There is considerable need for improved skin models to develop safe and efficient drugs for skin delivery as well as for cosmetic and chemical product testing on the skin.

Did early farmers deliberately use animal manure on their fields?

On Tuesday, September 16, 2025, Professor Elisheva Baumgarten (Hebrew University) delivered a Keynote Lecture at the Leiden Jewish Studies Network Conference “Care and the Jewish Experience".

SEECR-CONGO aims to strengthen the doctoral education ecosystem in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in order to foster a new generation of highly skilled researchers who can contribute to academia and the wider labour market.

Human AI is where artificial intelligence and machine learning meet philosophy, cognitive science, and the creative arts. Examples of research questions in this domain are: 'Can an algorithm be creative by human standards?', 'Can creative processes, such as composing music or writing poetry, be modelled?',…

To what extent are, can, and should, human trafficking and human smuggling be(ing) seen as interlinked phenomena? What are the consequences of seeing the phenomena as either distinct or interlinked for the way in which migrants crossing intra-Schengen borders are treated.

How might viola and string quartet playing in the performer-centered, moment-to-moment and communicative style heard on early recordings be brought about today?

This project studies the roles of prehistoric foragers in past ecosystems to establish the character of past “natural” landscapes and enhance the management of current ones.

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A Twenty-First Century Guide

AI has huge societal and economic potential and is widely used. But it also brings challenges: how do we combine human values with AI, how do we make AI more transparent and understandable, and what can AI and human cognition learn from each other, for example about language learning?

As a contribution to the changing legislation and evolving societal attitudes concerning environmental issues, this project aims to enhance and manipulate the plants’ own natural defense mechanisms against western flower thrips (WFT).

Brian Shaev

Recently, Ingrid Leijten’s book Core Socio-Economic Rights and the European Court of Human Rights was published with Cambridge University Press. The monograph was published in the series Cambridge Studies in European Law and Policy (edited by Laurence Gormley and Jo Shaw) and deals with the protection…

Study of human cultures using computational approaches

My current research focuses on criminality and gender interactions in nineteenth-century Europe. This project uses a comparative methodology to explain gender constructions in a criminal and in a court setting.

Arabic Humanities Blog

The Humanities Hub is a central location in Huizinga designed to strengthen the collaboration, connection and exchange of ideas in teaching and research on humanities in the digital world.

This case study-based textbook in multivariate analysis for advanced students in the humanities emphasizes descriptive, exploratory analyses of various types of data sets from a wide range of sub-disciplines, promoting the use of multivariate analysis and illustrating its wide applicability. Fields…

Welcome to the Graduate School of the Faculty of Humanities.

How did nineteenth century scholars evaluate each other and each other’s work through more or less informal practices of peer review?

Metastasis is responsible for over 90% of cancer-related deaths and arises from the ability of a small subset of tumor cells to detach from the primary tumor, overcome multiple biochemical and mechanical barriers, disseminate through the body, and colonize distant organs.

The Leiden Human Evolution Collective (LHEC) is a network of researchers from Leiden University, LUMC, and Naturalis with an interest in human evolution. The collective brings together existing expertise in Leiden to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in research, teaching, and public outreach.

Leiden University is a unique international centre for the advanced study of languages, cultures, arts, and societies worldwide, in their historical contexts from prehistory to the present.

Studies in Human Evolution is a series of the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University and The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig.

What does the excavated material tell us about the continuation and/or change of urban life during the transitional phrases from Antiquity to the Middle Ages on Crete and in the eastern Mediterranean more generally?

The expertise at the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University ranges from languages, cultures, area studies to history, philosophy, arts, and religious studies.

China wordt steeds assertiever in zijn relaties met andere landen, maar achter dit beeld gaat een opmerkelijk diverse maatschappij en politieke realiteit schuil die tal van aanknopingspunten biedt voor samenwerking en verdere integratie van China in de wereld. In China een gids voor de 21e eeuw past…

The Faculty of Humanities consist of various academic fields. What is the common ground of all these different academics and students? They tell their story and why it matters in today’s world in 'We are Humanities'.

It is well-known that humans have significantly transformed ecosystems since their adoption of agriculture. However, in a deeper past, prehistoric hunter-gatherers may already have altered and modified their niche in ways that had major impacts on ecosystems.

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The LUMC iPSC Hotel offers the generation of research grade human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from different tissue sources using state of the art reprogramming techniques.

This book explores how physicists, astronomers, chemists, and historians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries employed ‘epistemic virtues’ such as accuracy, objectivity, and intellectual courage. In doing so, it takes the first step in providing an integrated history of the sciences…

Correctly interpreting the patterns of fire evidence in the archaeological record will illuminate the origin of human fire use.

Humanities are needed to make sense of social issues. Watch or listen to the stories of our experts who tell about their research and the impact on society. Get to know the world at Humanities!

The Faculty of Humanities is committed to creating an inclusive and diverse community, where all students and staff are supported, respected, and empowered to do their best work, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, age, religion, or socio-economic background.

Disciplinary History and Epistemology

What made the early Islamic empire so successful and have we missed the story by neglecting crucial evidence? The 7th-century Arab conquests changed the socio-political configurations in the Mediterranean and Eurasia forever. Yet we do not really know how the Arabs managed to gain dominance of this…

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?

Doctoral Thesis

S.S. Kolipaka’s thesis questions and investigates the survival prospects of reintroduced tigers and their offspring’s in the human dominated landscape of Panna tiger reserve in India.

This volume is themed around the interdependent relationship between humans and the environment, an important topic in the work of Corrie Bakels

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