The Institute for History announces vacancies for three PhD positions on Rethinking Disability: the Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in Historical Perspective and one PhD position to conduct research on the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

The Discovery of El Greco: The Nationalization of Culture Versus the Rise of Modern Art (1860-1915)

This open access book explores the role of continuity in political processes and practices during the Age of Revolutions.

This year, the Leiden University Institute for History ranks #29 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. With this, the institute ranks as the second best in The Netherlands for the subject History.

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…

It is often claimed—in both scholarly and popular sources—that guide dogs for the blind are a modern innovation. But as this project demonstrates clearly, guide dogs also existed during the medieval period.

What was the stringed instrument known in medieval and early Renaissance Italy as “cetra”?

This year the PhDs of the institute had their traditional day out (uitje) to The Hague. The last two years they had stayed in Leiden, so The Hague already seemed like quite the adventure. Indeed, it seems almost that as time progresses and more and more archives become digitized, history PhDs slowly…

Colonialism Inside Out: Everyday Experience and Plural Practice in Dutch Institutions in Sri Lanka (c. 1700-1800)

Investigating epistemic and ethical practices in medical experimentation on humans in the colonial period in Southeast Asia.

European integration is under pressure. At the same time, the notion of a European administrative space is being explicitly voiced. But does a shared idea of the public servant exist in Europe?

How did colonial law work to turn people into property? This project argues that colonial ideas about households and domestic authority were critical to legal processes of enslavement in the early modern Dutch empire. Using colonial court records from Dutch Brazil, Suriname, and the Moluccas, the project…

What socio-cultural transformations did indigenous communities in the Lesser Antilles undergo from the late precolonial to the early colonial period in response to Amerindian­ European-African cultural encounters? How did Amerindian populations realign themselves in response to the colonisation…

Covid year 2021 might have felt somewhat less strange than the year before, but the virus still left its mark on University life and our students and staff. Fortunately there was also room for research, visiting dignitaries and in-person classes. And our social media accounts weren’t only about covid…