The Humanities Faculty bachelor’s degree programmes in History, and Greek and Latin language and culture were rated by students as the best. The master’s programmes in Classics and Ancient Civilisations, Dutch Studies and North American Studies also received the highest scores. These were the results…

On Monday 26 February the terrible news reached us that our gifted former Egyptology student – and former student assistant at the Leids Papyrologisch Instituut – Juan Archidona Ramírez had succumbed to cancer.

Sasha Lubotsky, professor of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, and Ineke Sluiter, professor of Classical languages and culture, have been appointed members of the Academia Europaea.

Leiden professor Ineke Sluiter was appointed president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) on 1 June. She was presented with the gavel by her predecessor Wim van Saarloos.

For a new food-related exhibition in the Wereldmuseum, Rotterdam, archaeologist Dr. Joanita Vroom has cooperated in creating the Taste Lab, where one can look, listen, taste and cook. Moreover, she designed a series of food workshops.

The National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden features a small photo exhibition on Mark Driessen's fieldwork research project in Southern Jordan. In this small exhibition you will see a selection of nine photos, made in Udhruh. This ancient Jordanian settlement lies fifteen kilometres east of Petra,…

Three researchers of Humanities have been awarded with a VIDI research grant. With a VIDI they can spend five years researching the topic they submitte. The grant amounts to a maxium of eight hundred thousand euros.

When are you (sexually) mature? A KNAW grant will enable associate professor Rafal Matuszewski to organise an interdisciplinary workshop on this question.

Leiden researchers Tazuko van Berkel (Greek and Latin Language and Culture) and Noel de Miranda (Tumour Immunology, LUMC) will join the KNAW’s Young Academy next year. They will be inducted on 22 March 2021.

On February 2nd, 2018, Professor Sven P. Vleeming of Trier University was presented with a ‘Festschrift’ to celebrate his retirement last summer. The book was presented to him, in the presence of friends and colleagues from the Netherlands and abroad, by the editors: his former Leiden colleagues Koen…

In a creative assignment as a part of the bachelor's course Visual Culture, students explored the impact and complexity of visual culture by means of visual culture. The resulting artworks were of such a high quality that it was decided to present these in an exhibition.

Classics alumnus Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer has won the Libris Literature Prize this year with his book La Superba. The Libris Literature Prize is one of the most prestigious awards in Dutch literature.

Prof. Dr. Joris F. Borghouts (1939-2018) was Full Professor of Egyptology at Leiden University and a specialist in ancient Egyptian grammar and magic.

Dennis Braekmans receives funding from the Byvanckfonds for the research

The Skandapurāṇa Project considers fieldwork to be essential to the study of purāṇic religious topography and the understanding of the socio-political milieu in which the Skandapurāṇa was composed and disseminated.

Master studies History, Classics, Russian Studies and Dutch Studies have received the label ‘top programme’ in the Keuzegids Masters of March 2018. The study guide bases its results on the opinion of students (through the National Student Survey) and experts (NVAO).

Three programmes at the Faculty of Humanities have been awarded medals by EW and ResearchNed. The bachelor’s in German Language and Culture took gold, and the bachelor's in Ancient Near Eastern Studies and the master's in Middle Eastern Studies each earned a bronze medal.

At first glance, archaeology seems like a job that is hard to take home. Nothing could be further from the truth though! Our archaeologists are currently developing new dating methods, are looking for lost cities in their living rooms, and perform daring acts of experimental archaeology!

The newly established Leiden Jewish Studies Association aims to bring together Leiden scholars working on Judaism. The first annual conference will take place in Leiden on 6 and 7 December. Leiden professors and co-organisers of the LJSA Sarah Cramsey and Jürgen Zangenberg talk about their plans.

Since September, a large part of education is 'hybrid': students can attend courses both at home (online) and in person in lecture halls. How do students themselves feel about this? We asked Emma and Cornelia of the Research Master Classics and Ancient Civilizations.

Lucien van Beek studied Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at Leiden University, focusing on Ancient Greek. As of February 2015, Van Beek will be project manager at Ineke Sluiter’s Greek-Dutch dictionary project.

In the depots of the Faculty of Archaeology, many artifacts, accumulated after decades of fieldwork across the world, are stored. A new project, the Leiden Inventory Depot (LID), aims to unlock this wealth of information to the outside world. Our Master’s students Sam Botan and Rishika Dhumal are currently…

University lecturer Lucien van Beek has been awarded a LUF Praesidium Libertatis Grant. He will use the sum of 75,000 euros to research the thinking of people in ancient and prehistoric times. To do that, he will look for unusual or striking metaphors in the earliest Indo-European languages.

Radboud University Nijmegen is hiring a Lecturer Ancient and Medieval History (24 hours a week, starting from 15 January 2021 until 31 August 2021). Candidates should apply before 12 november 2020.

