The P.J. Cosijn Research Fellowship is an initiative to give promising Research MA students of Leiden University with an interest in Anglo-Saxon Studies the opportunity to conduct research on Old English language and literature. The Cosijn Fellowships are part of the ERC-funded project ‘Early Medieval…

The new student centre in The Hague, the Beehive, will be opening its doors in stages starting from 1 October. The name Beehive was chosen because it stands for connection, an individual identity, activity and belonging. This meeting place for students is dedicated to improving the living environment…

Language evolution, targeted drugs or archaeological interpretation. Researchers are making increasing use of supercomputers that can rapidly process large quantities of data. This is one reason why the University data centre will be extended and updated. ‘Datamining means we can get a better picture…

To enjoy the Winter holidays, the Leiden Leadership Centre has selected several interesting illustrations of leadership.

The representation of death children in Dutch literature through time

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

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural…

The Effects of the 1881 Liquor Act on the Leiden Alcohol Trade

This study offers a new view on public services in the early modern Low Countries and answers the following questions: who provided public facilities in urban communities and in which ways did public amenities change in the period between 1500 and 1800?

Why does the history of dogmatism deserve our attention? This open access book analyses uses of the term, following dogmatism from Victorian Britain to Cold War America, examining why it came to be regarded as a vice, and how understandings of its meaning have evolved.

This collection of essays is the first to compare the emergence and development of these different types of regional identities.

The historical archaeology of the Port of Sandy Point and its anchorage, St. Kitts, West Indies

This project explores themes at the intersection of maritime history and environmental history by looking at the problems Dutch ships encountered in the different climates of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, and the solutions they could provide.

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural…

The “harpe organisée”, 1720-1840: Rediscovering the lost pedal techniques on harps with a single-action pedal mechanism, is the title of Maria Christina Cleary's PhD thesis. This is the first monographic study on harp pedal techniques, tracing the historical way to pedal on the early pedal harps with…

Ineke Smit defended her thesis on 17 September 2019

Team Economic and Social History

This project proceeds from the observation that since the second half of the twentieth century, forgiveness and reconciliation have become pervasive themes in western culture, both on a political level and in personal relations.

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

This monograph by Robert Ross provides a detailed narrative of the Kat River Settlement in the Eastern Cape of South Africa during the nineteenth century.

In this dissertation, a comprehensive portrait of the American-born Quaker Lindley Murray (1745–1826) is painted and the influence of Murray’s Quakerism on his language use is investigated by analyzing a corpus of 262 of his unpublished private letters.

On the 12th of May, Rita Barrera Virhuez-Eloranta successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Rita Barrera Virhuez-Eloranta on this achievement.

This research project problematizes the applicability of ballet within a contemporary choreographic practice.

On Thursday 10 April 2025 Wahyu Widodo successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This project investigates the professionalisation of university libraries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, through the lens of the medieval manuscript holdings. Taking Leiden University Library as a starting point, it sheds light on the changing practices surrounding the conservation,…

On the 15th of July Sawako Takemura successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Making extensive use of primary source materials this study contributes to existing scholarship in the field of eighteenth-century grammars and grammarians by providing an in-depth study of Ash’s Grammatical Institutes and its influence on other popular grammars for children.

Het Leiden Leadership Centre (LLC) neemt deel aan het Enabling City Transformation Programme. Samen met de Gemeente Den Haag en andere lokale partners zet het LLC zich in om bewoners en gemeenschappen te betrekken bij de transitie naar een klimaat neutrale stad.

On 30 October 2020, Armin Cuyvers was invited to give the inaugural lecture of the European Legal Studies Centre of the Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta.

Joni Reef was among those present at the opening of Expertise Centre KIND in 's-Hertogenbosch on Thursday 22 November 2018. She spoke to Dutch newspaper Brabants Dagblad afterwards.

Within the next five years, Leiden University wants its campus in The Hague to become a leading international academic centre with research and teaching that correspond with the city’s profile. All of the faculties will help achieve this, and the University has also signed a partnership agreement with…

Leiden University and the Municipality of Leiden will develop new plans for an alternative Humanities Campus in the city centre. This means they will not proceed with the compulsory purchase of the De Doelen housing complex to facilitate the construction of the new Humanities Campus. The plans to demolish…

A ‘world class institute’ with a ‘vibrant atmosphere’, doing research on a continent that is ‘becoming increasingly important’. That is how Annetje Ottow, president of Leiden University’s Executive Board, described the African Studies Centre Leiden (ASCL) on its 75th anniversary celebration on 8 September…

On the occasion of its fifth anniversary, the Hazelhoff Centre for Financial Law will organize a conference on ‘Public and private regulation of financial markets’ on 11 May 2017.

Preparations for receiving 123 refugees in the University Sport Centre have been in full swing for several days. The large sports hall will be transformed into a dormitory, and a living and dining area. There will also be two recreation areas, one for adults and one for children.

Victorian Fairy Tales

How can we explain the popularity of the Spanish comedia nueva in the seventeenth-century theatre scene of the Low Countries?

This collaborative research group (CRG) facilitates the synergies of researchers engaged with African languages and documentation of texts conducted in East Africa, paying particular attention to ‘endangered archives’ and ‘endangered languages’.

Museum Temporalities analyzes how museums relate to time. It explores the hidden temporal assumptions and practices that define museums. How might these assumptions help us to better understand and address museums’ often problematic and painful relationship to the colonial past?

Welcome to the Graduate School of the Faculty of Humanities.

The Leiden Institute of History approaches early modern and modern European history from comparative and transnational perspectives.

Traces of a Colourful Past

This book, edited by Joost Augusteijn, Constant Hijzen and Mark Leon de Vries, explores how democratic regimes have dealt with anti-democratic forces in society, from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century.

It is often claimed—in both scholarly and popular sources—that guide dogs for the blind are a modern innovation. But as this project demonstrates clearly, guide dogs also existed during the medieval period.

The University's childcare centre, de Kattekop, has been awarded the 2017 Regional Award by South Holland. In an independent survey, parents gave the centre an exceptional score of 9.4,.

The start of this year saw the opening of the LDE Centre for Governance, Migration and Diversity. The Centre looks at public administration and policy issues in the four South Holland cities from a multicultural perspective. What is unusual is that there are already master's graduates at the Centre.

The Faculty of Archaeology has a new Centre of Archaeological Studies in Italy.

Dr Johannes Magliano-Tromp has been appointed Director of Leiden University Interfacultary Dual PhD Centre The Hague as of 1st May 2016.