Digital journalism is transforming the way in which information and communication technologies are used by media workers. With this change journalist practices, norms and values are also being reshaped. This is the conclusion of Tomás Dodds PhD research.

How can we best protect cultural heritage in times of war? In an interview with LeidenGlobal, cultural heritage law specialist Evelien Campfens talks about her current research project on cultural heritage protection in Ukraine for the European Parliament (EP).

On Friday 20 September, the first Sector Plan Conference for the theme Cultural Heritage and Identity will be organised in Rotterdam. The conference is intended for all staff and national partners working in the field of Cultural Heritage and Identity. In particular, those involved in the Sector Plan…

A deliberate attack on a tangible element of a culture, such as a temple, is often also an attack on intangible elements: the religion or religious customs. Equally, the intangible can be attacked without the involvement of the tangible, for example the brutal curtailment of rights. How are these reflected…

In 2016, Leiden University hosts the monthly meetings of the Music and Cultural Analysis reading group.

The Centre for Digital Heritage undertakes collaborative international research in the field of Digital Heritage. It is an initiative of the University of York.

How did digital intermediality symbolise and facilitate the transfer of content from popular culture into policy statements and vice versa in the period between 1945 and the new millenium?

Skate legend Tony Hawk came to Antwerp. Belgium newspaper De Morgen published an article on the changing skate culture. Cultural Anthropologist Sander Hölsgens shines his light on this theme and talks about the democratisation of skate boarding, activism, public space and collective memory of skater…

Online Open Days are increasingly gaining popularity. On 13 September 2017, Dr. Erik de Maaker, Jule Forth and Tarini Shipurkar from the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology presented a webinar on their Master programme. The recorded webinar can be watched online.

On 8 December, Leiden University Press will present a new international series on Persian poetry and literature. The series will be edited by Asghar Seyed Gohrab (Middle Eastern Studies).

An Honours Class about the ostensibly unrecognisable worlds of insular Southeast Asia teaches students a fundamental piece of wisdom:

Watch and talk along with today’s science of the past during weekly Let’s Plays of popular games and vodcasts on the livestream platform Twitch.

Sybille Lammes is leaving Warwick University in Britain to research digital culture in daily life at Leiden University. She will start as professor New Media and Digital Culture on September 1st 2017

Utrecht University has a vacancy for a professor Middle Dutch literature and culture. Deadline for applications: 6 November 2021.

On 20 November 2020, Darinka Piqani spoke at the (online) kick-off event of the project 'Bridging the gap between formal processes and informal practices that shape judicial culture in the Western Balkans'.

Ornately decorated head pieces and jewellery, images of imposing mosques and photos of local people. The 'Splendours of the Silk Roads' exhibition depicts life and different cultures along this important trade route.

Amy Strecker assesses the institutional framework for landscape protection, analyses the interplay between landscape and human rights, and links the etymology and theory of landscape with its articulation in law.

The Institute CADS adheres to and teaches an approach to research ethics and integrity that emphasizes the processual nature of informed consent, situational ethics, and the indispensability of continually updating the ethical tradition in international anthropology in all the work of its researchers…

‘Visibility and secrecy are both valuable tactics and should not be antagonized in LGBT movements, ’ says Jingshu Zhu. Zhu defended her dissertation on Wednesday 21 February.

This study explores the role of linguistic data in the reconstruction of Dolgan (pre)history by analyzing contact-induced changes and using them to infer information about the nature of the contact settings in which they occurred.

This paper explores the long-term endurance of “breath” as a schema of personhood in the Austronesian-speaking world, from a comparative-ethnographic approach to the “Man with No Breath” figure featured in Philippine epics. This is one of two contributions from Myfel D. Paluga and Andrea Malaya M.…

An investigation into how racial stereotypes were created and used in the European Middle Ages.

How do technologies of computer vision, which promise to replace humans in the understanding of images, work in practice in the field of security, and what are their ethical and political implications?

The figure of the barbarian has captivated the Western imagination from Greek antiquity to the present. Since the 1990s, the rhetoric of civilization versus barbarism has taken center stage in Western political rhetoric and the media. But how can the longevity and popularity of this opposition be accounted…

The role of domestic and wild resource exploitation in Bronze Age subsistence

In a podcast episode of 'New Books in History' Claire Weeda talks about her book 'Ethnicity in Medieval Europe 950-1250: Medicine, Power and Religion'.

The field and the classroom invites ethnographers to engage with critical and engaged pedagogies. Breaking down the barriers between fieldsite and lecture hall, this research cluster aims to interrogate the structures and values that shape anthropological and sociological education today.

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

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

Writing a story from the perspective of a Rwandan girl set in Africa is not an easy task. Alumna Cultural Anthropology Ruth Erica did it. Her debut novel The tree with the bitter leaves, in which an important supporting role is played by a student of cultural anthropology, appeared in August 2020.

This volume edited by Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen aims to quantify and qualify cross-cultural global migrations and was published in the series 'Studies in Global Migration History'.

VVI Research Meetings 2024-2025

Two years ago, Amanda Henry joined the Faculty of Archaeology’s Archaeological Sciences department. She investigates diet and human evolution, with a specific focus on plant foods. ‘Most of the studies on the prehistoric diet focus on meat and hunting. This just didn’t make sense to me.’

Following the Beirut explosion, BBC's podcast series The Foodchain explores the chemical that caused the blast: ammonium nitrate. A compound that is widely used to produce fertilizer. Professor of Environmental sustaibability Jan Willem Erisman tells about the effects of nitrogen on the environment.

A team of Leiden researchers has won the Ammodo Science Award for innovative humanities research on perceptions of cultural heritage.

VVI Research Meetings 2023-2024

Leiden University will be the stage of the annual award ceremony of the World Cultural Council (WCC) on 8 November. We answer the five key questions about these prestigious prizes.

The Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology conducts extensive research on imprisonment. Sending a person to prison is the most severe form of punishment that can be applied in the criminal justice systems of European countries. In most countries, the number of prisoners has risen in recent decades.…

The Jordan Times interviewed professor Peter Akkermans about this research on ancient tombs in Jordan's Eastern Desert. “The evidence of this flourishing culture can be seen, among other things, in the diverse and complex burial record which we are currently investigating.”

The three-day conference will be held at the Ministry of Antiquities in Cairo from the 29th of September until the 1st of October 2019 with the title: The Walking Dead II: The Making of a Cultural Geography. It is organized by the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities (RMO) and Leiden University.

Exploring logging's real impact: Insights from Anthropologist Tessa Minter in the Solomon Islands.

In Augustus 2012 Kim Beerden will join the staff of the Institute for History as lecturer in Ancient History.

Egyptian temple culture was thought to be declining in the Ptolemaic era, after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. Nothing could be further from the truth, says Egyptologist Carina van den Hoven. Temple culture was very much alive and kicking. PhD defence 16 February.

Andrea Giolai defended his thesis on 3 May 2017.

Of jars and gongs deals with the traditional ritual art of Ot Danum Dayak subsistence farmers from a stretch of tropical rainforest in the heart of Borneo. Together with the Ngaju, their neighbours to the south, they gloried in one of the most elaborate secondary mortuary rites in the world.