Material Culture, Settlements, and Landscapes from the Mediterranean to Western Asia

Seven research projects have been honored in the unique researchprogramme Smart Culture - Arts and Culture. The successful research projects have one purpose, which is proving the connection between innovative artistic and cultural practices, scientific and social issues.

This PhD project investigates the different ways in which honorific forms are used in Japanese other than to express politeness, and how different factors affect perceptions about these uses.

On 28 November 2025, Leiden University and PLNT Leiden hosted “The Knowledge Orchard” - an event aimed at starting up/ enhancing interdisciplinary cooperation between academics at Leiden University, and improving collaboration between Leiden researchers and external partners in research and educatio…

On 25 January 2024 H.J. Pak successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The goal of the Kenniswerkplaats Diversiteit is to answer research questions schools in the Hague have in collaboration with the schools. The aim is to offer all children the same opportunities to develop through education.

Violent conflicts all over the world pose a great threat. Not only to the region’s inhabitants, but also to the cultural heritage in the area. This is the subject of the Europe Lecture in The Hague on 13 June.

When and how was alphabetic writing introduced to Greece and the wider Mediterranean region?

Jessica Barr and Barbara Zimbalist invite essays that examine any aspect of race and religion in medieval culture and society for a special issue on race and religion in the Middle Ages. Deadline for submission: 1 February 2021.

A ‘new governance culture’ – a hot topic for a number of years now. What kind of culture of public administration do we have in the Netherlands and how do you change it? This question is the focus of the podcast Het Spel & De Macht (the Game & the Power). Each episode considers one theme related to…

Dr. Vicky Kosta (Europa Institute, Leiden University), together with Professor Niamh Nic Shuibhne (University of Edinburgh), provided a course on “Cultural Diversity and European Law” at the EUI’s Academy of European Law two-week summer course in June 2023.

New Texts and Studies on Christian Nubian Culture

AI has huge societal and economic potential and is widely used. But it also brings challenges: how do we combine human values with AI, how do we make AI more transparent and understandable, and what can AI and human cognition learn from each other, for example about language learning?

Of jars and gongs deals with the traditional ritual art of Ot Danum Dayak subsistence farmers from a stretch of tropical rainforest in the heart of Borneo. Together with the Ngaju, their neighbours to the south, they gloried in one of the most elaborate secondary mortuary rites in the world.

Jessica Vance Roitman and Wouter Veenendaal, researchers at the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, investigate the origins, development, and consolidation of political oligarchy in the Caribbean island nation of St. Maarten.

Promotor: Huub J.M. de Groot, Co-promotor: Francesco Buda

This research project adresses the question how local and traditional European forms of parrhesiastic theater— events, actions, and performances staged by characters who courageously speak their minds through scenes of excess and laughter, that take place in public view and incite the spectator’s agency…

The early modern and modern Europeanists at the Leiden Institute of History approach the past from comparative and transnational perspectives, frequently placing the history of our continent in global contexts. Our research covers the geographical and thematic breadth of Europe since ca. 1500, with…

How should we address our colonial heritage? And how digital and accessible are our collections? Outgoing State Secretary Fleur Gräper spoke with researchers and heritage specialists about this on 25 January.

Cultural and individual differences

Watch and talk along with today’s science of the past during weekly Let’s Plays of popular games and vodcasts on the livestream platform Twitch.

Sara Polak, PhD researcher and lecturer at LUCAS, has won a Fulbright scholarship to work on her research on Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yale University from September 2014 till February 2015.

How did digital intermediality symbolise and facilitate the transfer of content from popular culture into policy statements and vice versa in the period between 1945 and the new millenium?

The project investigates epistemicity: how the knowledge of the speaker and hearer can be expressed in the grammar. This shows us how speakers organise their knowledge, and whether this is influenced by the language they speak.

Research on the process and construction of news stories about human rights issues in Latin American newspapers.

Amy Strecker assesses the institutional framework for landscape protection, analyses the interplay between landscape and human rights, and links the etymology and theory of landscape with its articulation in law.

This PhD project investigates how nationalist ideas are expressed, shaped, and negotiated in Moroccan Malhun poetry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Centre for Digital Heritage undertakes collaborative international research in the field of Digital Heritage. It is an initiative of the University of York.

How did local lifeways and crafting practices persist and develop in the diverse environments of the increasingly interconnected Gulf of Fonseca (AD 400-1521)?