Paolo Sartori is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna. In Leiden he will deliver one guest lecture on Twilight of the Persianate: The Vernacularization of Central Asia (18th - early 20th Centuries) on 12 April and a masterclass on How can we…

Lecture

Lecture

What developments preceded modern Standard Dutch? PhD candidate Iris Van de Voorde conducted research on ‘pluricentricity’, or the idea that language norms arise in different places and spread outwards from there. PhD defence on 19 April.

How do digital technologies affect both Asian societies and the methods we use to study them? Conference in Leiden on 23-25 May 2016. Deadline abstract submission: 15 February 2016.

'Consider languages in their shared context.' That is the message of Professor and Arabist Beatrice Gründler, who will receive an honorary doctorate from Leiden University on 8 February. ‘I would like people to learn that Arabic history has a close connection with Europe.’

Thijs Porck, expert in medieval English, has won the LUCAS Public Prize because he has made his research and education visible to a wider audience. Thijs has reached the national media, secondary schools and a lot of views with his blogs and videos. The prize consists of a certificate, trophy, 1000…

For every period, it is a challenge to unearth the details of political trafficking; yet the effort needs to include all relevant persons, groups, and institutions – not only those wielding formal responsibilities. We hope to reinvigorate this effort by inviting specialists to present their research…

Louis Sicking's Maritime Conflict Management in Atlantic Europe was awarded an 'Internationalisation in the Humanities' grant from NWO. What can we learn from how maritime conflicts were managed in the past?

By examining the impact of Islam on the daily life of those living under its rule, the goal of this project is to understand the striking newness of Islamic society and its debt to the diverse cultures it superseded. Questions will be the extent, character, and ambition of Muslim state competency at…

‘Archeologists don’t dig up explanations, let alone certainties,’ says Joanita Vroom, Professor of Archaeology of Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia. ‘Their job is to bridge the gap between the sherds that they find and people’s everyday lives. What do ceramics from the past say about people’s eating…

The Institute for History announces vacancies for three PhD positions on Rethinking Disability: the Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in Historical Perspective and one PhD position to conduct research on the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

Italian historiographers in the 16th and 17th centuries wrote remarkably often about the Dutch Revolt, better known as the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648). Their works influenced public opinion both in Italy and in the Netherlands. This is the conclusion reached by historian Cees Reijner in his dissertation.…

Conference

The compulsory reading list is infamous among secondary school students, and for all the wrong reasons. This prompted the Faculty of Humanities and the Onderwijsnetwerk Zuid-Holland (South Holland Education Network) to launch the Alternative Reading List Award, in search of books that motivate young…

How can we tell whether and how a prehistoric weapon was used? How can we better understand the dexterity and combat skills involved in Bronze Age spear fighting? A research team from Leiden and Göttingen University present a new approach to answering these questions: they simulated the actual fight…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Major renovations, much-discussed exhibitions and current museum related questions. ‘If you want to know what is happening in the art and museum sector in a very up-to-date way, then the 'Museum Talks' lecture series is the thing for you’, says Professor of Art History and organiser Stijn Bussels.

I am a Lecturer in Contemporary Military History and Security Studies, teaching in both the History and International Relations programmes here at Leiden. I grew up in Yorkshire, England and was interested in history and international politics from a young age. In 2003 I went to the University of Cambridge…

To what extent did the Netherlands grow rich from the Transatlantic slave trade? In his dissertation 'Walcherse Ketens', Gerhard de Kok looks at Vlissingen and Middelburg, the most important slave trade cities in the Netherlands during the second half of the 18th century. It turns out that, although…

In less than a week’s time, millions of Turkish people are going to decide who will govern their country for the next five years. These elections promise to be the most closely contested in years, with the opinion polls showing very small differences and everything at stake, including for Europe. Alp…

The terms ‘social’ , ‘collective’ or ‘public’ memory, are often contrasted with ‘private’, ‘individual’ or ‘personal’ memory. All these terms derive from a fairly new and interdisciplinary scholarly field that is often referred to as ‘memory studies’, and that according to some critics has developed…

LUC historian Jacqueline Hylkema unmasks forgeries from the early modern Dutch Republic in the research project

Pastoralist Societies, Rock Art and Literacy in Jordan’s Black Desert (200 BC to 800 AD)

The Life in Custody (LIC) Study comprises a large-scale research project into prison climate and the quality of prison life in Dutch prisons.

PhD defence

PhD defence

Conference

On 9 June the deans of Leiden University met for the 500th time with the Rector Magnificus for the Board of Deans. An informal, inspiring and contemplative meeting without a strict ending time, say deans and former deans.

Met groot plezier heeft de Universiteit Leiden van 1 tot 4 november het X Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Hispanistas del Benelux (AHBx) georganiseerd, met het thema Transhispanismos: contactos y contagios (Transhispanismes: contact en besmetting). De AHBx is een platform in de Benelux dat…

Anne Marieke van der Wal-Rémy, assistant professor of African History and International Studies, has received a Comenius Teaching Fellow grant of 50,000 euros. She intends to use the grant to set up an online archive of digital primary sources, together with her students. Van der Wal-Rémy: ‘ “Once on…

After a long night of partying, hundreds of people head to Leiden’s Van der Werfpark early on 3 October for a good singsong. Lecturer in Dutch literature Olga van Marion helped compile the new songbook for the occasion. Which songs were left out and which new hits have taken their place?

Debate, Panel Discussion

Lecture, Book Launch

Sanjar Golomov is a senior scholar at the Al-Biruni Institute in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In Leiden he will deliver two lectures and one masterclass for MA and PhD students as part of the Erasmus Mobility Plus project between Leiden University and the Al-Biruni Institute. The project is coordinated and…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Svetlana Gorshenina, Associate Lecturer at Collège de France, Paris, will be the Central Asia Visiting Scholar from 17 February until 25 February 2018. Svetlana Gorshenina will deliver a guest lecture on Tuesday, 20 February and a masterclass on Friday, 23 February within the Central Asia Initiative…

Lecture, Panel Discussion

“BABYLON” investigates the extent of the similarities between Babylonian and post-exilic forms of cultic and social organization and explores the question how Babylonian models could have influenced the restoration effort in Jerusalem.

Lecture, Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series

Lecture

In November 2013, three PhD students started in Herman Paul’s VIDI project ‘The Scholarly Self: Character, Habit, and Virtue in the Humanities, 1860-1930’. In this newsletter they introduce themselves.

President John Quincy Adams studied in Leiden. His father, John, who was also president, also stayed here and received a lot of support from professor and publisher Johan Luzac. And how are presidents Bush and Obama linked to Leiden?

Dutch people are far more law-abiding than they might like to think. And they are very different from the Belgians in that regard. The different approaches of the two governments towards the coronavirus crisis, for example, can be explained from the history of both countries since the Middle Ages. Historians…

On the passing of Anique Schüller

This research project, that started in September 2008, aims to explore how personal and public memories of the Dutch Revolt in the seventeenth century evolved and interacted to create new political and cultural identities for the societies that eventually were to become the kingdoms of the Netherlands…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Security in the broadest sense of the word was the key focus in the Interfaculty Conference on 4 April in Leiden. With almost 200 attendees and such well-known speakers as Dick Schoof, Pieter van Vollenhoven and Ad Verbrugge, the first conference was a success.

Are predictive archaeological maps a reliable tool to play an important role in the spatial planning? One of the goals of this project was to develop best practices for the production and application of the models.