How do religious narratives persuade their readers to believe their message? And how can it be that some readers even come to treat fantasy and science fiction as authoritative religious texts? These are the core questions treated in Markus Davidsen’s new book Narrative and Belief: The Religious Affordance…

Chenyu Cheng defended her thesis on 6 April 2017.

Unravelling Mindreading Skills through Storytelling and Narratives

What is the role of technology and cyberculture in Korean social structures and in the potential formation of a new collective subjectivity? How do we reorient disoriented souls?

Research on the global field of museums, heritage, commemoration, consumption and material culture

How is tradition constructed and belief made plausible in fiction-based religion?

The CADS Research Cluster People, Power and Diversity aims to further theoretical and methodological debates on the classifications of human difference, such as gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, age, ability, religion, level of development, time, etc., and the way these classifications organize…

Conspiracy theories are of all times, and the government should never dismiss them as a fantasy of fools. Certainly not now, when it turned out that authorities made a conspiracy themselves with a journalist threatened with murder. Which proves that the truth is always more insane than you could have…

As far as Daniël Pijnappels, Professor of Cellular Electrophysiology, is concerned, both researching and inventing are essential for a scientist.

From Great-Britain to the United States and from Australia to South Africa: people around the whole world speak and write English. In Leiden you will broaden your knowledge of the English language and the rich Literature and culture of the global English world on academic level.

Jelle van Buuren, university lecturer at ISGA, discusses the role that social media played in the storming of the Capitol last Wednesday

ACPA PhD Candidate Gabriel Paiuk will be guest speaker at the coming UNM – Young Nordic Music Days to take place in Aarhus, Denmark in August 2021.

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…

In 2013, Thijs Porck wrote a guest blog for 'medievalfragments'...

Modern Japanese culture can best be described in one word: cute. Hello Kitty, the most important symbol of cuteness, can be found in all layers of society. Leiden Japanologists Ivo Smits and Kasia Cwiertka put together a volume of articles on this curious phenomenon.

Jelle van Buuren, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, appeared as guest on VICE to discuss the usefulness of recent ban on QAnon.

Four young Leiden researchers have been awarded a Rubicon grant to conduct research abroad. They will be working in Germany, the UK and the US studying such topics as the origin of galaxies and risk behaviour in young people.

Markus Altena Davidsen’s PhD dissertation is the first major study of Tolkien Religion. In it, he analyses the religion that is based on the stories by acclaimed British fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien. He also discusses how fiction itself can become religious. Davidsen will defend his dissertation on…

‘The Netherlands’ response to coronavirus is inconsistent.’ These are the words of Leiden political scientist Arjen Boin, an expert in crisis management. Vulnerable groups such as the elderly need more personalised advice. ‘It would be better to cancel bridge tournaments than football games.’

Each month we will be spotlighting material we have been reading, or that have been recommended to us that relate to AI and a particular theme.

Read all about YAL membership and the members of the Young Academy Leiden.