Every year, an outstanding lecturer receives the Faculty Teaching Prize from the teaching committee. The prize is awarded during the official opening of the academic year on 7 September. This year, students nominated eight candidates.

Dr. Bettina Reitz-Joosse, postdoctoral researcher in the Classics department, has received a Niels Stensen Fellowship.

Archaeologist Araceli Rojas has been invited to participate in the award-winning festival Let’s Talk about Water. This festival combines academic seminars, movies, and panel discussions around water issues around the globe.

Alongside several other authors, Guus Kroonen, University Lecturer in Linguistics, published an article in the well-renowned academic journal Science Magazine. The article,

On 25 November, Professor Ineke Sluiter received the Medal of Honour for Arts and Sciences in the Order of Orange-Nassau. She was presented with the medal by King Willem-Alexander.

Since 1 September 2016, Caroline Waerzeggers has been appointed as professor of Assyriology at Leiden University. From January 2017 she will be directing a new project about the rise of the Persian Empire, funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

At the start of the year a lot of journals publish lists of their most cited papers of the previous year. Three papers published by Leiden archaeologists were ranked in the top 10 of the Journal of Archaeological Science: reports.

This year marks a special occasion because it was just ten years ago that the Georgian language was taught for the first time at Leiden University. It is even more exciting that its first professor, Ramaz Kurdadze, will return to Leiden this year to teach students interested in the language. Kurdadze…

In 2011, the University of Hussein Bin Talal in Maan and Leiden University initiated the joint Udhruh Archaeological Project, led by Professors Fawzi Abudanah and Mark Driessen.

The bachelor program Religious Studies has, besides also Linguistics and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, been awarded by the 'Keuzevakkengids Universiteiten 2019' with the predicate top program.

Four bachelor courses are rewarded as Top courses.

This postponed international workshop will now be held on a digital platform. It seeks to bring together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to work on the interrelated aspects of ancient and early medieval walls in the Mediterranean and northwestern Europe throughout the first…

This fall, LUCIS will have the pleasure of welcoming Professor Hugh Kennedy from SOAS University of London to Leiden. He is the fourth Abdulaziz Saud Al-Babtain Cultural Foundation Visiting Professor in Arabic Culture at Leiden University.

In line with tradition, the opening of the academic year will see the presentation of the LUS Teaching Prize to the University's best lecturer. Get to know the nominees. This week: Kim Beerden.

The city centre of Leiden is covered in them: wall poems. When roaming around, you come across poetry written in the Latin alphabet, but also in scripts that might be more difficult to understand for the average person living in Leiden. In a new series of videos, Tijmen Pronk talks more about this.

Do all graduates in the humanities pursue a career in education? What does support for incoming students look like in Leiden? And what makes a language study so enjoyable? These and more questions were answered during an information session organised specially for twenty deans from West Brabant.

Roman philosopher and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero is still used as an intellectual example by politicians and speech writers today. But, he did not go unchallenged in his own day, as a statesman in particular. Classicist Leanne Jansen conducted research into how classical historians judged Cicero’s…

Expert in Classics Renske Janssen has been awarded a Rubicon grant. She will use the grant to conduct research at the University of Edinburgh into how Roman law was perceived by society at the time.

Three PhD candidates from Leiden University have been awarded a Mosaic 2.0 scholarship for their PhD research. The Dutch Research Council (NWO) Mosaic 2.0 programme is aimed at an underrepresented group of graduates with a migrant background.

Where does Dutch come from? Newly appointed Professor Alwin Kloekhorst looks for an answer to that question in millennia-old languages from Anatolia, the Asian part of present-day Turkey. 'A new interpretation in one of the Anatolian languages can have consequences for dozens of other languages.'

Kim Beerden, lecturer in Ancient History, has won the 2016 LUS Teaching Prize.

How many cities were there actually in the Roman Empire? And why did some regions only have a few cities, while others consisted of a tight urban network? Luuk de Ligt, Professor of Ancient History, wants to know the answer to all these questions. With the ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million awarded to…

How many cities were there actually in the Roman Empire? And why did some regions only have a few cities, while others consisted of a tight urban network? Luuk de Ligt, Professor of Ancient History, wants to know the answer to all these questions. With the ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million awarded to…

An evening program in the University Library and Middle Eastern Library in Leiden for everyone who has something to do with the Middle East; from Tajikistan to the Mahreb and from Istanbul to Sanaa. View the oldest books and clay tablets from the collection and listen to the most fascinating stories…

Dr Sarah Schrader, an expert in the study of human remains, received a VIDI grant for a research project on health and inequality. In present day people with a high socio-economic status encounter fewer health risks than those in lower socio-economic strati. ‘Now we will look at this process in the…