The Ancient Worlds Network brings together staff and graduate students in LIAS working on the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world.

This monograph, written by dr. Dennie Oude Nijhuis and published by Cambridge University Press, discusses the postwar development of the welfare state.

This study offers a new view on public services in the early modern Low Countries and answers the following questions: who provided public facilities in urban communities and in which ways did public amenities change in the period between 1500 and 1800?

This dissertation the role of the English dissenting minister Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) as a grammarian is studied.

This dissertation examines how Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Fécamp designed, produced, and read books over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Muhammad Adlin Sila examines the range of ways Bima Muslims constitute their Islamic identities and agencies through rituals and festivals. In response to their surroundings, what it means to be a Muslim is constantly being negotiated.

The Dutch and English East India Companies were formidable organizations that were gifted with expansive powers that allowed them to conduct diplomacy, wage war and seize territorial possessions. But they did not move into an empty arena in which they were free to deploy these powers without resista…

On Tuesday 30 April 2024 Jonny Russell successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The History programme has been working for several years to make the curriculum more diverse and inclusive. With a Comenius grant, university lecturer Kim Beerden wants to take the next step.

How old is the phenomenon of states attempting to control migrations on external borders? What were the motives and outcomes of these policies? In his dissertation, Jovan Pešalj examines how migration control on the southern Habsburg border emerged, how they functioned, and what impact they had on migrations.…

In August 2014 Stefano Bellucci started working as Senior Lecturer in African History at the Institute for History.

Margarida Borges has been working as a PhD candidate at the Leiden Institute for History since September 2011.

Suddenly getting lost, failing to recognise family members, or forgetting words and names are well-known symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Psychologists have now discovered that the disease also manifests in more subtle ways: through the rhythm of finger tapping.

Viola Müller is a PhD candidate at the Leiden University Institute for History. Her research focuses on slave refugees in the US South, 1800-1860.

Women confined to the kitchen? Not in Scheveningen around 1900. There, some women ran entire shipping companies. This is according to new research by history student Sjors Stuurman. He compiled the results in a book he wrote for Muzee Scheveningen.

On 8 and 9 May 2018 the Workshop 'Challenging the Liberal World Order: The History of the Global South, Decolonization and the United Nations, 1955-2000' takes place at Leiden University.

In January 2014, Irial Glynn started a two-year Marie Curie Fellowship in Leiden. His project will compare the migration experiences of Ireland and Italy since 1945.

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

A collaboration between linguists, geographers and anthropologists aims to uncover how languages spread across South America over thousands of years. Associate Professor Rik van Gijn is responsible for the linguistic side of this NWO project.

In January 2014, I began working as a postdoctoral researcher in History at Leiden on the NWO project “Democratization and political terrorism: The formation and destruction of the two-party system in the Red River Valley of Louisiana, 1865-1878,” where I am studying with Professor Adam Fairclough.

The physical features of twelfth-century manuscripts from the Flemish abbey of Ter Duinen – such as script, page layout, and reading aids – show how their readers organized, interpreted, and transmitted knowledge.

The Sanquin blood bank gathers data on every donation. Around 720,000 donations are made every year. ‘That generates a mountain of highly valuable data,’ says Leiden PhD candidate Marieke Vinkenoog.

They never cross our minds until, that is, they become damaged and then they’re a huge problem: our sewers. Their maintenance could be much faster and more accurate, PhD candidate Dirk Meijer has discovered. Algorithms are also proving to be a godsend deep underground.

Hasan Colak is one of the two postdocs in Cátia Antunes’ ERC Research Project 'Fighting Monopolies'.

Joris van den Tol spent three months doing archival research in Albany in the USA. Read on how he experienced his stay.

In November 2013, three PhD students started in Herman Paul’s VIDI project ‘The Scholarly Self: Character, Habit, and Virtue in the Humanities, 1860-1930’. In this newsletter they introduce themselves.

The Department of History of Art in Oxford has appointed Leiden University professor Caroline van Eck as Slade Professor of Fine Art for the second semester of academic year 2016-2017. As Slade Professor Van Eck will spend a semester in office at Oxford University and deliver eight public lectures and…

Emeritus professor Willem Otterspeer received a royal honour from mayor Henri Lenferink on Tuesday 20 September. The university historian was appointed Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau.

The Institute for History of Leiden University, in collaboration with the N.W. Posthumus Institute, is organising a Masterclass by Dr. Arthur Weststeijn on Friday 13 November 2015.

Interview with Pieter Slaman who received the LUS Education Prize. What makes the award so special to him and does he already know how he will use his prize money?

The coronavirus has the world in its grip. Finding a cure has never been more important. Unfortunately, the development of new drugs for treatment of the COVID-19 disease caused by the virus and development of a vaccine are complex, lengthy, and above all costly processes. With the help of computer…

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

Since August 2013, Alanna O’Malley is the new Assistant Professor for International Studies at the Institute for History, Leiden University.

Erik Odegard is the third PhD-student who's joining Cátia Antunes' 'Challenging Monopolies' project.

Kaarle Wirta is one of the four PhDs in Cátia Antunes’ ERC Research Project 'Fighting Monopolies'.

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

If idioms employed in codes of conduct could be as idiosyncratic as examples suggest, then to what extent did early modern language of vice, too, persist in this genre?

This proposed research uses ego-documents from visual artists that were not intended for publication to reassess the scholarly debate on the demise of the Russian Avant-garde aesthetic in the twenties and early thirties of the 20th century.

What evaluative languages (errors, mistakes, vices, etc.) did book reviewers employ? To what extent and on what occasions did they invoke early modern vices? And to what extent did this differ across fields or change over the course of the century?

This book contains the first three Leiden-Aramco Lectures on Arabic Language and Culture delivered by Petra Sijpesteijn, James E. Montgomery and Geert Jan van Gelder.

Drawing on a broad array of sources, this project examines modern retrievals of Bacon’s idols, thereby testing Justus von Liebig’s intriguing observation, back in 1863, that Bacon’s name lived on mainly in mottos or stereotypical phrases. More importantly, it examines the rhetorical purposes served…

This PhD research aims to trace the impact of the Arab conquest, both immediate and long-term, on the material and social organization of Central Asia from 651 to 821 through an “urban change” perspective in four cities: Merv, Paikent, Balkh and Samarkand.

This project analyzes to what extent hodegetical textbooks relied on each other in warning their readers against vicious habits, how much continuity their catalogs of vice displayed, and to what extent vices that persisted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries were associated with easy-to-remember…

When you want to analyse big quantities of archaeological data, you run into the issue that searching through excavation reports is extremely time-consuming. If only there existed a search engine specifically focused on querying these reports… But wait, work on an archaeological search engine focused…

Alice Twemlow has been named professor by special appointment in the Wim Crouwel chair in the History, Theory and Sociology of Graphic Design and Visual Culture at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam.