines historically grouped together as “humanities” has grown and diversified to include media studies and digital studies alongside philosophy, art history and musicology to name a few, the need to clearly define the field is pertinent.

Islam at 250: Studies in Memory of G.H.A. Juynboll is a collection of original articles on the state of Islamic sciences and Arabic culture in the early phases of their crystallization.

This volume examines how the history of the humanities might be written through the prism of scholarly personae, understood as time- and place-specific models of being a scholar.

University Lecturer Ahab Bdaiwi:

This project studies the roles of prehistoric foragers in past ecosystems to establish the character of past “natural” landscapes and enhance the management of current ones.

Cwiertka wants to investigate how waste is produced and disposed of in modern East Asian society. With her research group she will be carrying out a comparative analysis on two levels: the international level (between China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) and the inter-regional level (between East Asia…

Research on papyri has provided new insights into the history of the origins of Islam. Petra Sijpesteijns’s book,'Shaping a Muslim State', is based on these ancient Arabic letters and documents. Her new research on a Viennese collection of untranslated papyri is expected to produce more discoveries.

Jochem van den Boogert defended his thesis on 18 November 2015

The main aim of this project is to reveal and unravel the invisible histories of the UN, transcending the dominant Western perspective to recover the historical agency of Global South actors. The research will investigate how the UN has both facilitated and limited their role in shaping global order…

Muslims have lived in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe for centuries. Their arrival in Western Europe, the two Americas and Australia is however relatively recent. Studying how Muslims relate to their Western environment (and vice versa) and the mutual influences of Western and Islamic philosophies…

Show People offers a comprehensive history of the film star from Mary Pickford to Andy Serkis, traversing more than one hundred years and drawing on examples from America, Britain, Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

Conference

Promotor: P. T. de Zeeuw, Co-promotor: N. Neumayer; G. van de Ven

How do the pathways of Dutch converts to Islam involved in jihadist movements differ from those of Dutch converts who are not, in terms of their life prior to Islam, their conversion experience and the form of involvement with the Islamic community after conversion?

The Institute organises Arabic courses for universities, but also for companies, international organisations and individuals.

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.

Academic staff and students blog about their research and teaching.

In recent years, and especially since the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011, a growing body of research, media reporting, and scholarly literature has focused on the role of ‘Arab youth’ as the drivers of social and political movements across the Middle East and North Africa.

This PhD research sets out to unravel and explain the socio-structural and cultural impacts of oil-industrialization on the local Bakhtiari community in general and the industrial laborers it provided in specific.

The narrow but long stretched stript of Frisian land along the North Sea was already occupied before Roman times. However, man repeatedly suffered setbacks when he tried to extend his living space, both in the tidal marshes and the peat area south of them.

Surreal Geographies recovers a forgotten archive of Holocaust representation. Examining art, literature, and film produced from the immediate postwar period up to the present moment, Kathryn L. Brackney investigates changing portrayals of Jewish victims and survivors.