How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

Five research projects of the Institute for History have been selected for the Research Traineeship Programme 2016-2017. The programme was initiated by The Faculty of Humanities to offer motivated students the opportunity to develop themselves in academic research. In December the research trainees,…

How can we understand the material instability of photographic (mixed media) artworks (1960s - present) from an integrated approach of Art History, Conservation Science and Chemistry in order to preserve these works for the future?

King Willem-Alexander has commissioned independent research into the role of the House of Orange-Nassau in Dutch colonial history. The research will take three years to complete and will cover the period from the late 16th century to the postcolonial present. The research will be carried out at Leiden…

Political scientists Rebekah Tromble and Michael Meffert (Leiden University) address the question why certain frames persist over time in the media while others fade away and still others disappear very quickly. They suggest an approach based in event-history methodologies for assessing the causes of…

The key subject of the research programme Cities, Migration and Global Interdependence 1500-now (CMGI) is Inequality (at local, national and global levels). We study this from an intersectional perspective: gender, class, ethnicity or race, religion, sexuality, age, ability/disability, citizenship and…

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).

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo

Despite the wealth of historical literature on the Second World War, the subject of religion and churches in occupied Europe has been undervalued.

History and Religious Studies in Leiden rank # 17 and #32 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. With this, History in Leiden ranks as the best in The Netherlands and Religious Studies ranks as second best.

In QS’s World University Rankings of 2016, Leiden University’s History and Linguistics programme rank #19 and #28, respectively. This makes the History programme the best of its kind in the Netherlands, and Linguistics the second best.

Peter Webb is one of the four young Leiden Humanities researchers to receive a Veni grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Webb will use the funding for his project EPIC PASTS: PRE-ISLAM THROUGH MUSLIM EYES, to reevaluate the ways in which Muslims in early Islam remembered…

Call for Papers: Imperial Artefacts. History, Law, and the Looting of Cultural Property

Fondazione 1563 launched a call for the Summer School of the Turin Humanities Programme, that will take place in Torino from September 6 to September 8 2023. The theme is: Writing global medieval history: comparative and connected approaches. Deadline for applications: June 25.

In July 2021 the Leiden Empowerment Fonds (LEF) awarded a research grant of €13,500 for research into the history of maritime law in early modern times.

European integration is under pressure. At the same time, the notion of a European administrative space is being explicitly voiced. But does a shared idea of the public servant exist in Europe?

Lecture, Tea ceremony

Nobuaki Murai defended his thesis on 24 January 2018.

How did nineteenth century scholars evaluate each other and each other’s work through more or less informal practices of peer review?

This study presents a re-evaluation of Malay adventure stories.

The Patriot behind the pot tells the story of pottery, people and politics in the Netherlands during a time of great revolutions -revolutions both in a political and industrial sense.

Dutch Title:

In which way was literary celebrity constructed in the nineteenth century and what forms of fandom were there?

The Institute for History has a new academic director. Professor of Early Modern History Jeroen Duindam will take on this role from 1 September. ‘You can only do this job properly if you make time for it.’

Diplomatica addresses the broad range of work being done across the social sciences and the humanities that takes diplomacy as its focus of investigation. The journal explores and investigates diplomacy as an extension of social interests, forces, and environments.

This research network aims to create a shared platform for debate and dialogue on the broader theme of cultural production and exchange across different area specializations and historical periods.

This year the PhDs of the institute had their traditional day out (uitje) to The Hague. The last two years they had stayed in Leiden, so The Hague already seemed like quite the adventure. Indeed, it seems almost that as time progresses and more and more archives become digitized, history PhDs slowly…

The Netherlands Institute in Morocco is open to students from all Dutch universities. Two students explain why they are spending a semester studying in Rabat.

We live in a data-drenched society awash with numbers. An inhabitant of the democratic polis of Athens (5th and 4th centuries B.C.E.) increasingly found himself surrounded by numerical data. This project aims to analyze the communicative functions and the political meaning(s) ascribed to these public…

This project investigates the effects of the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953) on the production, distribution, preparation and consumption of food in transwar Japan and Korea.

Three alumni of our Master’s degree programme in Ancient History talk to us about how they found a job after graduation during the coronavirus pandemic. During the interview, Gabriël hung a huge board covered in post-it reminders behind his laptop, Molly was glad that the members of the selection committee…