When it comes to languages and cultures, Leiden University is the university. The global expertise present places our university at the top. In Leiden and The Hague, we study languages and cultures from all regions of the world and from prehistory to the present day. In this way we create a broad view…

The master’s programme in Colonial and Global History at Leiden University offers the most in-depth and comprehensive programme on the history of colonialism and globalisation currently available in Europe.

University lecturer Olga van Marion invited pupils from Ashram College in Alphen aan den Rijn to take part in a series of Dutch workshops organised at the University. Some the students and workshop leaders reflect on the busy morning.

Since 1 January Leiden has a new graduate school. The Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA), previously based at the University of Amsterdam, has moved to the Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS).

In the Criminal Justice research programme, legal experts, criminal law experts and social scientists – many of whom are criminologists – collaborate on various projects. The research programme focuses on the content and form of decisions that are, can and may be taken in the criminal justice chain…

Meet the people of the Resilience Center

Aesthetic formations and cultural repertoires give meaning to our reality in ways that are never neutral. Focusing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and its global interlocutors, this project brings together a team of scholars from Leiden University who bring in inter-disciplinary, inter-area…

Our library contains around 23,000 books, journals and historical documents under the care of a specialized librarian.

At our regular panel discussions we bring together scholars and other experts to discuss a current topic that captures the interest of the general public as well as academics.

What is my contribution to the world? This is what students and researchers at Leiden University College The Hague (LUC) ask themselves every day. They want to make a difference with their teaching and research in the four global challenges of ‘Peace and Justice,’ ‘Sustainability,’ ‘Diversity’ and ‘…

SciSTIP was established on 1 April 2014 as part of the DSI-NRF Centres of Excellence Programme funded by the South Africa’s National Research Foundation (https://www.nrf.ac.za/). SciSTIP is hosted by the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST) at Stellenbosch University and…

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

Morocco and the Netherlands have a strong bond. The modern community of Dutch people with Moroccan roots is part of a shared history spanning four centuries of social and academic exchange. As an institution that functions at the heart of Moroccan society and the university system, the Netherlands Institute…

As a university we stand with both feet firmly in the world. Internationalisation is in Leiden’s DNA: from the very foundation of our university, the ideal of the free academy has always attracted researchers and students from across the whole world, and that will continue.

Bone research provides plenty of detailed data about the health of a person or a group. This data is not only used to reconstruct the past but also to fight disease today.

This seminal volume covers the entire global history of urbanization since the rise of cities in Mesopotamia in the 6th millennium BC. Leiden historians Wim Blockmans, Leonard Blussé, Luuk de Ligt and Leo Lucassen contributed survey and thematic chapters.

Description of The Regional Network on the Synergy between the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.

Within the Global Ethnography specialisation, you can develop your own research project or make use of the research opportunities offered by our staff members listed below.

Research on the global field of museums, heritage, commemoration, consumption and material culture

Lecture

Studying linguistics at the Leiden University Centre of Linguistics (LUCL) is a challenging but rewarding experience. There are few places in the world where such a broad range of languages are studied from so many different perspectives.

Wim Klooster and Gert Oostindie present a fresh look at the Dutch Atlantic in the period following the imperial moment of the seventeenth century. This epoch (1680–1815), the authors argue, marked a distinct and significant era in which Dutch military power declined and Dutch colonies began to chart…

What makes a good historian? When historians raise this question, as they have done for centuries, they often do so to highlight that certain personal attitudes or dispositions are indispensable or studying the past. Yet their vieuws on what virtues, skills or competencies historians need most differ…

The Near East, situated at the nexus of Europe, Africa, and Asia, was central to the development of ancient societies in all three continents.

It is well-known that humans have significantly transformed ecosystems since their adoption of agriculture. However, in a deeper past, prehistoric hunter-gatherers may already have altered and modified their niche in ways that had major impacts on ecosystems.

This book collates thematic reflections on Cameroon music exalting Manu Dibango, one of the first-generation Cameroonian musicians, who bowed to Covid-19 on 24 March 2020.

An experimental approach to organic palaeolithic technology

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease which is spreaded through the air. It is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and it led 1.7 million people to death in 2016. This mortarlity rate is concentrated in developing countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan, and South Africa. These numbers make…

This edited book presents case-studies and reflections on the role of languages and their analytic study in development practices across four regions: Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific.

The remains of Dutch East India Company forts are scattered throughout littoral Asia and Africa. But how important were the specific characteristics of European bastion-trace fortifications to early modern European expansion?

At LUCL, researchers aim to contribute to a comprehensive and informed perspective on the human past.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of China's global resurgence and its effects on U.S. dominance.

This book questions the accepted origins of the field of International Relations (IR). Commonly understood to have emerged from the horrors of WW1 with the goal of bringing about world peace, the authors argue that on the contrary, IR came from a somewhat less noble tradition – that of the Round Tab…

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A Comparative Anthropology of Commercial Insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

This book reveals how one publishing firm's editorial strategy helped to legitimate European colonialism in the early modern era.

Proceedings of the European Science Foundation Workshop at Tautavel (France), 1993

'Communal Dining in in the Roman West' explores why the practice of privately sponsored communal dining gained popularity in certain parts of the Western Roman Empire for almost 300 years.

Today, everybody and everything produces data. People produce large amounts of data in social networks and in commercial transactions. Medical, corporate, and government databases continue to grow. Sensors continue to get cheaper and are increasingly connected, creating an Internet of Things, and generating…

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A comparative anthropology of commercial insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

This book connects labour history, global history and the institutional or political history of international organisations.

Interested in studying Colonial and Global History at Leiden University? Find out what our alumni said about this master's programme.

The idea of global governance and trust in international institutions are apparently getting into deep water. But is there a legitimacy crisis? Not according to international élites, as Jan Aart Scholte (Leiden University), Soetkin Verhaegen (Maastricht University) and Jonas Tallberg (Stockholm University)…

This thesis attempts to describe the entire corpus of Latino-Punic inscriptions, found in Tripolitania.

Current status and future prospects

The LUC Fund is part of the Leiden University Foundation (LUF). The Fund is managed by LUC’s administrative staff and overseen by a Spending Committee consisting of staff and alumni. Together they are responsible for the allocation of available resources, identifying funding opportunities, and developing…

This book challenges the predominance of mainstream sociolinguistic theories by focusing on lesser known sociolinguistic systems.