Do you want to know the best reasons to study at Leiden University or want to know what's it like to live in the student cities Leiden or The Hague? Our students tell you why you have to choose Leiden University to study your bachelor's programme.

Exponential population growth and rapid urbanisation are prompting the development of gigantic African metropolises that must be supplied with resources such as food, water and energy. This creates economic opportunities, drives migration and presents political challenges. Researchers from Leiden combine…

Bachelor, Master

Festival

This dissertation presents the first full grammatical description of bago ts'amakkilo ('mouth of the Ts'amakko'), or simply Ts'amakko. It is a Cushitic language, spoken in Southwest Ethiopia and belongs to the Dullay cluster of Lowland East Cushitic. The number of speakers is about 10,000. The data…

Lecture, This Time For Africa! series

Our library contains around 23,000 books, journals and historical documents under the care of a specialized librarian.

Vocal learning is a trait shared by songbirds and humans. It is also a trait that is restricted by the brain rather than by a species' vocal apparatus. In this dissertation, functional MRI is employed in both species in order to explore potential common neural mechanisms underlying the ability to develop…

Lecture

When it comes to literature, people mostly talk about what characters see or hear. Rarely is it about what they smell. That’s a shame, thinks university lecturer Jan van Dijkhuizen. He has been awarded an Open Competition grant from NWO to expand academic knowledge about scent in literature, and to…

What started as a call for help in a Facebook group turned into a permanent group of students from the Bachelor's in Russian Studies and the Master's in Russian and Eurasian Studies who regularly help the Ukrainian refugees. They act as the link between the refugees and aid workers at various reception…

LUCIS affiliated members are researchers outside Leiden University who are actively involved in the study of Islam and/or Muslim societies and who regularly participate in LUCIS activities. LUCIS affiliate membership offers possibilities to cooperate with LUCIS as well as network opportunities. Contact…

When did the Mali Empire disintegrate? What does the Sunjata heritage demonstrate about the political situation after 1600?

With regard to governance, policies and law, many Muslims and Muslim countries recognise the possibility that Islam has something important to say about the way society is to be ordered, governed, and regulated.

The expedition commanded by Nicolas Baudin to Tenerife, Mauritius, Australia, Timor and South Africa in 1800-1804 is fully researched in regard to ornithology.

Forgotten Lineages explores the paths through which generations of formally enslaved and their descendants gradually forgot their past of enslavement under Dutch and British imperial rule and became local subjects in Sri Lanka and South Africa. It explores why and how forgetting rather than memory became…

This recently released book takes a critical view of conceptual issues and practical problems that inevitably emerge when ‘excellence’ takes center stage in science systems in the Global South. What is ‘excellent science’? And how to recognize and assess it? After decades of inquiry and debate there…

This book explores how changes in the patterns of cooperation and conflict among states, regional actors and transnational non-state actors have affected the rise of emerging global powers and the suggested decline of US leadership. Scholars, students and policy practitioners who are interested in the…

This programma, an initiative of the Institute for History in partnership with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta. Aims to study more than 20 kilometers of Dutch archival materials in The Netherlands, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and South Africa.

This thesis focuses on the social dimensions of crane and wetland conservation in rural landscapes in Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Conference

It is one of the most talked-about subjects right now: how do we eradicate sexual harassment and violence? Alumnus Femke Eisma is the spokesperson for Mariëtte Hamer, the government commissioner tasked with tackling this persistent social problem. Eisma studied the Dutch language at Leiden. How is her…

How can theories about modern disinformation help to understand how Roman documentary fictions functioned?

Researchers from Leiden see hungry villagers in the north of Cameroon steal meat from the prey of lions. The researchers from Leiden University's Institute for Environmental Sciences (CML) reported on this kleptoparasitism in the online publication of the African Journal of Ecology in July.

Professor Mirjam de Bruijn will research digital warfare in the North African Sahel with an NWO Open Competition grant. The focus of the research will be on Fulani social networks in war and cultural violence.

Lecture, This Time for Africa! Series

Your time at Leiden is about more than just studying. Some of your best experiences will stem from being a part of our lively and diverse student community, as well as from life in the beautiful city of Leiden.

Master

Your time at Leiden is about more than just studying. It is being a part of a lively and diverse student community. Living in beautiful and historic Leiden. And enjoying the rich cultural life of Holland, where you are right in the heart of Europe.

Researcher Max van Duijn and PhD student Bram van Dijk apply language models to stories told by children to investigate empathy. For this research, they received the Best Paper Award at the Computational Natural Language Learning Conference in Singapore.

Social scientists from Leiden University have worked with an international team to create teaching modules on migration.

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Conference

New policies, institutional configurations, and state-market relations are emerging outside of East Asia, as new developmental states move beyond the historical experience of East Asian development. Yet, the ‘developmental state’ is still relevant. This book, edited by Jewellord Nem Singh (Institute…

On 8 February 2021 Leiden University celebrated its 446th anniversary.

The Leiden Institute for Philosophy has a unique profile in the Low Countries and is one of few of its kind worldwide. It takes a global and comparative perspective of philosophy, whereas most philosophy programs restrict themselves to European and Anglo-American philosophical traditions rooted in Greek…

This Collaborative Research Group acts primarily as a platform for discussion of historical issues related to the African continent, its place in the world and in African Studies.

Below you can find an overview of our network.

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.

Discover the impact of financial products on inequality and conflict in South Africa through Erik Bähres' book 'Ironies of Solidarity', now available in Brazil as IIronias da solidariedade. Explore the role of insurance companies in serving financially disadvantaged African individuals.

Leila Demarest, Assistant Professor of African Politics at Leiden University, has recently been awarded with a Leiden University Fund research grant to study adolescents’ political attitudes and inter-group tolerance in Lagos, Nigeria.

Leiden professor of Cellular Immunology of Parasitic Infections Maria Yazdanbakhsh receives the prestigious NWO Spinoza Prize this year. This, in many ways, border-crossing scientist contributes with her research to more effective vaccines against parasitic infections and better medication for inflammatory…

The Kenyan second-hand clothing market is depended upon locally by citizens for its low cost, high quality and diversity. To prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Kenya halted imports of second-hand clothes in late March. Ever since, local manufacturers and designers are looking for solutions and opportunities…

The most densely populated country in Africa, Nigeria, is fighting a war on two fronts. Not only is Nigeria being confronted with violence on a national level by terror group Boko Haram, on a regional level there are conflicts between shepherds and farmers.

This dissertation provides a systematic description of English and Afrikaans verbal pseudo-coordination and a formal analysis couched in the Minimalist program.