On Thursday 11 January 2018, Xiang Li defended her doctoral thesis: “Collective Labour Rights and Collective Labour Relations of China”. The supervisors are Professor Guus Heerma van Voss and Professor Barend Barentsen.

The circular economy is typically seen as the progressive alternative to our wasteful linear economy, where raw materials are used to make the products that feed today’s rampant consumerist hunger, which are then thrown away. In a fascinating article, archaeologist Maikel Kuijpers reflects on the recycling…

While ecosystems have concrete benefits for human society, these benefits are typically overlooked in decision-making.

To what end and how does Plautus constantly underline the Helleni(sti)c provenance of his art? How does this aspect relate the author’s originality?

In 2011, the Udhruh Archaeological Project was launched, bringing together teams of Jordanian and Dutch archaeologists to investigate the region and reconstruct ancient water harvesting techniques in the extremely arid landscape of Udhruh. Access to fresh water remains one of the most pressing global…

The first objective is to create a catalogue raisonée, i.e. a structured database that will store the main attributes of each town in a standardized format database, which will be freely accessible when completed; the second objective is to exploit theories and methods that can help us to understand…

This historical study argues that the Mandaean religion originated under Sasanid rule in the fifth century, not earlier as has been widely accepted. It analyzes primary sources in Syriac, Mandaic, and Arabic to clarify the early history of Mandaeism.

Migration and Mobility in the Early Roman Empire by Luuk de Ligt and Laurens E. Tacoma (Eds.)

The Chair Democratic Representation in the Kingdom focuses on the political relations between the ‘European’ Netherlands and the six Caribbean islands in the Kingdom; so-called Kingdom Relations. Professor Wouter Veenendaal investigates the quality of democratic representation in the Kingdom, both within…

This thesis introduces a relational interaction model and a practical tool for describing, visualising and generating interactive dialogues.

This zine is an experimentation in layering and juxtaposition as bonding relations of care by Federico de Musso.

An international team of astronomers, including Leiden PhD student Elia Pizzati, has observed several ancient quasars that, surprisingly, appear to be floating alone in the early universe (less than a billion years after the Big Bang). Until now, astronomers, based on models, assumed that quasars are…

Dr Bleda Düring deemed it was time for an archaeological approach on the imperialisation of Assyria. ‘While there are lot of archaeological studies of Assyrian sites, they are not really trying to address this broader picture of imperialism and how this imperialisation actually worked.’ These imperialisation…

For hundreds of years, children in Ancient Egypt learned to read using The Satire of the Trades, a text in which a father gives advice to his son through descriptions of different professions. PhD candidate Judith Jurjens investigated how this worked in practice.

The main focus of this research project is to investigate why people in Eastern Arabia chose to reuse ancient tombs and how this can be linked to collective memory.

This book questions the accepted origins of the field of International Relations (IR). Commonly understood to have emerged from the horrors of WW1 with the goal of bringing about world peace, the authors argue that on the contrary, IR came from a somewhat less noble tradition – that of the Round Tab…

Festival, Study trip Greek and Roman History 2026

Are you thinking about studying Global Conflict in the Modern Era? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Since the adoption of agriculture people have cultivated fields. The project concerns all kinds of aspects related to raising crops.

A unique archeological find near Tombos in Northern Sudan. Archaeologist Sarah Schrader from Leiden University, working with a team of international researchers, has discovered a grave of a ritually buried horse that is over 3000 years old. Both the grave and the skeleton are in perfect condition. The…

An international team of researchers, involving members from the ERC Synergy project NEXUS 1492 based at the Leiden University, the Universities of Oklahoma, Copenhagen and York reveal challenges when studying ancient microbiomes in a recent issue of Scientific Reports.

How were ideas about politics and society distributed in ancient China? Hilde De Weerdt, Professor of Chinese History, investigates this using new digital methods. We speak with her about networks, big data and digital humanities.

The material and intellectual presence of Egypt is at the heart of Western culture, religion and art from Antiquity to the present. This volume aims to provide a long term and interdisciplinary perspective on Egypt and its mnemohistory, taking theories on objects and their agency as its main point of…

Two Humanities research masters and one master’s programme score well above average in the Keuzegids Masters: the research master History, the master and research master Classics and Ancient Civilizations.

LIAS faculty teach and carry out thesis supervision in many programs.

Autophagy is a fundamental degradative process, maintaining cellular homeostasis and functions in host defense against intracellular pathogens, including mycobacteria and Salmonella.

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Accurately recognising others’ emotions is a fundamental social skill, relevant for navigating the social world from early childhood. Children’s ability to do represents a milestone in their socioemotional development and is associated with a number of important psychosocial outcomes. Many individual…

To an algebraic curve C over the complex numbers one can associate a non-negative integer g, the genus, as a measure of its complexity.

In art history, performance is categorized as performance art and defined as live-act. However, performance is no longer conceived of by artists as live-act only.

In the History of the Roman Emperors, what does Herodian’s method of composition consist of and how does it relate to his writing intention, particularly in terms of political and moral idea(l)s?

Pakistani archaeologist Abdul Ghani Khan (MPhil) and Dr Marike van Aerde (Leiden University) have been awarded the Prince Claus Heritage Emergency Grant for the rescue and preservation of ancient rock art in the Karakorum mountain range of the Pakistani Himalayas. The project will run for a year, from…

In her podcast Tea-Break Time Travel Matilda Siebrecht is joined by fire expert Femke Reidsma, to talk all about how this essential tool was made and used by our ancient human ancestors. How can you recognise an ancient hearth? Why is it so important to study the first use of fire? When was the first…

Phosphorylation affects all four major biomolecules – proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and nucleic acids – and plays a pivotal role in the most fundamental cellular functions.

The Leiden Greek and Roman History Team concentrates on the study of the economies, societies and cultures of the large empires of the Graeco-Roman world, starting with the empires of Alexander the Great and his successors.

Dynamics of material, social and ideological relationships in the pre-Columbian insular Caribbean