Nearly eight decades after the liberation of Auschwitz, we continue to learn more about how the Holocaust “happened” in central and eastern Europe. In Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey’s History MA Research Seminar “New Approaches to the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe,” a dozen Leiden students read what…

Conference, Workshop

This volume sees the publication of fifty-six early Old Babylonian letters from ca. 1880 BCE. They were found by legendary Iraqi archaeologist Taha Baqir in 1941 at the site of Tell ed-Dēr, ancient Sippar-Amnānum, in central Iraq.

Indonesian translation of the book Recollecting Resonances from authors Bart Barendregt and Els Bogaerts.

Writing under Wartime Conditions is a study into North and South Korean literature written during the Korean War.

Professor Peter Bisschop, lecturer in Sanskrit and Ancient Cultures of South Asia, has been awarded a grant by the NWO Free Competition to fund his research into the rapid growth of Saivism in the sixth and seventh centuries in South and Southeast Asia. The research project, entitled ‘From Universe…

Professor Peter Bisschop, lecturer in Sanskrit and Ancient Cultures of South Asia, has been awarded a grant by the NWO Free Competition to fund his research into the rapid growth of Saivism in the sixth and seventh centuries in South and Southeast Asia. The research project, entitled ‘From Universe…

Three Dutch research institutes - including the Leiden University’s KITLV - will conduct a follow-up study on the use of violence during the Dutch East Indies war of decolonisation (1945 – 1950). The government has designated 4.1 million Euros for this study.

Combining cutting-edge quantitative approaches with more traditional book history approaches, this new book offers the first history of medieval manuscript destruction in England from the medieval period to the present.

Lecture, Workshop

Investigating the intercultural connections that shaped practices of knowledge production in colonial Dutch Brazil.

How did the medieval manuscript develop as a physical object during the Twelfth Century Renaissance and what do these changes tell us about the intellectual culture of the period?

This project combines and reconsiders all the available evidence of the Scheurrak SO1, and use new archival databases and modern archaeological techniques to shed new light on the material culture of the Baltic grain trade and the Holland shipbuilding industry at the turn of the sixteenth century.

Subproject of

Estudio arqueológico de la primera ciudad española en la Tierra Firme de América: Santa María de la Antigua del Darién

This volume challenges the idea that the development of ‘democracy’ is a story of rise and progress at all. It is rather a story of continuous but never completely satisfying attempts of interpreting the rule of the people.

La naissance d’une thalassocratie considers the contribution of the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands to the rise of the Dutch Republic as a maritime power. In Braudelian fashion, its chapters follow three lines of research.

Bernini and Pallavicino, the artist and the Jesuit cardinal, are closely related figures at the papal courts of Urban VIII and Alexander VII, at which Bernini was the principal artist. The analysis of Pallavicino's writings offers a new perspective on Bernini's art and artistry and allow us to understand…

The historiography of the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944 is dominated by the personal clash between the principal negotiators, Harry Dexter White of the United States and John Maynard Keynes of Britain.

This book explores the lasting legacy of the controversial project by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, funded by the CIA, to promote Western culture and liberal values in the battle of ideas with global Communism during the Cold War.

Arabist and papyrologist Petra Sijpesteijn has received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council for her research on the early Islamic Empire. The five-year ERC grant will fund the research project

From colonial times through to the present day, large numbers of Javanese have left their homes to settle in other parts of Indonesia or much further afield. Frequently this dispersion was forced, often with traumatic results.

Huda Abi-Fares defended her thesis on 10 January 2017.

In Uprooting the Diaspora, Sarah Cramsey explores how the Jewish citizens rooted in interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia became the ideal citizenry for a post–World War II Jewish state in the Middle East. She asks, how did new interpretations of Jewish belonging emerge and gain support amongst Jewish…

This thesis studies the relationship of the town al-Fusṭāṭ, located at the southern end of the Nile delta in Egypt, and its hinterland in the period between the town’s foundation in A.D. 641 and the arrival of the Abbasids in 750.

This article assesses Russian rhetoric toward Ukraine from 2004 to 2019 by analyzing statements by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This book explores the Indian tradition of liberalism through a critical intellectual biography of Valangaiman Sankaranarayana Srinivasa Sastri (1869–1946).

This research cluster is a part of the Institute of Political Science’s research programme ‘Institutions, Decisions and Collective Behaviour’. Its members study phenomena such as migration, immigration, citizenship, integration, ethnic parties, minority and caste-based politics, borders and migration,…

Emily Wolff, PhD candidate at Leiden University, wrote a paper about the inclusion of imperial citizens in the Dutch post-war welfare state.

The Decolonising Collective Leiden is a platform for staff and students interested in exploring strategies to foster pluralistic, diverse, and decolonised knowledge production at Leiden University. While many discussions about decolonisation are ongoing in discrete spaces across the University, there…

The VVI seeks to advance knowledge of the formation and functioning of legal systems in their social contexts, the impact of these systems on society and vice versa, their effectiveness in governance, and their contribution to development.

How can we understand the material instability of photographic (mixed media) artworks (1960s - present) from an integrated approach of Art History, Conservation Science and Chemistry in order to preserve these works for the future?

How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

The first biennial symposium Environmental History in the Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries is scheduled for October 25 and 26, 2024. This event aims to facilitate the exchange of recent research, ongoing projects, and key discussions within the realm of environmental history among scholars from…

The key subject of the research programme Cities, Migration and Global Interdependence 1500-now (CMGI) is Inequality (at local, national and global levels). We study this from an intersectional perspective: gender, class, ethnicity or race, religion, sexuality, age, ability/disability, citizenship and…

Museums have long focused on power, wealth and a few famous figures. But that is changing, says Valika Smeulders, head of the history department at the Rijksmuseum. What this change comprises and how it has come about is the subject of her keynote speech at the D&I Symposium on 11 January.

King Willem-Alexander has commissioned independent research into the role of the House of Orange-Nassau in Dutch colonial history. The research will take three years to complete and will cover the period from the late 16th century to the postcolonial present. The research will be carried out at Leiden…

On 25 and 26 October 2024, the first biennial symposium Environmental History in the Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries, is scheduled to take place at Leiden University.

Despite the wealth of historical literature on the Second World War, the subject of religion and churches in occupied Europe has been undervalued.

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo

Call for Papers: Imperial Artefacts. History, Law, and the Looting of Cultural Property

In which way was literary celebrity constructed in the nineteenth century and what forms of fandom were there?

Dutch Title: