The LAK offers various theater and presentation courses. You'll learn how to confidently perform, move, and transform into a role; you'll learn to play with status and emotions; how to use your voice, how to use the space, and how to perform a simple text in different ways. For the performing arts courses,…

The theater studio is a multifunctional space of 9.4 x 8 m, with wooden floor, mirrors and curtains. Music system and piano available.

Historiography of science is in its current self-image a non-evaluative discipline. Its main goal is to understand past processes of knowledge formation on their own terms. In the last few decades this approach has greatly improved our understanding of the phenomenon of science. Yet, something strange…

This NWO-funded research programme focuses on the assumptions and methodology of the writing of history of science. History of science is in many respects a flourishing discipline: it currently yields an impressive volume of studies. Systematic reflection about the ways in which history of science may…

Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Augustan Rome: Greek culture in the Roman world.

On Wednesday 5 February 2025 Milan Ismangil successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

People in Asia increasingly feel the need for a strong identity. This is the consequence of developments such as globalisation and the realisation that Asian countries such as China and India are becoming new world powers. Professor Hilde De Weerdt studies how political ideas and national identity spread…

ASLU 16

This research project adresses the question how local and traditional European forms of parrhesiastic theater— events, actions, and performances staged by characters who courageously speak their minds through scenes of excess and laughter, that take place in public view and incite the spectator’s agency…

On Tuesday 11 June 2024 Olivia Ramble successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Linde Desmaele explores the role of US theatre nuclear weapons stationed in Europe. Moving beyond the deterrence vs. reassurance debate

Nature and History, Towards a Hermeneutic Philospohy of Historiography of Science

Physicists from Leiden University wrote the script and ensured that every experiment in the performance was scientifically accurate. The kickoff of the major educational project of the Amsterdam Light Festival was a huge success — and there’s much more to come.

Memory, Imagination, and Mimetics in Contemporary Composition and Historical Performance

Is it possible to formulate a new conceptual foundation for attributing an evaluative role to historiography of science, without relinquishing the historiographic sensitivity of recent work in the discipline?

The emergence of the Köprülü household that imprinted its stamp on the latter half of the seventeenth century in the Ottoman Empire. What is the power struggle they carried out against Ottoman dynastic power?

This project will construct an inventory of possible conceptions of the resistance of the world to scientists’ claims and theories.

The aim of this project is to foster a historiography that does justice both to the realization that scientific knowledge is constructed by local, contingent, and contextual processes, and the claims of science to objective validity.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

A Spanish translation of Herman Paul’s 'Key Issues in Historical Theory' has appeared under the title 'La llamada del pasado: claves de la teoría de la historia'.

Whether implicitly or explicitly, we all have ideas about how the law is supposed to function, whose interests it should represent, and what role it should play in society. This project explores the ways in which these questions are addressed in the works of the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus…

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

At the Lak you can participate in a large variety of artistic and creative courses taught by our professional teachers. We offer courses in the following categories: theater and presentation, dance, visual arts, music, photography and writing (literature). All staged art courses come to a close with…

LAK creative courses is part of Leiden University and can be found in the Lipsius building on the Cleveringaplaats. The abbreviation "LAK" stands for Leids Academisch Kunstcentrum (Leiden Academic Art Center)

Steven Frost defended his thesis on 6 June 2017

At the LAK, you can participate in a wide range of creative courses, supervised by passionate professionals. From drama and presentation to dance, visual arts, singing and music, photography, and writing – there's always something for you. You'll not only develop your talents but also meet like-minded…

PhD defence

What did plays look like in the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth centuries? With the new OverActing theatre festival, university lecturer Jed Wentz is trying to get closer to an answer to that question.

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

Adopting a largely chronological approach, Gerrits links the historiography of post-war Europe and the major theoretical approaches to nationalism with analysis of key historical developments and events.

In what way is constructivist logic able to account for both the role of the judging agent in inference and the universal claims of logical validity?

How can theatricality act as a mediating process between public space and public as ‘audience’? Does the presence of an observer change the nature of the observed and if so, how?

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

This volume brings together experts on the history of the various revolutionary Sister Republics.

Bas Verberk defended his thesis on 6 September 2016

I would like to investigate what are the philosophical and practical consequences a reappraisal of the 17th-and 18th-century concept of taste may have for general and historical performance practice.

This comparative study investigates court politics in four kingdoms that succeeded the south Indian Vijayanagara empire during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: Ikkeri, Tanjavur, Madurai, and Ramnad. Building on a unique combination of unexplored Indian texts and Dutch archival records, this research…

This is the first comprehensive commentary on a section of Xenophon's Anabasis in English for almost a century.

What makes a good historian? When historians raise this question, as they have done for centuries, they often do so to highlight that certain personal attitudes or dispositions are indispensable or studying the past. Yet their vieuws on what virtues, skills or competencies historians need most differ…