Find out how to apply for Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University by following our step-by step guide.

On the 30th of September Christine Ketel successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This project investigates how the first generation of Dutch printed books (the incunabula, 1473-1501) affected late medieval spirituality, religious practice and visual culture in the Low Countries.

This year’s edition of the prestigious art festival Ruhrtriennale, carried in diverse locations around the cities of Essen, Bochum and Duisburg (Germany), has re-staged De Materie, ACPA professor Louis Andriessen’s exceptional opera which overcomes traditional patterns of the genre in terms of dramaturgy,…

How do you make lobbying and rhetoric both challenging and understandable for high school students? Professor Jaap de Jong found the answer in climate activist Greta Thunberg. Together with his colleague Arco Timmermans, he developed a digital guest lecture on how to present a convincing story.

What does it mean to be the ‘perfect student’? This is the focus of the Perspectify exhibition, which was opened on 16 November by President of the Executive Board Annetje Ottow.

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?

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…

This research cluster aims to analyse and interpret the formation and transmission of Graeco-Roman culture by exploring the relationships between cultural products (texts, objects, practices) and their societal and historical contexts.

Take a walk through any city, and you are likely to come across a brightly coloured mural. Although these paintings often seem to serve solely as a backdrop for Instagram snapshots, art history professor Minna Valjakka says there are rich traditions and intricate histories that uncover more critical…

The researchers in the World Archaeology department of the Faculty of Archaeology concentrate on a range of different periods and regions: from humanity’s origins to the Middle Ages and the modern age, and from Asia to South America.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University’s Faculty of Humanities with the University of Sulaimani in Iraq.

Update : August 2017 Dr Willem van Haarlem

Understanding the history of Islam and Muslim societies sheds a clear light on the complex and changing social structures of the Middle East, including the current trouble spots whose effect spreads all the way to Western Europe.

Why follow the Middle Eastern Studies programme? Because it will improve your insight, expertise, and understanding of the region, the central debates and issues, and its interconnections with other regions, global issues, and processes. And why at Leiden University? Because thanks to our experts, expertise,…

A project aimed at understanding the complicated process of religious transformation in one of the centres of the early Muslim world.

This section provides an overview of online tools for the study of the medieval Low Countries. The websites linked down below are often times both available in Dutch and English.

If you have a question, there are various ways to get in touch with us.

Welcome to the website of Turkish Studies at Leiden University. On this website you will find information on the work and the activities of the people studying the Ottoman Empire and Turkey at Leiden University.

News, events, announcements, social media and more about the building of the new Middle Eastern Library in Leiden

This book is a result of the collective research project Urban Societies in the Port Towns of Atlantic Europe in the Late Middle Ages. It studies the connections between diplomacy and trade from a comparative and transnational perspective throughout medieval Atlantic Europe.

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (the NVIC) was founded in 1971. Nine universities in the Netherlands and Flanders participate in the institute with an aim to stimulating internationalisation of their teaching and research activities in the Middle East.

Get the most out of your studies at Leiden University by taking part in our extracurricular activities.

On the 22nd of February, Ami Okabe successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Ami on this achievement!

Did you know that Arabic was for centuries the lingua franca in an area stretching from the south of Spain to the Chinese border? And that the Middle East under Muslim rule was the world’s beating heart of trade, but also of science and scholarship?

Long-distance Trade in Early Medieval Landscapes (ca. 6th-12th centuries)

The aim of the Indonesian-Dutch Literature Collective (which is allied to the Society of Dutch Literature (MNL)) is to support research into the literature of and about the Dutch Indies, from the era of the Dutch East India Company to the present. Starting in 1986, the collective has published its own…

Lecture, Lunch Research Seminar

If a forged Vermeer or Rembrandt is discovered, it is world news. Yet tracing fakes has long been a low priority in art history. University lecturer Anna Tummers will receive an ERC grant of almost two million euros to change that.

This dissertation examines how Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Fécamp designed, produced, and read books over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

On this page you will find more information about the selected projects of the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Fund for 2023.

Mariken Teeuwen started at the Institute for History as a professor by special appointment of Script Culture of the Middle Ages on 1 March. ‘I’m looking forward to doing research together with students.’

After the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the Islamic Empire expanded at a tremendous pace. Within a hundred years, it stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian subcontinent. How did such a rapidly conquered territory become one empire? Professor Petra Sijpesteijn has been awarded a Vici grant…

GIFs, memes and videos: anyone who opens a social media platform can be in no doubt that today we live in a visual culture. But the role of images in social communications isn’t new, says Associate Professor Marika Keblusek. She has been awarded a Dutch Research Council (NWO) Open Competition (Large)…

This is a Special Issue of the peer-reviewed journal 'Social Sciences and Missions', which provides a forum for exploration of the social and political influence of Christian missions worldwide.

The research addresses the question of “what is the impact of geopolitical changes to the pivot states in the Middle East? With special focus on Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia.”