LIAS has a School of Asian Studies (SAS), a School of Middle-Eastern Studies (SMES) and a School of Religious Studies (LUCSoR). These designations, and the fields within them, remain foundational to our work. At the same time, the academic community benefits from the presence of cross-regional networks…

Now and then we organise book launches to present the latest publications, both academic and popular, in our broad field.

How did free agents in the Dutch Republic react to the creation of colonial monopolies (VOC and WIC) by the States-General? This project answers this question by looking at the role individuals played in the construction of an informal global empire parallel to the institutional empire devised by the…

Investigating the contribution of interpreters, informants, hunters and guides in the making of colonial scientific knowledge.

In this lecture professor Harding considered the implications of Asia's 21st-century rise for its legal systems and our approaches to studying them in the new situation we confront in the early 21st century.

An overview of Professional Associations and Journals

This omnibus brings together some old and some recent works by Jos Gommans on the warhorse and its impact on medieval and early modern state-formation in South Asia.

What's New is a lecture series organised by LUCIS and the department of Middle Eastern Studies. The lectures focus on current research on Islam and the Middle East.

Alternative perspectives and sources of colonial literature haven’t received much attention before now. School books have long ignored the violence that accompanies colonialsm. How can we paint an honest picture?

On 30 June 2016, Eesa Fredericks is expected to defend his Ph.D.-thesis ‘Contractual Capacity in Private International Law’ in Leiden. Supervisors are prof. Sierd J. Schaafsma (Leiden) and prof. Jan Neels (Johannesburg).

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…

The socio-political and cultural memory of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire played a very important role in Antiquity and later ages. This book is the first to systematically chart these multiform ideas and associations over time and to define them in relation to one another, as Persianism.

Natural resources often stretch across borders that separate modern nation states. This can create conflict and limit opportunities for regulated consumption of their goods and services, but also provide opportunities for joint multinational efforts that exceed single country capabilities.

Leiden University has a long standing tradition in the collaboration with Indonesia in research and education.

This thesis focuses on the social dimensions of crane and wetland conservation in rural landscapes in Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Jelle van Buuren, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, discusses the death of Al-Baghdadi and whether this could also mean the end of IS.

Debate, Lunch discussion

On 29 February there appeared a column by Maaike Warnaar in the Volkskrant on the Iranian elections.

There are still things we can learn from the Ancient Greeks. How they managed to make sure that innovations were accepted, for example. A group of classics scholars, led by Leiden, will be carrying out research on this question funded by the largest ever NWO subsidy.

The research involves the application and combination of archaeological and archaeometrical methodologies. Petrographic analysis and isotopic provenance studies of raw materials and exotics, and the study of the distribution patterns of these materials are used to gain insight into the exchange of goods…

Jasper de Bruin, Guus Besuijen, Hans Siemons & Jeroen van Zoolingen (2012). De romeinse nederzetting bij het tegenwoordige Goedereede heeft waarschijnlijk een belangrijke functie gehad in de overslag en distributie van diverse goederen, waaronder keramiek en voedingsgewassen. De opgraving van deze nederzetting…

A mere day after setting foot ashore in the Bahamas on October 13th 1492, Christopher Columbus notes the broad foreheads of the inhabitants of the Americas. These permanently altered cranial shapes are deliberately created through the application of pressure to the head of the infant in the first years…

What are the capabilities or limitations of traveling between islands and how does this reflect seasonal variation? Is it possible to show higher levels of connectivity between islands based on generated pathways between several sites on two separate islands?

In this second book of the series

Excavations on Saba took place between 1987 and 1992, and then in 2001 and 2002.

Fieldwork

Book by Dr. Mariana Françozo resulting from her research into the collection of count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen, governor of the Dutch colony in Northeastern Brazil between 1637 and 1644.

What does site patterning reveal about the social landscape dynamics across the historical divide?

Lecture

Symposium

In welke mate hebben domaniale structuren de machtsvorming en nederzettingsontwikkeling in en van het gewest Holland bepaald?

Leiden University recently named a new building for Egyptologist Herta Mohr. But who was she?

Two thousand years ago, the Middle East found itself caught between the rise of the Roman Empire in the west and the Parthian Empire in the east. PhD candidate Nolke Tasma has been awarded an NWO grant to investigate how local inhabitants experienced these changes.

Leiden University is participating in a project to reassemble Roman vessels from between 80 - 200 AD. The 'Zwammerdam ships' are already world famous in the world of archaeology, and guest researcher Tom Hazenberg hopes to extend this fame beyond its academic boundaries.

The use of fire can tell us a lot about human evolution. Archaeologist Femke Reidsma has developed a more accurate technique to identify how our ancestors used fire. Existing archaeological studies will need to be revised. Reidsma’s study was published in Nature Scientific Reports on 2 November.

What are the origins of the Islamic Empire? And what was daily life like there? Two new Ted Ed animations answer these questions in simple language. Arabists Petra Sijpesteijn and Birte Kristiansen explain what the process of developing the videos was like.

LIAS aims to advance the globally conscious vision of area studies, both within and outside the academic community. Focusing on Asia and the Middle East, the institute is a meeting place of multiple fields of inquiry, theories and methods, historical periods, and areas.

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University’s Faculty of Law with two different partner universities in Uganda: The International University of East Africa and Makarere University.