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 physical features of twelfth-century manuscripts from the Flemish abbey of Ter Duinen – such as script, page layout, and reading aids – show how their readers organized, interpreted, and transmitted knowledge.

Leiden University’s President of the Executive Board, Professor Annetje Ottow, has been reappointed for a second term by the Board of Governors.

Lecture, Research Seminar Medieval and Early Modern History

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

An endoscopic camera was used to record images of reused medieval fragments on the inside of book bindings from the 16th and 17th centuries. The unique images were made as part of the project ‘FragmEndoscopy: An Innovative Way to Discover Hidden Heritage inside Early Modern Book Bindings’, funded by…

'When taking into account all finds in the Islamic world of this enigmatic vessel, it would perhaps be wise not to restrict this container to merely one function.'

In 2024, Professor Joanita Vroom received a substantial grant from the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) in support for her Hinterlands of Medieval Chalcis Project (HMC Project) in Greece. PHI, a California-based non-profit organization, is dedicated to archaeological research as well as to the preservation…

This new Casebook features the work of an international, interdisciplinary research group entitled ‘The Joust as Performance: Pas d’armes and Late Medieval Chivalry’.

On June 26-28, 2024, the Annual Conference of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Theology will take place. The theme this year is "The End: Finiteness, Death and Completion in Medieval Theology". Deadline for paper proposals: 20 December 2023.

Medievalism is the area of academic study that investigates the reception and reconstruction of the medieval past since the Middle Ages came to an end.

On 20 September 2023 Mark van de Water successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Leiden University has a new Executive Board. Since 8 February 2021, Annetje Ottow has been the new President and Hester Bijl the new Rector Magnificus of the Board, while Martijn Ridderbos has continued in his role as Vice-Chairman.

Central to Nuranisa’s PhD project is the cultural diplomacy practiced by the Javanese courts of central Java (Surakarta, Yogyakarta, Pakualaman and Mangkunegaran) in response to the increasing Dutch colonial power in the 19th and early 20th century.

Lecture, Research Seminar Medieval and Early Modern History

At the end of the 7th century something curious occurs in Northwestern Europe. Suddenly, people start burying the dead next to their dwellings instead of in communal cemeteries. Professor Frans Theuws recently published a book on this phenomenon. ‘We wanted to know if the study of these farmyard burials…

Promotor: Prof.dr. H.P. Spaink Co-promotor: Dr. B.E. Snaar

This thesis describes the importance of being able to control the selectivity of potential drug candidates.

Promotor: M. Franx, Co-Promotor: I.F. Labbé

The Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) record throughout Europe is characterized by major changes in human behaviour.

This thesis describes how different colours of light affect various aspects of the growth and development of Arabidopsis and tomato plants⁠.

Human and animal cells are very complex: very different chemical processes are going on at the same time, but they are separated from each other because the cells are divided in compartments. These compartments may also have a profound effect on the potential efficacy of therapeutics, because the drug…

PhD defence

A new research line is the development of liquid biopsy fingerprints to predict early Alzheimer’s disease (AD) stage in human in readily accessible body fluids in human (in collaboration with: Dr. Geert-Jan Groeneveld, CHDR; Prof. Elga de Vries, Free University Medical Center; and others).

Fighting for the faith, caring for the sick, and praying for the soul of their benefactors were the main tasks of the military orders, who since the time of the crusades were well represented in the Netherlands in the Middle Ages, including the Frisian lands. Especially the Hospitallers and the Teutonic…

The deadline for the conference "The Fantastic and the Supernatural in the Medieval Germanic Traditions" has been extended to June 30.

ASLU 7 - A.E. de Hingh

What can continuity and change in the manufacturing of locally made ceramics from the early colonials Spanish towns of Concepción de la Vega, Cotuí and Nueva Cádiz (1492-1600) tell us about the choices people made in ceramic production as a reaction the the changing social environment?

This book rovides an economic history of Portugal over the course of eight centuries, from 1143 through to 2010 and situates Portugal's economic growth within the context of European development. It also responds to fundamental questions about when, how and why the economy expanded, stagnated or co…

Fondazione 1563 launched a call for the Summer School of the Turin Humanities Programme, that will take place in Torino from September 6 to September 8 2023. The theme is: Writing global medieval history: comparative and connected approaches. Deadline for applications: June 25.

The ERC project SenSArt (University of Padova) is organizing a conference on multisensorial preaching practices in Medieval Europe. The conference will take place on October 24 to 25. Those interested are encouraged to submit a paper proposal before April 5.

As part of the lecture series 'Religion Matters', Sven Gins (RUG) will speak about moving statues and other ingenuous devices in late medieval France. The lecture will take place on Wednesday, March 13, 17:00-18:00.

This symposium (May 22) will explore topics such as the loss of and damage done to medieval manuscripts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through an interdisciplinary set of papers. Speakers will highlight projects aimed at identifying and rehabilitating damaged manuscripts and archives, and…

On May 30 and 31, a workshop will take place at the Dutch Art Historical Institute in Florence (NIKI). This workshop aims to further our understanding of how late medieval societies reconciled the partially contradictory ideals and expectations of Ecclesia and Iustitia at a collective and individual…

Op 22 februari leidt Karst Schuil (Wenen) het derde seminar (online) van de seminarreeks van de Onderzoekschool Mediëvistiek: Emotionality and Late Medieval Self-Transformative Processes. Hij onderzoekt de relatie tussen pelgrimages en emoties en zal zijn prospectus (een uitgewerkt voorstel) van zijn…

The 7th European Congress of Medieval Studies of the Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales (FIDEM) will be organized by the Department of Arts, Media, and Philosophy of the University of Basel, Switzerland. There is a number of slots for papers (20 minutes) and special sessions…

Leiden University and the University of Warsaw organize a two-day conference on medieval fragmentology, with a special focus on the so-called N-Psalter. The conference will take place in the Regional Archive in Alkmaar. ReMA students can obtain 1-2 ECTS by attending the conference and completing an…

ChatGPT, the text-generating chatbot, has recently become available for anyone to use. Is this artificial intelligence (AI) tool a threat to our teaching?

The programme focuses on the medieval dynamics of intellectual life in the Rhineland and the Low countries, nowadays divided over five countries (Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands) but one cultural region in the later Middle Ages.

The most important group of medieval manuscripts from the Special Collections of the University Libraries of Leiden (UBL), the Codices Vossiani Latini, is now available in open access via the Digital Collections. The 324 Latin manuscripts copied in medieval Europe, along with 48 post-medieval manuscripts,…