The times between the Neolithic and Urban revolutions in Mesopotamia have for a long time been interpreted as a period of stagnation. This volume is part of an emerging discourse that challenges such assumptions.

How do speakers adapt to multilingual contexts?

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of the Faculty of Humanities with two partners in Uzbekistan.

For the first time in the 441-year history of Leiden University, students will be the keynote speakers at the opening of the new academic year. Their talks will focus on refugees.

How did disability become a global concern? In this project we will identify the contribution of international agencies, governmental and non-governmental organizations and, just as importantly, disabled people themselves, to the IYDP and by showing the connections, interactions and entanglements between…

Leiden scholars succeeded in making Arabic accessible to Western academic communities as early as the sixteenth century. But how did they approach this problem?

Many of the big challenges of the 21st century (climate change, international migration, financial instability, socio-economic inequality) find their origins in the organisation of the global economy. Any solution to the world’s big challenges therefore requires forceful policy interventions at the…

China is a one-party regime, yet elections are held for the local congresses. PhD candidate Wang Zhongyuan investigated how the Communist Party uses this democratic instrument to strengthen the authoritarian regime. PhD defence 31 January.

What is the role of memory in contemporary music?

An overview of the educational profile of the Leiden Institute for Philosophy, including its global teaching focus, curriculum themes, and supervision model.

Leiden University commemorates its victims of the war and pays tribute to all members of the university community who resisted injustice.

Between foraging and farming: an extended broad spectrum of papers presented to Leendert Louwe Kooijmans.

Understanding the evolving landscape of extremism in the 21st century.

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

In this publication the results of the analyses of the Roman harbour of Voorburg-Arentsburg (NL) are presented. This fully inclusive and integrated study of more than 1000 pages is published in two volumes. The publication is written in Dutch, but has got an extensive synthesis/summary in English.

Understanding the history of Islam and Muslim societies sheds a clear light on the complex and changing social structures of the Middle East, including the current trouble spots whose effect spreads all the way to Western Europe.

The Team International Relations and European Studies addresses the interconnections and interdependence of contemporary global political, economic, security and culture from a multidisciplinary perspective rooted in the humanities. More specifically it is concerned with the study of international relations…

What are the main issues leading to polarisation and division? What is the role of social exclusion in these processes? How can we inform and design better policies to safeguard young people from falling prey to intolerance and polarisation? The DRIVE project, led by Leiden University in The Hague,…

Towards an international orientation in the field.

Study of human cultures using computational approaches

Since 2012, thousands of individuals have traveled from Western countries to join jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq. While much has been written about these individuals, only sparse attention has been paid to the social environment of these jihadist travelers and, more specific, the role of family members…

On the 3rd of September, Adrian Stenton successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Adrian on this achievement!

Leiden University Centre for Intercultural Philosophy (LUCIP) is a centre housed in the Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University.

Book Launch

How many men and women die per year at the hands of others? What are the motives behind these killings? Are there as many homicides today as years ago? How can we explain the rise and fall of homicides over time? And: What is the influence of (early) childhood and adolescence on the likelihood to commit…

Ramesh Ganohariti, PhD student and Ernst Dijxhoorn, Assistant Professor at Leiden University, researched the relation between international relations and sports, with sport and sports events increasingly being used for various diplomatic and political goals.

This proposed research uses ego-documents from visual artists that were not intended for publication to reassess the scholarly debate on the demise of the Russian Avant-garde aesthetic in the twenties and early thirties of the 20th century.

Big Science, commonly defined as conventional science made big in three dimensions, namely organizations, machines, and politics, brings a plethora of different stakeholders together, often for a long period of time. This includes policymakers, scientists, (scientific) managers as well as local “host”…

On 1 June 2022, Bruno Braak defended his thesis entitled 'Overcoming ruptures: Zande identity, governance, and tradition during cycles of war and displacement in South Sudan and Uganda (2014-2019).' The doctoral research was supervised by Prof.dr. J.M. Otto, Dr.ir. C.I.M. Jacobs, and Dr. C. Leonardi…

This volume, featuring sixteen contributions from leading Roman historians and archaeologists, sheds new light on approaches to the economic history of urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, with a particular emphasis on the imperial period.

In Luganda, the widest spoken minority language in East African country Uganda, the word for photographs is Ebifananyi. However, ebifananyi does not, contrary to the etymology of the word photographs, relate to light writings. Ebifananyi instead means things that look like something else. Ebifananyi…

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

An overview of Professional Associations and Journals

How are contemporary art practices from Southeast Asia negotiating notions of art and tradition?

On the 16th of February 2022 Mr. Yunus Sulistyono successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This study interrogates contemporary and historical uses of barbarism, arguing that barbarism also has a disruptive, insurgent potential.

The Cide Archaeological Project: Surveying the Turkish Western Black Sea Region

On the 12th of December, Eleanor Dutton successfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Eleanor on this achievement.

This book explores how changes in the patterns of cooperation and conflict among states, regional actors and transnational non-state actors have affected the rise of emerging global powers and the suggested decline of US leadership. Scholars, students and policy practitioners who are interested in the…

Stylianos Irakleous defended his thesis on 6 February 2020

The Iseum Campense, the impressive sanctuary for Isis and the Egyptian gods on the Campus Martius and arguably one of ancient Rome’s most notable absent presences, is a monument central to various debates.

Misinformation has emerged as a major societal concern. But why do citizens contribute to the dissemination of falsehoods online?

Kohei Suzuki and his co-authors reflect on their extensive scholarly experience teaching comparative public administration across diverse countries including Canada, the Netherlands, Qatar, and the United States.

A story of Two Mosuls, The Resurrection of the Iraqi Armed Forces and the military defeat of ISIS. In this article, published in the Journal of Strategic Studies, the authors Maarten Broekhof, Martijn Kitzen and Frans Osinga discuss the military adaptation by the Iraqi armed forces and their role in…

From Los Angeles to Tokyo, Urban Sociolinguistics is a sociolinguistic study of twelve urban settings around the world.

“Transitional justice” is a field of practice, policy and study that focuses on the ways that societies respond to legacies of large-scale atrocities though tribunals, truth commissions, reparations, and other mechanisms.