Tell Balata Archaeological Park project On January 15th the cooperation project of the Faculty of Archaeology with the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage) and the Ramallah office of UNESCO was officially closed. At the same time the Archaeological…

Ominous witches, gruesome monsters, and hideous freaks: from Saturday 15 June, Kunsthal Rotterdam will be putting the spotlight on the shady depths of human imagination in the exhibition Hello darkness, my old friend. Seventy works on paper from the collection of the Leiden University Libraries confront…

The La Galigo manuscript at Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been digitized. The manuscript, which was inscribed in 2011 on UNESCO's ‘Memory of the World’ Register, is now freely available online and can be used for teaching and research. La Galigo is the world's longest epic, written in the Buginese…

Sarah van der Kwast

Cut marks on the bones of bears show that people in North-West Europe used bearskins to keep warm 300,000 years ago.

On January 25th, artist Jonas Staal will defend his dissertation which explores the development of propaganda art from the 20th to the 21st century.

Stultiens project, together with 36 other projects, is awarded with 50.000 euros to further investigate the idea for one year. This funding comes from the Idea Generator program of the Dutch National Research Agenda (NWA)

Novelist and essayist Karin Amatmoekrim will be writer-in-residence at Leiden University in autumn 2019. She will be the 35th writer-in-residence at the University.

On Thursday 3 November Leiden University will celebrate the official opening of two wall formulas in the city centre. As of now, Snell’s law and the Lorentz force formula shine on two walls in the heart of Leiden. They are part of a project to display at least ten groundbreaking formulas with a Leiden…

bachelorstudent Serafine Beugelink ontwikkelt kaartspel over elementaire deeltjes en deeltjesfysica. Ze zet succescol haar eigen bedrijf op.

Scientific research, heritage management and public outreach intertwined.

Yliana Rodríguez was in the middle of a second fieldtrip in the Falklands researching Spanish-English language contact, when global lockdown measures were announced. Sit back, relax and enjoy reading about Yliana's research into a unique speech community.

This year, LUCIS adapted the programme of its popular annual Middle Eastern Culture Market into an evening version, featuring a lecture, book discussion, and music.

Uncovering ancient Arabian inscriptions feels like pioneering detective work, says Arabist Michael Macdonald in a video interview with Leiden Islam Centre LUCIS. 'First you have to learn the alphabets that they're written in, and then you have to try and work out what they say.'

Leiden Professor Richard Griffiths received the Outstanding Educator Award for Innovation during the annual Coursera Partner Conference on 22 March. The conference was hosted by Leiden University in the World Forum in The Hague and was attended by 500 participants from more than a hundred leading universities.…

From 25-27 March, second-year students of the Advanced MSc in International Relations and Diplomacy (MIRD) took part in the programme's annual visit to Geneva, Switzerland. Students participated in institutional visits focusing on a wide range mandates in the field of International Relations and Dip…

Finds uncovered in the east of Germany show that Neanderthals stored and preserved vast amounts of meat and/or temporarily aggregated in larger groups to exploit the spoils

The Palaeolithic period extends from the earliest stone tools (and in Europe, earliest occupation) to the beginning of the current warm period.

Iraqi-Kurdish student of Middle Eastern Studies Bareez Majid has been nominated for the ECHO Award. ‘She has a strong personality, though she may appear unassuming at first,’ was the comment from one of her lecturers.

Excursions to Leiden museums, a flown-in American professor and a collaboration with PhD students from Cambridge: Leiden PhD candidates in early modern art were in luck this summer. An award from the Camino Laurent van Vugt Fund allowed the LUCAS research institute to organise a special summer school…

Today, anyone wanting a new look for their living room watches a home decorating programme or buys an interior design magazine. In the eighteenth century, people went to an upholstry specialist, who would provide you with new wall coverings, curtains and much-needed accessories. PhD candidate Aagje…

Heart patients who maintain a healthy lifestyle can start earning discounts at shops or for trips out. The Tergooi Hospital is the first in the Netherlands to introduce this unique method that was co-developed by the research group headed by Professor of Health Psychology Andrea Evers and the Leiden…

The International symposium on artistic research methods organized by ACPA and the Platform for Arts Research in Collaboration (PARC), in coordination with Fontys Tilburg and SAR– took place on 9th April, 2024 at the Textile Museum in Tilburg. The recordings are now online at whatmethodsdo.com.

It’s often said that citizens have lost trust in their governments. But who exactly are these ‘citizens’? And which aspects of people’s contact with government agencies work better than others? These questions will be discussed at the Crafting Resilience conference (working language is English) on…

The Leiden Hortus Botanicus is the oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands. Although perfect for a ramble, it is much more than an open air museum. PhD students carry out their research here and the Hortus makes a serious contribution to biodiversity through the exchange of rare seeds with other…

A major new study of ancient DNA has traced the movement of people into southern Britain during the Bronze Age. In the largest such analysis published to date, scientists examined the DNA of nearly 800 ancient individuals. Publication in Nature on December 22, 2021.

