The project aims at highlighting and strengthening Dutch research into the diversity of the world’s languages from a historic and a cognitive perspective.

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.

The study of language in change.

Intensive public debates have erupted about integration of immigrants in Europe. The influx of refugees from the middle east during the summer and autumn of 2015, the increasing visibility of immigrants throughout European societies, but also the widely publicized occurrences on New Year’s eve in Cologne…

The NVIC library is a public, academic reference library. Entrance is free—no membership needed—and offers access to our book collection and two reading rooms, which have a WiFi connection. It is not possible to borrow books from our library.

The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.

When you apply for admission, you’ll be asked to submit several documents.

You’ve been accepted! Leiden University looks forward to welcoming you as a new student. Your next step is to prepare for your studies. Below you can find some tips to help you get a head start as you embark on your studies at Leiden University.

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.

You’ve been accepted! Leiden University looks forward to welcoming you as a new student. Your next step is to prepare for your studies. Below you can find some tips to help you get a head start as you embark on your studies at Leiden University.

Learn about the newest research from the researchers who are performing it.

Get to know us through our online and in-person events for prospective students!

Get to know us through our online and in-person events for prospective students!

The master’s in Philosophy is a one-year, English-taught programme. The programme offers five specialisations:

What is it like to study Urban Studies in The Hague? Sonia Dobkowska, second year student, describes what a typical day looks like for her.

Develop your knowledge of French and Francophone literary works and genres with the Master’s programme in French Literature and Culture at Leiden University.

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.

Conference, Public Event

Lecture

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.

Three lecturers from Leiden University have been awarded a €100,000 Comenius Teaching grant within the Senior Fellows programme. A further two lecturers have been awarded a €50,000 grant within the Teaching Fellows programme. The grants will enable the lecturers and their project teams to realise an…

Over a decade ago the then foreign minister Abdullah Gül awarded me the “Medal of High Distinction” of the Republic of Turkey. I received the award, consisting of a diploma and a gigantic gold medal, during a festive ceremony at the Turkish embassy in The Hague. The reason I was deemed worthy of the…

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…

What do you do if you have a book from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, but you suspect that the binding contains a fragment of a medieval manuscript? University lecturer Thijs Porck has received an NWO grant to experiment with a camera attached to a tube. 'The project boils down to keyhole surgeries…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

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…

Many Asian countries are in a process of democratisation. The expectation was that citizens would gradually gain more control over the functioning of their elites. Experts from Leiden have concluded that this process often fails to improve the quality of the administration. They researched the nature…

An Investigation into the role of copper-alloy craft production in the early medieval economy of northwest Europe.

The aim of the research project is to get insight in the biostratigraphical age and the palaeoecological setting of the Schöningen sites and hominin behavior and subsistence during the late Lower Palaeolithic.

Update : March 2020 A.J. Mills

A linguistic reconstruction of the migration of the Tocharians from Europe to China

How do early modern states organize effective rule in difficult conditions? EMStaD YEMEN focuses on a country that due to its geographical, religious and social complexities is now considered a failed state – Yemen.

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…

Classics and Ancient Civilizations (Research) covers two years and can be studied in four programmes, one of them is the Assyriology (Research) programme. When you choose to study Assyriology, you will both be guided through the broadness of Assyriological sub-disciplines, as well as gradually led to…

In the master's programme Europe 1000-1800 at Leiden University you will learn to think comparatively about practices of power in premodern Europe in its global context.

How did the medieval manuscript develop as a physical object during the Twelfth Century Renaissance and what do these changes tell us about the intellectual culture of the period?

Uncovering ancient Arabian inscriptions feels like pioneering detective work, says Arabist Michael Macdonald in a video interview with Leiden Islam Centre LUCIS. 'First you have to learn the alphabets that they're written in, and then you have to try and work out what they say.'

LUCIS is an interfaculty knowledge centre offering a multidisciplinary and comparative view on Islam and Muslim societies.