On 19 July Erik-Jan Zürcher, professor of Turkish languages and cultures, made a TV appearance in Nieuwsuur to talk about the actions Erdogan took after the failed coup.

What does the retail crisis mean for the future of Europe's urban centres? Assistant professor Alistair Kefford answers this very question in the French television programme 27.

Managing Diversity: Supervising Functions in Managing Colonial Workplaces

In what ways and to what ends did Parisian buildings overwhelm the early modern public? This study is concerned with the experience of the sublime in architecture in seventeenth-century Paris.

Valedictory lecture

This project studies travel writing about the Dutch East Indies written between 1800 and the end of the Second World War. By analyzing both Dutch travel texts and Indigenous travel texts in Javanese and Malay, it presents a new, double-voiced perspective on (the historiography of) the Dutch colonial…

Lecture, Lectures in Historical Linguistics and Philology

This year marks the 450th anniversary of the Capture of Brielle by the Watergeuzen (lit. ‘Sea Beggars’) and therefore the birth of the Netherlands. Student Johan Visser is contributing to no fewer than three books about the extraordinary year of 1572.

Ali Al Tuma, PhD candidate at the Leiden University Institute for History, has won the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity for his play ‘Yusuf Melik Espanya’ (Yusuf King of Spain), that tells the story of a young Moroccan whose brothers conspire to send him off, against his will, to the Spanish Civil…

Assistant professor Stephanie Noach has won the Dissertation Prize of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation. She is receiving this prestigious prize for her research on darkness in contemporary art from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Richard Chancellor, the English Willem Barentsz, discovered the North Cape during the first English expedition to attempt to find a northeast passage. But the ship, the Edward Bonaventure, was ‘robbed by Flemings on its return in 1554.’ Historian Louis Sicking and legal expert Remco van Rhee found the…

As Real As You Want is a group exhibition focusing on navigating the virtual and real spaces, experiences and conversations.

Dr. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Researcher at eLaw, received a personal visiting researcher grant from the Research Council of Norway to spend five weeks visiting the University of Oslo.

The Leiden University Medical Center is being transformed into a Teddy Bear Hospital in the week of 20 to 24 March. During this week more than a thousand children will care for their favourite cuddly toy under the watchful eyes of Leiden's medical students. The aim of the event is to reduce children's…

Resilient Diversity: the Governance of Racial and Religious Plurality in the Dutch Empire, 1600-1800

How did free agents cooperate with the VOC and the WIC, through lobbying for private interests within the Companies as well as at the highest political levels?

This research cluster aims to analyse and interpret the formation and transmission of Graeco-Roman culture by exploring the relationships between cultural products (texts, objects, practices) and their societal and historical contexts.

Oran Kennedy

Carolien Stolte has received an Early Career Award from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). She received this award for her research into the role of informal Afro-Asian networks in the Cold War. For this innovative research she received the award, an amount of 15,000 euros, and…

Take a walk through any city, and you are likely to come across a brightly coloured mural. Although these paintings often seem to serve solely as a backdrop for Instagram snapshots, art history professor Minna Valjakka says there are rich traditions and intricate histories that uncover more critical…

PhDArts candidate Ruchama Noorda will graduate on Wednesday 9 December 2015

In October 2014, Leiden University established the ‘Leiden University Teachers’ Academy’. Helen Westgeest, who lectures in the BA and MA Art History and MA Media Studies, was put forward by the Faculty of Humanities for appointment in the so-called ‘LTA’.

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research has awarded a grant of 750,000 euros to the 'Visualising the Unknown in 17th-century Science and Society' project. Researchers will reconstruct how seventeenth-century scientists recorded and shared their groundbreaking microscopic discoveries. We…

82 years ago Queen Wilhelmina fled to England. Henk te Velde tells about her on the Australian radio show 'Nightlife'.

How can we best tell the current generations about some of the darkest parts of our past? To answer this question, researchers from Leiden are working with the Gedeeld Verleden, Gezamenlijke Toekomst foundation on public programmes about the Dutch history of slavery.

PhD defence

Debates about the ‘end’ of the Roman era, how, when, and even if it ended, are still very much alive and raging. However, what happened after the (long) late antique period is a lesser-known and lesser-studied subject. The post-Roman past needs, however, as much energetic investigation and discussion.…

How do first-hand narratives of war of commanders in the front line relate to the official narrative of the Eighty Years’ War?

On this page you can learn more about the history of our Faculty Awards and view the previous winners.

A new volume, co-edited by Nadine Akkerman of the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, shows how ladies-in-waiting, by 'creatively manipulating their gender', often played a major role in shaping the political climate of Europe in the early modern period.

Professor of Korean Studies Remco Breuker has been awarded a subsidy from the European Research Council to study the dispute between both Koreas and China on the history of Manchuria.

Leonard Blussé, emeritus Professor in the History of European and Asian relations, will receive the prestigious Japanese Academic Fukuoka Prize. Blussé receives the prize for creating a new academic field: 'The Maritime History of early modern East/Southeast Asia'. He will receive the Prize in September…

University lecturer Lauren Lauret has been awarded the D.J. Veegens Prize 2022 for her dissertation on the meeting practices of the States General during the time of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces compared to those of the Lower House during the first half of the 19th century.

Josephus Justus Scaliger was one of the most famous scholars of his time and yet today his name is likely to be met with blank looks. His correspondence shows that this Leiden professor was also irritable to say the least. Kasper van Ommen will defend his PhD thesis on Scaliger’s legacy on 2 July. Find…

Dr. Henk Schulte Nordholt, working at KITLV and LIAS, has been appointed extraordinary professor of Indonesian history for a five-year period.

Conference, Summer School

Lecture, INVISIHIST Masterclass

In a speech on Keti Koti the Dutch king, Willem-Alexander, apologised on behalf of the royal family for the Netherlands’ historical role in slavery. What is the significance of this?

Remembrance Day on 4 May may be different this year, but it will make no less of an impression. Ethan Mark, who specialises in modern Japanese history, will give an online lecture about forgotten stories from the Second World War. Via Open Jewish Homes, moving stories can be heard online of Jewish alumni.…

Banquets for the rich, porridge for the poor and a standard diet of bread, olive oil and wine. Just a few assumptions about the Roman diet.