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

Subproject of

The project will clarify that in the search for these new means the treatise On the sublime of ps.-Longinus played a crucial role. However, the project will also place the theatre performances in a broader social and political perspective. These public events and the theatre performances suggest that…

How can we explain the popularity of the Spanish comedia nueva in the seventeenth-century theatre scene of the Low Countries?

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

How can a participatory theatre-based pedagogy support pre-service teachers in The Netherlands in developing critical awareness and an active change-agent identity with respect to diversity, equity and inclusion in educational contexts?

Subproject of

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

To what end and how does Plautus constantly underline the Helleni(sti)c provenance of his art? How does this aspect relate the author’s originality?

On the 12th of December, Ria Huijgen-Koolen successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Ria on this achievement!

Joost van den Vondel is considered to be the greatest Dutch poet and playwright of his time, but he certainly wasn’t the most popular. The 17th- and 18th-century public preferred to watch ‘Spanish theatre’. University lecturer Olga van Marion has written a book about this, together with Frans Blom (University…

Black Theatre, activist theatre by and for black South Africans, flourished under apartheid. However, according to Francis Rangoajane, the democratisation of South Africa has in no way diminished the importance of this art form. PhD defence 16 November.

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?

What is freedom worth in times of hunger? ‘Beleg’ is a modern interpretation of Lucretia van Merken’s 1774 play. With five performances in Leiden’s Schouwburg theatre, the play is a prominent part of the Relief of Leiden celebrations, and Leiden alumni are playing a big role. Take a look behind the…

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.

On September 12, Michel Orrit received his Spinoza prize in the Royal Theatre in The Hague from OCW Secretary of State Sander Dekker. With the award comes a budget of 2.5 million euro, to be spent freely on scientific research, and the coveted Spinoza statue. Orrit shared the honor with Eveline Crone…

Baroque flautist Jed Wentz followed two years of dancing classes in order to develop the right feeling for the gestures required for the Baroque French opera genre ‘tragédie en musique’. In his dissertation, the links between gesture affect and rhythmic freedom in the performance of the tragédie en…

This project will clarify how these concepts operated in theoretical writings on performance ,this broadened conceptual framework will not only give us a clear view on how sublime effects in performance were theorized, it will also provide us a concrete apparatus to understand the cultural and political…

Graduating in international law and fulfilling a childhood dream by performing your own theatre show. Alumna Fleur Verhoeff has achieved both. How did she go from studying law to the performing arts? And how does her background in international law help?

After every attack, terrorism researchers are often asked the same question: who did it? Jeanine de Roy van Zuijdewijn, a researcher at Leiden University, doesn’t always have a ready-made answer.

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'.

The aim of this project is to study the influence of Longinus’s treatise ‘On the sublime’ on practice and theory of architecture and theatre in seventeenth-century Paris and Amsterdam.

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

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.

‘The storm of the passions rages’: The works of Johannes Jelgerhuis as a source of stagecraft for the historically informed performer.

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?

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

Leiden has much to celebrate: first, 450 years of the Relief of Leiden and then 450 years of Leiden University. And that is no coincidence.

Ali Al Tuma, PhD candidate at the Leiden University Institute for History, has won the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity for his play ‘Yusuf Melik Espanya’ (Yusuf King of Spain), that tells the story of a young Moroccan whose brothers conspire to send him off, against his will, to the Spanish Civil…

Lecture

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…