Join us at the second edition of the Making Matters symposium, which will take place on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 November 2020 at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam and online.

Stefano Bellucci, university lecturer at the Institute for History, has been awarded a grant by the EAP for a pilot project for the preservation and digitisation of the workers’ files of the Takoradi Railways (now part of the Ghana Railways Corporation).

Two open letters are currently circulating among civil servants in the Netherlands calling for the Dutch government to take a different stance towards Israel. Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law in Leiden, says in a national radio broadcast that this is an unusual and unique…

The Dutch temporary bridging measure for self-employed professionals (known as Tozo) was set up to help Dutch self-employed professionals who are experiencing financial difficulties due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Last week, the ombudsman announced an investigation into the scheme for the self-employed.…

On 7 March, Carlos Roos (lecturer, philosopher, researcher) gave a talk about popular music at Utrecht University, organized by the education committee of Study Association Hucbald (Musicology at Utrecht University).

The energy system is at the heart of two of the greatest challenges of the 21st century: decreasing CO2 emissions to meet the ambitions of the Paris agreement while fulfilling the growing energy demand associated with the economic aspirations of a growing world population.

The theme of the Opening of the Academy Year on 4 September was sustainability and how the university could take the lead as a change agent. How is it going about this and what else can it do? There was also room for a critical note.

Can suffering be positive? Currently dominant discourses, primarily voiced through human rights activism and humanitarianism, maintain the opposite: suffering, mentally and physically, has to be avoided and where it exists, it has to be reduced.

Determined, innovative lecturers are the driving force behind our teaching. Alexandra Langers, a specialist in gastroenterology and hepatology at the LUMC, is an active educator, both within and outside the hospital. She passed the Senior Teaching Qualification at the end of last year. ‘I want to cultivate…

For his PhD, historian and army major Dion Landstra researched the effectiveness of observers in peace operations in the Balkans between 1991 and 1995. What risks are acceptable for bringing about and maintaining peace? Landstra will defend his PhD on 28 September.

Statement from the Editorial Board of the Common Market Law Review regarding the UK Brexit referendum campaign:

Arts and culture

Promotor: H.J. van den Herik, B.R. Katzy, Co-promotor: K. Sailer

On Thursday, May 16, Leiden University Libraries is organizing a workshop on early photography of the Middle East. In the workshop, curator Maartje van den Heuvel shows photos of three adventurous Dutch nineteenth-century travel and photography pioneers. They created beautiful photos and photo albums…

Leiden scholars study clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia. But what exactly does the cuneiform script say?

The Epic of Gilgamesh was a lifelong inspiration to artist Harry van Kruiningen. This tale from Mesopotamia about the adventures of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk, and his friend Enkidu is one of the oldest surviving epics in world literature. Despite its almost 4,000 year age, it still captures…

Leiden University recently named a new building for Egyptologist Herta Mohr. But who was she?

Conference

Leiden scholars succeeded in making Arabic accessible to Western academic communities as early as the sixteenth century. But how did they approach this problem?

This was the question Leiden researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences CML posed in an article published last week in the journal Resources, Conservation, Recycling

In de rubriek ‘Onderwijsheden’ delen Psychologiedocenten hun belangrijkste inzichten over college geven. Deze maand: Anouk van der Weiden ontwikkelde met een team collega’s en studenten een lespakket kritisch lezen, toepassen en schrijven. ‘Studenten denken: wie ben ík om kritiek te geven op een gepubliceerd…

Promotores: Arjen Doelman, Jens Rademacher, Max Rietkerk

Promotor: J. Aarts

With support of several publishers and private foundations, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Scaliger Institute welcome around 15 to 20 Fellows and guests per year to consult and research materials from our Special Collections. The Scaliger Institute received applications this year from domestic…

eLaw colleagues Bart Custers and Helena Ursic have a new publication in the peer-reviewed journal The European Data Protection Law Review.

How did the mythical kings of ancient Persia live? In this podcast, we delve into the Shahnameh, also known as the Book of Kings.

Persian stories with beautiful miniatures, letters on papyrus from Egyptian traders and medicinal manuscripts translated from Greek and edited in Arabic. Studium Generale organizes a lecture series on the world-famous manuscripts from the Middle East collection of Leiden University Libraries (UBL).…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Several of the most important manuscript collections in the Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Special Collections, comprising 443 extremely rare and often unique volumes, have been made available in Open Access via Digital Collections. The available manuscript collections include the private collections…

The Middle East has a rich literary tradition, which is steadily gaining a foothold in the West. Modern literary works deal with contemporary issues, such as the legacy of colonialism, the struggles between traditionalism and modernity, the place of women in society and the war in Israel/Palestine.

Symposium & Workshop

How do you move 3,000 fragile clay tablets that date back thousands of years? This was the challenge faced by staff from the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO). After years of preparation, the Liagre Böhl collection has been moved on trolleys to its new home.

How can artist PhD candidates research their own work? They need to be good at switching from maker to critical observer and their research has to have a solid theoretical basis. This is the premise of Professor Janneke Wesseling. The aesthetic value of their work also has to be up for discussion. Inaugural…

Lecture, Summer School

In collaboration with the The Hague Historical Museum and photographer Dagmar van Weeghel, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) is the first to present a retrospective exhibition of the photographic oeuvre of Alexine Tinne (1835 – 1869). New research into her life and work is the reason for a reappraisal…

The perception of the Middle East is riddled with stereotypes that have had dire consequences on its people. What is myth and what is reality? How did these stereotypes come about? What consequences have they had? All of these questions and more are answered within this reading list.

Lecture, Studium Generale

PhD defence

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series