Lack of manliness, avaricious or too imaginative. These are just a few of the accusations with which British scientists discredited each other over a hundred years ago. PhD candidate Léjon Saarloos researched British scientists around the year 1900 and their idea of what makes a good - and therefore…

Bernhard Rieger recently joined the Institute for History as our new Professor of European History. He introduces himself.

Márcia Gonçalves joined Institute for History recently as Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow and specialises in the history of modern European colonialism (19th-20th Centuries). Below she introduces herself!

Carla van Baalen was awarded the Thorbecke Medal on 4 June. She received the award in recognition of her remarkable and varied oeuvre in the field of parliamentary history.

In addition to his Film and Literature Studies, Bob van Oosterhout is a bassoonist with several orchestras. He is going to Milan with the student choir and orchestra ‘Collegium Musicum’.

Professor Nira Wickramasinghe will research forgotten lineages with an NWO Open Competition grant, in particular the afterlife of Dutch slavery in the Indian Ocean World.

How did Scottish speakers sound hundreds of years ago? University lecturer Mo Gordon thinks the answer to that question can be found in church archives. 'It can be a boost to your identity to know the history of your language.'

If it is up to university lecturer Evelien Walhout, in a year's time we will know exactly what people from Haarlem and Zwolle died of a century ago. Together with colleagues from other universities, she started the doodsoorzaken.nl platform, where causes of death are recorded. ‘Somewhere around the…

Too expensive groceries, diseases suddenly breaking out: from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, hundreds of people documented the world around them in chronicles. A significant number of these texts have been digitised in recent years. Professor of Early Modern Dutch History and project leader…

The board of the Pastoor Schmeits Prize for Astronomy Foundation has awarded the Pastoor Schmeits Prize 2025 to two individuals: Yamila Miguel, affiliated to the Leiden Observatory, Leiden University and SRON, and to Else Starkenburg, affiliated to the Kapteyn Institute, University of Groningen. The…

How do you go about the sustainable restoration of a nineteenth-century ship without affecting its historical worth? Leiden University students from the master’s programme in Industrial Ecology spent six months working on this question. We spoke to Hidde Boom (25) and Tycho Jongenelen (25), two of the…

What do you do with a museum collection full of individual white Nobel laureates at a time when diversity, inclusion and teamwork reign supreme? Ad Maas, professor by special appointment, and researcher Hilbrand Wouters have been awarded an NWO Museum grant to answer that question.

Anisa Nuranisa recently joined the Institute as PhD candidate in the startersbeurs project "Cultural diplomacy and the Javanese Courts (19th and early 20th century)", led by Bart Verheijden and Fenneke Sysling. Below she introduces themselves.

The Defence White Paper, titled ‘Strong, smart and together’, is debated in the House of Representatives along with the Defence Budget and raises concerns especially in uncertain times.

Research master's student in history Jesse Dijkshoorn collaborated on a transcription system for medieval texts. ‘It’s nice to make the Middle Ages accessible to people.’

PhD defence

The renovated Arsenal building, part of the Humanities Campus, has been in use since April 2020. The building was officially opened on Monday 13 June by Martijn Ridderbos, Vice-Chairman of the Executive Board, and Mark Rutgers, dean of the Faculty of Humanities.

Dutch greenhouse horticulture is a world leader when it comes to innovative capacity and sustainability, but ‘the challenges are great in terms of energy, water, environment and biodiversity,’ says Peter van Bodegom, coordinator of AgriFood at the Centre for Sustainability of the Leiden, Delft, Erasmus…

As one of the first environmental scientists ever, Arnold Tukker received the honorary doctorate at Linköping University on Saturday 12 November. This Swedish university awarded Tukker for his scientific work to establish a circular economy.

The book ‘Geleerde Zorgen: twee eeuwen academische geneeskunde in Leiden’ (‘Learned Care: two centuries of academic medicine in Leiden’) was presented on 16 December to Annetje Ottow (President of the Executive Board of Leiden University) and Pancras Hogendoorn, Dean and member of the Executive Board…

Lecture, Book talk

Lecture

On Things That Talk, a website founded and developed by Fresco Sam-Sin, students and researchers describe objects from today and from long ago. By now, more than a hundred objects have been covered. Willemijn Waal, Emma Verweij and Frank van den Boom contributed to the content.