Over 600 manuscripts and early prints have been made digitally available by Leiden University Libraries (UBL) via the Europeana platform. In the project 'The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages’ (ARMA), seven European heritage institutions added 30,000 digitised medieval items to Europeana’s database…

Pieter Houten is a PhD student in the ERC granted research project 'An Empire of 2000 Cities: urban networks and economic integration in the Roman empire', directed by Luuk De Ligt and John Bintliff (Archaeology).

Joanita Vroom's term as Head of the Department for World Archaeology runs out on March 1, 2023. Quentin Bourgeois will succeed her. In this interview, we look both back on the turbulent last three years and ahead at what the future has in store for the department. ‘I am very proud of the World Archaeology…

This autumn Leiden University is launching eight new MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) that are available free to the general public. You can follow courses on the theory of evolution, mindfulness, political economy, international law, music, cultural heritage or archaeology.

The programme for the Leiden Asia Year in 2017 is now available. Rector Carel Stolker launched the new website www.leidenasiayear.nl at the opening of the Academic Year of Leiden University on 5 September.

For 2022, The Iranian-German project 'The Iranian Highlands: Resilience and Integration of Premodern Societies' announces the second round of fellowship grants. The fellowship is open for both iranian and non-iranian researchers, especially in archaeology but also in other interdisciplinary fields focussing…

Women behind the front play an important role in a large proportion of Iranian novels, written on the Iran and Iraq-war (1980-1988). But their martyrdom is an uncommon theme. Saeedeh Shahnahpur will give a lecture on this subject on 16 February.

Associate professor Alice Twemlow introduces a new elective which will start in September, called: Design and the Deep Future. We asked her to tell a little bit about herself and the elective she will be teaching in the first semester of the next academic year.

For the past 2 years, Dr Letty ten Harkel has been jointly running an excavation project of a suspected Roman villa site on the Balearic island of Mallorca with colleagues Dr Antoni Puig Palerm and Ritchie Kolvers, MA. The project was recently awarded a LUF Chastelain-Nobach fund to explore the extend…

Since 1 February 2016, Paul van Trigt is postdoctoral researcher in the project Rethinking Disability: the Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in Global Perspective at the Institute for History.

The LUCAS Audience Award 2021 has been awarded to Nadine Akkerman. This is a prize for researchers who appeal to an audience wider than the academic community. The prize consists of 1000 euros, a trophy and eternal fame.

Every student learns about science, but those of the Master Honours Class ‘The Academic Life’ went an extra mile. They learned all the ins-and-outs of academia and rounded off this successful lecture series with a final session on evaluating scientific research.

On January 28 and 29, 2021 the conference ‘Imperial Artefacts: History, Law and the Looting of Cultural Property’ took place online. This first of its kind event at Leiden University was an interdisciplinary online conference and brought together (post-)colonial historians, legal historians, curators,…

Dr Nadine Akkerman, lecturer in Early Modern Literature and postdoctoral researcher in Leiden, has written a new book to accompany the exhibition on Elizabeth Stuart and Amalia von Solms at the Historical Museum of The Hague. ‘They were like goddesses, constantly trying to upstage one another,’ says…

King Willem-Alexander has commissioned independent research into the role of the House of Orange-Nassau in Dutch colonial history. The research will take three years to complete and will cover the period from the late 16th century to the postcolonial present. The research will be carried out at Leiden…

Since November 2022, Veronica Tamorri has been a new face at the Faculty of Archaeology. Originally from Rome, she joined the Faculty with a two-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie post-doctoral fellowship. Here she is studying human remains from early Egypt and Nubia (Sudan) using bioarchaeological methodologies.…

Researchers from Leiden and Delft have found a way to look inside early-modern bookbindings. An x-ray technique has allowed them to search for remains of medieval manuscripts hidden inside the bindings. After the Middle Ages many manuscripts were recycled, their pages pasted inside bookbindings to provide…

On the past 6th of October, the Pillar A of the research program me Citizenship, Migration and Global Transformations finally had its awaited kick-off event, which was previously cancelled last spring due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Geometrical patterns serving as decorations do more than just that; they always have a meaning, according to art historian Arthur Crucq. Doctoral defence 17 May.

As a humanities researcher, it is not always easy to explain to other people why what you do is important. It is easy for people to see why searching a cure for cancer matters, but it is a bit harder to make clear why it is also important to study language, culture, and history. One of the things that…

In 1800, French explorer Nicolas Baudin led an important scientific expedition to Tenerife, Mauritius, Australia, Timor and South Africa. He returned with hundreds of exotic bird species. PhD candidate Justin Jansen reconstructed this ‘catch’ in a weighty book and talked to us about the wonderful fi…

A group of patients were given a guided tour of the larger than life Rembrandt canvases on University buildings around the Rapenburg canal. This was with the help of students from Present, a volunteer organisation, who pushed their wheelchairs over the bumpy cobblestones. The canvases are on show until…

Alumnus Maarten Asscher (60) is mentor of the month. He studied Law in Leiden and has worked as a literary publisher, senior official at the Ministry of Education and director of Athenaeum Booksellers. Will he be your mentor?

Silver jewellery, sculptures made of cork and intriguing photos of psychiatrists' treatment rooms. Staff at Leiden University exhibit their artworks in the Old Library. The summer exhibition can be viewed until 12 August.