This paper explores how citizenship is enacted and experienced in welfare encounters for Egyptian migrant parents in Paris, Amsterdam, and Milan, highlighting the importance of social citizenship and personal interactions in shaping belonging.

For an assignment for the course Medical Anthropology, students were asked to choose a theme related to the Covid-19 pandemic, find information and present their work in a creative way. The results are impressive.

Investigating the intercultural connections that shaped practices of knowledge production in colonial Dutch Brazil.

Inequality and violence are the two biggest issues in South Africa. What is the underlying cause? Could they be linked to rivalling groups, economic factors, government policy or all of the above? To understand social issues, it is important to study them within their context. The extended case study…

Katarzyna Cwiertka, Leiden Professor of Modern Japan Studies, was already the recipient of a VENI and a VIDI grant. Now she has also been granted a VICI, worth 1.5 million euro, for her research project Garbage Matters: A Comparative History of Waste in East Asia. ‘I want to do something that hasn’t…

With her debut album ‘Itaala’, the multicultural Shishani & The Namibian Tales are taking the Dutch music scene by storm. The album, which was crowned by Mixed World Music as the best Dutch World Music Release, merges different musical traditions to create an unprecedented new genre. Shishani Vranckx,…

Changes to halt further biodiversity loss are more urgent than ever and feasible, says IPBES, the United Nations biodiversity panel. In two reports released this week, the panel calls on governments worldwide to develop coherent policies that address biodiversity, climate change, water, food and health.…

A multi-disciplinary approach to past lifestyles and cultural practices

Annick Dezitter from Belgium celebrates 3 October with heart and soul: she has become a fanatical Leidener. Her portrait is part of Leiden meets Europe: an exhibition of 28 portraits of EU citizens in Leiden. City photographer and third-year Cultural Anthropology student Wilke Geurds explains.

In Sri Lanka, a prominent Singhalese Buddhist monk publicly proclaims that it is not a sin to kill Tamils. In Japan, the family register kept in a Buddhist temple and specifying the outcaste status of a lineage is provided to private detectives investigating the marriageability of a young woman. Throughout…

In the context of urban challenges, multidisciplinary knowledge adds value. The idea is that urban planners, sociologists, economists, and historians can collectively provide a deeper understanding of what has worked and what hasn't so far. Since 2022, scientists from the University of Indonesia and…

Festival, Network Launch

Protestant missionaries have provided the earliest and most detailed sources regarding the ritual art of the Papuan peoples of the Geelvink Bay. Raymond Corbey brings these sources to bear on circa 300 ritual objects and their itineraries in the book KORWAR - Northwest New Guinea ritual art according…

Lecture

American anthropologist Rosemary Joyce will be awarded an honorary doctorate from Leiden University on its Dies Natalis on 8 February. Joyce has delivered important new insights into the ancient Mayan cultures of Central America.

In the first episode of the podcast series, Andrei Marin, Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, interviews Marja Spierenburg, Professor of Anthropology of Sustainability and Livelihoods and Scientific Director at Leiden University, along with Diana Vela Almeida, Assistant…

On 15 June 2022 Professor Anthropology of Sustainability and Livelihood Marja Spierenburg was one of the invited speakers at the round table in the House of Representatives of The Netherlands.

Cultural anthropologist Annet Pauwelussen has been invited by the University of Washington to participate in an expert meeting on 'Global Measures of the Contribution of Small-Scale Fisheries to Sustainable Development'. 29 - 30 May 2018, Seattle.

Course, Workshop

Engagement between Asia and Europe is increasing. If these continents want to build a lasting relationship, they need to understand each other better in the economic, socio-cultural, historical and legal arena. Researchers from Leiden have already contributed to the body of knowledge on past and present…

In the media, we hear a lot of worrying news from Africa: refugees, attacks, Ebola, starvation, corruption... But Africa is much more than that: it is a continent in transition, with developments occurring at breakneck speed. African Studies scholars from different academic disciplines in Leiden conduct…

Very little is known about the relationship between religion and the digital future. Bart Barendregt, Professor by special appointment Anthropology of Digital Diversity, is about to change that. He receives a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros from the NWO for his research project 'One between the Zeros,…

Anthropologist Marja Spierenburg talks in the Dutch newspaper NRC about the neoliberal system and how it has to change in order to solve the energy crisis in South-Africa.

Cultural Anthropologist Erik de Maaker published, together with Monica Janoswki (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), Stories across Borders: Myths of Origin and Their Contestation in the Borderlands of South and Southeast Asia in Southeast Asian Studies (SEAS).

The United Nations has declared May 22 the International Day for Biological Diversity. A moment of global reflection on everything on Earth and its indispensability. Anthropologist Marja Spierenburg stresses the importance of the interaction between natural and social sciences in addressing sustainability…

Erik Bähre has been elected to the board of the Society of Economic Anthropology of the American Anthropology Association. On top of this he has joined the scientific advisory board of the NIAS-Lorentz Program.

Audiovisual and Digital Ethnography is a state-of-the-art introduction to this dynamic and growing subject. The authors explain its fundamental aspects in a clear and systematic way.

The secular West is struggling with the rise of AI, but so too is Muslim Southeast Asia. What can we learn from each other?

How do people living in a remote part of Northern Mongolia experience the post-socialist transition that occurred twenty years ago? Based on extensive fieldwork, cultural anthropologist Richard Fraser argues that this is not at all clear. In his PhD dissertation, he developed a new framework based on…

In order to deepen your knowledge of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, we encourage you to continue your studies with a master's programme.