Leiden’s Faculty of Humanities is one of the broadest of its kind, offering courses in no fewer than 80 different languages and a very broad spectrum of academic disciplines.

If you are interested in an academic programme, but do you not wish to complete the entire programme? Then, you can choose one of the many à la carte courses the Faculty of Humanities offers.

Now and then we organise book launches to present the latest publications, both academic and popular, in our broad field.

The master's in Assyriology, a specialisation of the Classics and Ancient Civilizations programme, at Leiden University provides you with a multidisciplinary study of the languages, literatures and cultures of ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia.

LIAS has a School of Asian Studies (SAS), a School of Middle-Eastern Studies (SMES) and a School of Religious Studies (LUCSoR). These designations, and the fields within them, remain foundational to our work. At the same time, the academic community benefits from the presence of cross-regional networks…

On 28 and 29 August, Dr. Ben Van Rompuy and Dr. Armin Cuyvers gave a two-day training to the Competition Commissioners of the newly established East-African Competition authority.

In tracing intra-site, local and regional craft networks in Late Bronze Age Tiryns (Greece) the project aimed to understand technological changes, (dis)continuities and social practices from the Late Palatial until the Post Palatial periods in Mycenaean Greece.

Pursuing Whiteness in the Colonies offers a new comprehension of colonial history from below by taking remnants of individual agencies from a whiteness studies perspective. It highlights the experiences and perceptions of colonisers and how they portrayed and re-interpreted their identities in Afric…

The Assyrian Empire was the first state to achieve durable domination of the Ancient Near East, enduring some seven centuries and, eventually, controlling most of the region. Yet, we know little about how this empire emerged from a relatively minor polity in the Tigris region and how it managed to consolidate…

This project aims to revisit the relationship between the European cultural agenda and the local identity formation process, and social and religious transformations of Arab Christian communities in Palestine, when the British ruled via the Mandate. What was the role of culture in European policies…

Promotores: G.A. Persoon, H.H. de Iongh

Leiden University offers its students a wide range of bachelor's, master's and minors that explore sustainability or climate. Here, you find an overview of those programmes in the academic year 2020-2021.

Every semester, LUCIS invites a scholar to Leiden to provide a lecture series on a topic of their choice. With these lectures, we aim to present state-of-the-art research in Islamic studies to the Leiden academic community and beyond, and to offer students and junior researchers the opportunity to get…

For Arabic and Islamic Studies and Middle East Studies

For Arabic and Islamic Studies and Middle East Studies

This Philosophy bachelor's programme offers perspectives from around the world. It will make you one of the next generation of students who will shape philosophy in the 21st century, ready to take on academic or professional challenges that call for critical thinking, analysis and argumentation skil…

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.

Drawing on the analogical lessons of the Great War, this article uses applied history to analyze how the four parallels discerned can help us make sense of contemporary Sino-American rivalry

This research cluster is a part of the Institute of Political Science’s research programme ‘Institutions, Decisions and Collective Behaviour’. Its members investigate the drivers of political conflict and various types of crises. They study how citizens, political institutions and international organizations…

The D&I Expertise Office is in close contact with various student and staff networks regarding diversity and inclusion.

Negotiation can only really be an alternative to warfare, if the parties agree on a framework of rules and procedures. And if the confidence of the partners may increase in another. But negotiations continue to wage war by peaceful means.

Chinese organisations increasingly operate across the borders of China, and growing numbers of people from outside China are coming to live there. Professor Frank Pieke believes these movements have a significant effect on central and local government policy in China.

In what ways do historical and current events affect how we should judge the legitimacy of political authorities?

Our library contains around 23,000 books, journals and historical documents under the care of a specialized librarian.

Research within the centre is broad and pluralistic, ranging from the history of political thought to contemporary analytic and continental political philosophy and critical social theory. Members of the CPP also participate in the Research Profile Area on Political Legitimacy. The Centre is the proud…

The research master's in Assyriology, a specialisation of the Classics and Ancient Civilizations (Research) programme, at Leiden University provides you with a multidisciplinary study of the languages, literatures and cultures of the Ancient Near Eastern world.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of the Faculty of Humanities with Université Mohamed VI Polytechnique.

The researchers in the World Archaeology department of the Faculty of Archaeology concentrate on a range of different periods and regions: from humanity’s origins to the Middle Ages and the modern age, and from Asia to South America.

This research delves into the unique cultural approach of the Tenggerese people, an Indigenous community in East Java, Indonesia, regarding elderly care. It focuses on their traditional practices of bakti (‘filial piety’) and sayan (‘mutual aid’), deeply ingrained in the community's lifestyle and va…

On an excavation site in Oegstgeest Leiden University archaeologists discovered a very rare silver bowl from the first half of the seventh century. The bowl is decorated with gold-plated representations of animals and plants and inlaid with semi-precious stones. The discovery suggests the existence…

Opportunities to join the initiative as a guest researcher and spend time in residence with GTGC in The Hague are available. If you are interested, we welcome you to contact us. Below you can find our current and former guest researchers.

The current migration flow into Europa demands effective measures. Leiden experts examine whether these measures are legal and hold up a mirror to policy-makers.

The MCS group consists of five staff members, all of whom have a strong link to the Museums and Collections programme of the Faculty of Humanities and the Heritage and Museum programme of the Faculty of Archaeology.

The research Early Pleistocene human occupation at the edge of the boreal zone in northwest Europe published 8th July 2010 in Nature is part of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project, in which the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University is involved.

What inspires scholars who study the history, cultures, religions and languages of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia? LUCIS interviewed scholars about their work and research in the video project “Passion in Profession”. The videos are available online now.

The two-year research master in Middle Eastern Studies equips you with advanced and in-depth knowledge of a region and discipline within the field of Middle Eastern Studies. You are expected to spend the third semester of the programme doing research, either in the Netherlands or abroad. Blended and…

The central question of this thesis is: What drives late Middle Paleolithic stone artifact variability? In its attempt to answer this question, this thesis is a contribution to understanding variability within and between late Middle Paleolithic assemblages of the European Plain.

Reconstructing Later Prehistoric Societies in Northern Iraq (ca. 7000-3000 BCE)

On 29 and 30 April 2015 the Leiden Centre for East African Law (LEAC) hosted its first Annual Conference in Kigali, Rwanda. The conference was organized in cooperation with the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) and compared integration through law in the EU and the EAC.

A landscape-oriented chronostratigraphic approach to MIS 5 Middle Paleolithic open-air sites on the European Plain : case studies from Lichtenberg and Khotylevo I

Yusen Yu wins the prestigious Graduate Student Prize of the Middle East Medievalists (MEM) with his article

The main question I want to answer is about the mutual influence between the cultural and settlements changes that occurred between the Bronze and the Early Iron Age in Margiana and the management of water resources.

According to a number of British historians, the elderly had a particularly high status in the early Middle Ages. A new book by Leiden cultural historian Thijs Porck sheds a different light on the matter: elderly people had to earn that respect first, and old age was often described in negative terms…