The purpose of LENS is to foster, coordinate and support research of visual media of analog and digital photography, film, and video, and the visual arts.

The arts and science: for years, they were seen as opposite extremes. One calls on emotion and the other on reason. The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) proves that nothing could be further from the truth. ACPA is where the knowledge and expertise of Leiden University and the University…

Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) is dedicated to ground-breaking and interdisciplinary research dealing with the relations between culture and society.

On 14 September 2021, Bram van der Sar defended his thesis 'Fiscale geheimhoudingsplicht: art. 67 AWR ontrafeld'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.P. Boer and Prof. A.O. Lubbers.

How are contemporary art practices from Southeast Asia negotiating notions of art and tradition?

A contextual approach to anthropomorphic figurines in the Pavlovian (Central Europe, 29-24 kyr BP) (2001)

The center studies the many ways in which issues of law and justice are dealt with in art and literature with a focus on liminal issues and cases. These are issues and cases where law comes to the limits of what it is capable of dealing with and art and literature explore the implications of what is…

How does contemporary art and culture represent nuclear contamination in post-nuclear landscapes?

'Politics of Withdrawal' considers the significance of practices and theories of withdrawal for radical thinking today.

On 19 February 2019, Mirjam Sombroek-van Doorm defended her thesis 'Medisch beroepsgeheim en de zorgplicht van de arts bij kindermishandeling in de rechtsverhouding tussen arts, kind en ouders'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. A.G. Castermans en Prof. mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker.

This study by artist Jonas Staal explores the development of propaganda art from the 20th to the 21st century.

How can the concept of Critical Making be expanded into a general approach that ties the critical methodology of artistic research, and the established concepts of artistic autonomy, together with contemporary creative-technological development?

Sophie Ernst’s doctoral thesis is an artist’s contribution to media art theory.

This programme adopts a new approach based on the paradoxical nature of these responses in early modern Italy: it draws on rhetorical discussions of lifelikeness and living presence, and it uses the anthropological theory of art as agency developed by Alfred Gell.

The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) of Leiden University and Art Institute West Den Haag are pleased to announce their close collaboration in the second season of the public series In the Making. This series, dedicated to the practice of research in the arts, will consist of seven public…

How do countries collaborate to impact climate change? How does inequality affect life expectancy? How can diplomacy help reduce international conflict? These are the types of questions you get to explore in the Liberal Arts & Sciences programme at Leiden University College through the central theme…

Protestant missionaries have provided the earliest and most detailed sources regarding the ritual art of the Papuan peoples of the Geelvink Bay.

Study information

The Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) is one of the few research institutes in the world in which researchers in the field of literature, art, architecture, design and media studies come together to conduct research into the cultural production of the western world, from classical…

The MA in History, Arts and Culture of Asia is designed for students interested in taking a humanities-related approach to the study of countries or regions in pre-modern, modern or contemporary Asia.

How do countries collaborate to impact climate change? How does inequality affect life expectancy? How can diplomacy help reduce international conflict? These are the types of questions you get to explore in the Liberal Arts & Sciences programme at Leiden University College through the central theme…

How do countries collaborate to impact climate change? How does inequality affect life expectancy? How can diplomacy help reduce international conflict? These are the types of questions you get to explore in the Liberal Arts & Sciences programme at Leiden University College through the central theme…

How digital technologies affect the way we conceive of the self and its relation to the world, considered through the lens of media art practices.

This book examines how renewed forms of artistic activism were developed in the wake of the neoliberal repression since the 1980s.

Questions of justice are not only the concern of legal professionals, politicians and activists, they also permeate culture at large. Literature, Cinema, Music and Artworks often revolve around questions about rights, justice and fairness, raising a wide range of issues, such as: how do we understand…

Study information, LUC 101 | Information Session

Lecture, Descriptive Linguistics Seminars

The aim of this project is to study the influence of Longinus’s treatise ‘On the sublime’ on practice and theory of architecture and theatre in seventeenth-century Paris and Amsterdam.

The Discovery of El Greco: The Nationalization of Culture Versus the Rise of Modern Art (1860-1915)

To what extent and in what manner can experimental video be used to reclaim the capacity for telling one’s own story, on one's own terms, speaking in tongues outside the linguistic framework of immune system discourse?

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This project involves research into the oeuvre of the Sundanese sculptor Iko, who has worked for the Catholic mission in Java and has carved sculptures for a chapel and church in Ganjuran. The images were designed by the Catholic layman Jos Schmutzer and are characterized by a fusion in style and symbolism…

To what extent can literary strategies deepen and enhance research in and through the visual and performing arts, as well as for research in academia?

Indigenous Latin American artifacts have attracted the interest of Europeans since the earliest moment of contact between Europeans and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The ERC-funded BECACO project uses an innovative multidisciplinary framework to investigate the provenance of ethnographic and…

Digitally Preserving Heritage at Risk

On 25 Februarry 2021 Hart Bloomsbury brings out a monograph by Frans-Willem Korsten: Arts as an Interface of Law and Justice: Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption. Its working title was 'Annoyance' but that did not sell. A sign in itself; most struggles for justice have been considered as annoying.

Subproject of

Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in the Age of New Media is dedicated to art practices that mobilize the model of the archive, demonstrating the ways in which such archival artworks probe the possibilities of what art is and what it can do.

This project investigates memorisation strategies that were employed in the fields of painting and calligraphy in imperial China, with a focus on the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

The eighth issue of the JLGC explores the diverse and interdisciplinary research on our multifaceted relationship with animals which is currently taking place, re-examining the relationship between humans and animals, and the definitions involved.

Wrenching poverty, global inequality, violent political and ethnic strife, deadlocked, unresponsive or even collapsing governments, growing dissatisfaction with democracy and missed opportunities for innovation – these are merely some of the challenges of governance and development with which our programme…

Today, globalization makes us all aware of how closely we are connected to, and often dependent upon, the actions of people who are distant from us. Human migration and economic liberalization have confronted local communities with changes happening on a global level. How can we devise ways to share…