In the eighteenth century, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) housed its enslaved people on ‘Slave Island’ in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. Today ‘Slave Island’ is under serious threat from property developers. Senior lecturer Alicia Schrikker, together with her Sri Lankan colleagues Iromi Perera…

On 14 May, curator and professor Ruurd Halbertsma will be leaving the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO) after forty years of dedicated service. In fact, it will be a double farewell: Venusval (‘Venus trap’), the last part of his trilogy about Tjalling Kingma, the fictional curator of the classical…

Nationalism is so prevalent in our society that we hardly realise it once didn’t exist. In his new book, senior university lecturer Eric Storm reveals the global history of the phenomenon. ‘Nationalist movements have always influenced each other.’

Anyone who wanted to get an impression of the Dutch East Indies between 1800 and 1945 quickly turned to travel literature. Large groups of readers devoured non-fiction accounts of the island empire on the other side of the world – and were given a one-sided picture. Most of the sources that reached…

Fadly Rahman and Marleen Reichgelt recently joined the Institute for History within the NWO-funded project 'Epistemic actors. The role of Indonesians in the making of knowledge in the colonial era’ under the supervision of Fenneke Sysling. Below, they introduce themselves.

Walter Gam Nkwi is lecturer at the Institute for History, University of Leiden since 1 September 2019. He also lectures at the Den Haag campus. Walter introduces himself below.

The plan was to research the years surrounding the creation of the signature H.P. Berlage building of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, but due to the lockdown, University Lecturer Laurie Kalb Cosmo has hardly been able to visit museums. Yet she succeeds in continuing her research for the Museums, Collections…

Cultural anthropologist Sabine Luning, cultural historian Paul van de Laar and professor of architecture and urban development history Carola Hein say that the things that are not shown in images are also worth studying.

The way the great masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries learned to draw is more similar to a present-day drawing class or book than you might think. Professor of ‘Art on Paper and Parchment’ Yvonne Bleyerveld tells us about the art of copying and model books.

Geert-Jan Janse has always been fascinated by the way objects can bring the past closer. On 16 November, he will present a Museum Talk about his work as the director of the Vereniging Rembrandt (Rembrandt Association).

Three enormous maps of China, created during the reign of three different emperors of the Qing dynasty, have now been made available in open access and are downloadable via Leiden University Libraries’ (UBL) Digital Collections. The rich maps are an early example of academic collaboration between the…

When you think of political philosophy, you think of Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel and Johann Fichte. Both philosophers are considered great representatives of German idealism. University lecturer in Continental Philosophy Marie Louise Krogh has received a Veni subsidy to delve deeper into the German idealists…

Imagine we could do what green plants can do: photosynthesis. Then we could satisfy our enormous energy needs with deep-green hydrogen and climate-neutral biodiesel. Scientists have been working on this for decades. Chemist Chengyu Liu will receive his doctorate on 8 June for yet another step that brings…

On December 10, Kazakh pianist and composer Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin will perform at the Stadsgehoorzaal in Leiden. A remarkable event where music and modern physics come together.

On 22 September, LUCSoR alumnus Bas van Rijn successfully defended his PhD dissertation entitled “The Experimental Culture of Afterlife Research: Attempts by Spiritual Animal Magnetizers to Prove Life after Death” at Universität Bern, Switzerland. The PhD project was part of the of SNF research project…

From Persia and Arabia to North Africa: as early as the nineteenth century, there were Dutch people who used the camera themselves in various regions of the Middle East.

Six projects from the Faculty of Humanities recently received grants of up to 750,000 euros from the NWO Open Competition. Researchers involved tell how they will spend this money.

The exhibition Leiden celebrates – 450 years of parades at Museum De Lakenhal shows how parades and society have changed through the centuries. Alumnus and historian Danielle van Goethem worked on the exhibition. She gives a preview.

Who doesn't love to turn on a horror film on a rainy evening? Fortunately, it is only fiction - or is it? According to university lecturer Evert Jan van Leeuwen, modern horror says more about our society than we think. He has been nominated for the Klokhuis Science Prize for his research into addiction…

Lecture, COGLOSS Seminar

Lecture, Museum Talks

Cotton is the most widely used natural fibre for clothes. But how polluting are our jeans and shirts actually? Environmental scientist Laura Scherer coordinated an international research project on the impacts of cotton. ‘The purchases of consumers in Europe can contribute to water scarcity in China…

Last November, it was announced that the European Commission has awarded a Jean Monnet Chair to Professor of Tax Law Irma Mosquera Valderrama. She will use the grant to shape the EUTAXGOV project over the next three years.