A newly opened museum in China appears to be devoted to the origins of the Austronesian-speaking peoples, who some 5000 years ago spread from East Asia across the Pacific, seeding it with a distinctive culture and some 1200 languages. But those displays are also a statement in the long-running dispute…

The Rutte IV cabinet is more or less complete. It includes more women than ever. For the first time ever, the Netherlands will have two ethnic minority ministers, and ministers without political experience but with plenty of professional expertise will also be making their debut. However, political…

The new student members of the Programme Committee (OLC) are Pablo Pandocchi, Benjamin Maldonado, Emily Berube-Palsboll and Nico Lesenfants Ramos.

Different groups of hominins probably learned from one another much earlier than was previously thought, and that knowledge was also distributed much further. A study by archaeologists at Leiden University on the use of fire shows that 400,000 years ago knowledge and skills must already have been exchanged…

Descolonización, continuidad cultural y re-apropiación de los códices mixtecos en el Pueblo de la Lluvia

Serial learners: interactions between Funnel Beaker West and Corded Ware communities in the Netherlands during the third millennium BCE from the perspective of ceramic technology

Dean prof. Willem Willems has visited Japan from 8-10 September, at the invitation of the Aomori District Council in northern Honshu. Purpose of the visit was to provide assistance in the nomination process for World Heritage Site of 15 prehistoric Jomon Culture sites in northern Honshu and Hokkaido…

Leiden-Yale collaboration uncovers a tale of samurai same-sex love in a library manuscript.

An experimental approach to organic palaeolithic technology

In close collaboration with the Center for Medieval Studies (Fordham), Centre for Medieval literature (Odense and York) and Centre for Medieval Studies (York), the University of Ghent organizes an Autumn School for PhD- and MA-students in Medieval Studies (18-22 October 2021). It will be organized in…

A linguistic reconstruction of the migration of the Tocharians from Europe to China

When we read a text, we think we know who wrote it, but in the early modern period, manuscript production was often a collaborative or ‘socialised’ enterprise involving secretaries and scribes who physically wrote what the author dictated.

In the South African context, certain iconic images have been a dominant source for public understandings of historical events. The emphasis given these images tends to overshadow the historical value of other more personal photographic sources – like studio or amateur photography. This project looks…

A group of confidants including a former student of Meijers managed to avert his deportation to a death camp. In her lecture on 27 November, Cleveringa Professor Marjan Schwegman revealed the history of the persecution of the Jewish Professor Eduard Meijers.

Audrey Heijns explored the mindset of alumnus Henri Borel. From 1894 to 1916 he was an interpreter of Chinese and later a government officer for Chinese affairs in the Dutch East Indies. Borel's way of 'translating' Chinese was both unique and inimitable. PhD defence on 28 June.

The BOCA project explores new forms of communicating academic knowledge as a way to strengthen the connection between the university and society.

Since the beginning of September, Emma van der Plas (20) is the new student ambassador for CADS. Emma is a third-year student and is currently following a minor in Sustainable Development in Leiden. Her goal? To eliminate the stigmas surrounding anthropology.

On the 19th of November, Tingting Zheng successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Tingting on this achievement!

This PhD project investigates how Russian state-aligned media frame the war in Ukraine for international audiences and how these frames travel across borders, being adopted, adapted, or challenged by foreign media and political actors.

As part of Nexus 1492 Subproject 4: A Future for Diverse Caribbean Heritages, which seeks to shed light on how local communities interpret and engage with heritage in the present day, this doctoral study aims to gain insight into how indigenous heritage is represented in the school curriculum for social…

From ca. 1540 to 1600, thousands fled the war-stricken Southern Low Countries to the British Isles, Germany, and the Northern Low Countries. Research on this displacement crisis, central to the formation of the Netherlands and Belgium, reflects 21st-century debates on migration and language: language…

How and to what extent the historic house (re-)constructs identity through image-making in China.

Based on interviews with feminist Instagram users, this article studies emergent feminist visibilities on Instagram through the concept of filtering.

This book provides an overview of critical scholarly reflections on the history of Dutch slavery and colonization, as well as how this translates into critical cultural practices.

How did nineteenth-century non-Anglophone translators and authors creatively engage with the poem Beowulf?

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…

Archaeologist Hayley Mickleburgh studies how bodies decompose. This helps with the reconstruction of changes in the burial rituals of Caribbean Indians.

How do contemporary authorship and scholarship work together to shape the way that early twentieth century literary and cultural movements are remembered today?

As one of the most influential ideas in modern European history, democracy has fundamentally reshaped not only the landscape of governance, but also social and political thought throughout the world.

When and how to use the concept of “culture” . To medical anthropologists this is a core question, but also a challenging one.

Teachers of English as a foreign language in China and the Netherlands have different notions of themselves as teachers in relation to cultures associated with the English language. This is stated in the doctoral thesis of Dadi Chen, who graduates from the Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching…