From colonial times through to the present day, large numbers of Javanese have left their homes to settle in other parts of Indonesia or much further afield. Frequently this dispersion was forced, often with traumatic results.

In Uprooting the Diaspora, Sarah Cramsey explores how the Jewish citizens rooted in interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia became the ideal citizenry for a post–World War II Jewish state in the Middle East. She asks, how did new interpretations of Jewish belonging emerge and gain support amongst Jewish…

This book argues that Armenians around the world – in the face of the Genocide, and despite the absence of an independent nation-state after World War I – developed dynamic socio-political, cultural, ideological and ecclesiastical centres. And it focuses on one such centre, Beirut, in the postcolonial…

The project focusses on how US views of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia influenced its strategic interpretations of the region. Being eleven million strong, dispersed across the region and sharing ethnic ties with Communist China, interpretations of the diaspora intersected with key Cold War…

By documenting lexical and morpho-syntactic patterns among P’urhepecha speakers in Mexico and the US diaspora, this project will investigate the sources of language variation. The ensuing online dialect atlas will serve as an online resource for speakers, learners and researchers of the language.

An interesting Ottoman History podcast that deals with the slave trade and the African Diaspora in Ottoman Izmir.

Priya Swamy defended her thesis on 27 October 2016

Taking as a point of departure the Italian American community in Boston and its process of collective remembrance surrounding Saint Anthony’s Feast, we address the limits and potential of montage.

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.

How has migration affected Irish and Italy society since 1945?

This book connects labour history, global history and the institutional or political history of international organisations.

A Persistent Revolution: History, Nationalism, and Politics in Mexico since 1968

Narrative Science examines the use of narrative in scientific research over the last two centuries.

The project investigates the changing local context of crime dynamics and the responses by selected international organizations and national governments. It places a major emphasis on security management at the trans-national level by investigating intra-regional security cooperation between Latin America,…

The research will touch upon the communal role of text and the actions of interpretation and discussion that developed among Jews in exile.

In the African Studies BA programme you will obtain in-depth knowledge about Africa and the specific theme of your choice. At the same time, you will develop valuable academic and digital competences, as well as personal skills.

Since its beginnings, Leiden University has been home to scholars with a broad and diverse expertise in the histories, languages, literatures and material cultures relevant to the study of Jews and Judaism from antiquity to modern times.

The NWO-funded Vidi project “American foreign policy and liberalism” challenges the idea that the United States has created and sustained a “liberal international order” since World War II. It instead explores the ways in which illiberal ideologies – such as those underpinning racial hierarchy at home…

Could an emergent Cinema of Un-Belonging discover forms of narrative time relevant to the long-term, inter-generational fractures caused by forced traumatic dispersion?

Since the Middle Passage is in the North Atlantic, and the North Atlantic has a relationship with the arctic, what relationship does the Arctic have with the Middle Passage? How can this relationship be used to provide a space of healing by uncovering Afro/diasporic counter narratives?

What determines civic engagement in transboundary hydropolitics and why has it been muted in the Eastern Nile Basin?

This November, Leiden Jewish Studies Network has presented the Best Thesis in Jewish Studies award to a highly talented Leiden graduate, Lotte-Sofie Groenendijk, and awarded an honorable mention to Nasreen Javanjoo. The two theses stood out with their insightfulness and academic rigor among others written…

How have British cities changed in the years since the Second World War? And what drove this transformation? This innovative new history traces the development of the post-war British city, from the 1940s era of reconstruction, through the rise and fall of modernist urban renewal, up to the present-day…

Reconfigurations of Practice, Community and Authority in Contemporary Aceh

On Wednesday, September 17, 2025, Prof.dr. Sarah Cramsey convened a book manuscript event at the beach of Wassenaar near Leiden to discuss her new book 'Caring through Catastrophe: Jewish Children and their Caretakers during the Holocaust' which is under contract with Indiana University Press.

Ramesh Ganohariti, PhD student and Ernst Dijxhoorn, Assistant Professor at Leiden University, researched the relation between international relations and sports, with sport and sports events increasingly being used for various diplomatic and political goals.

On the 22nd of April, Liszt Vianna Neto successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Liszt Vianna Neto on this achievement.

This book provides a grammatical sketch, glossed texts and a glossary of Tarifiyt Berber, which is the main heritage language of the Moroccan community in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

The project Multimedia Research and Documentation of African Oral Genres: Connecting Diasporas and Local Audiences (Director: D.Merolla) focuses on multimedia as technology that allows scholars to share documentation and scientific knowledge with the cultural owners of the collected oral genres.

This book is a much-needed update on our understanding of public diplomacy. It intends to stimulate new thinking on what is one of the most remarkable recent developments in diplomatic practice that has challenged practitioners as much as scholars.

On 16 November 2022 ms. Eftychia Mylona successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Rising geopolitical tensions are causing states and national elites to innovate their use of the past for present-day political ends. This is certainly true for the People’s Republic of China, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2024 amid mounting superpower rivalry, ideological tensions with the…

Leiden University is a centre of migration research, bringing together historians, economists, lawyers, political scientists and anthropologists. They conduct research on who migrates and why, and the impact on societies. They analyse government policy, the role of media and how societies respond to…