Playing a musical instrument is generally considered to be a complex human behaviour involving the integration and coordination of a broad range of human functions such as perception, imagination, memory, information processing, emotion, communication, and dexterity.

In a modernist interpretation of migration controls, nation states play a major role. This book challenges this interpretation by showing that comprehensive migration checks and permanent border controls appeared much earlier, in early modern dynastic states and empires, and predated nation states by…

This book was published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Pera Museum in Istanbul. It contains seven articles on the global panoramic visual history from the early modern to modern times and Istanbul's place within this history.

Over the last few years, human Rights have become subject of intense debates in historiography. Sam Moyn’s provocative book The Last Utopia (2010) made in particular clear how important it is to investigate precisely which meaning human rights have been given in a particular context. During the research…

This volume investigates how urban growth and prosperity transformed the cities of the Roman Mediterranean in the last centuries BCE and the first centuries CE, integrating debates about Roman urban space with discourse on Roman urban history.

This study offers a new approach to the history of sites, archaeology, and heritage formation in Asia, at both the local and the trans-regional levels.

This project investigates how the first generation of Dutch printed books (the incunabula, 1473-1501) affected late medieval spirituality, religious practice and visual culture in the Low Countries.

Are you thinking about studying Arts and Culture: Art History and Museum Studies? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

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…

Visiting Researchers at the Leiden University Institute for History

The Vici project Through the Hands of Signers invites everyone to participate in its kick-off symposium on the History of Sign Language Emergence, Transmission, and Change on July 10 2026.

As a lecturer of a block 4 course, osteoarchaeologist Dr Rachel Schats is preparing to give her education remotely. For this she uses Kaltura, Leiden University’s video platform. While she is new to remote teaching, like most of the University’s lecturers, she already has some tips and tricks based…

Last year, LUCSoR welcomed two new Ph.D. students from Iran: Kiyan Foroutan from Ahvaz and Amir Ardalan Emami from Tehran. Kiyan works on a project on the role of the family in medieval and early modern Zoroastrianism in India and Iran (15th-18th centuries). Ardalan works on a much earlier period, the…

Which plants in the Mediterranean garden were already known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and how were they utilized?

Maritime conflict management is the regulation of conflict in relation to the sea. It comprises conflict enforcement, conflict resolution and conflict avoidance. How did victims of maritime conflicts claim and obtain damages or demand compensation or reparation?

This project investigates the rich linguistic history of the crucial language groups in East Africa and includes a search for words that indicate earlier lost languages. These outcomes, combined with recent archaeological and genetic research, will contribute to a new understanding of East Africa’s…

This project will construct an inventory of possible conceptions of the resistance of the world to scientists’ claims and theories.

From the very beginning, the Islam has known an oral tradition. It was only two hundred years ago that Muslims starting writing about the history of Islam, on rocks or other hard materials. Arabic epigraphy (study of inscriptions) turns out to be an essential tool in historical genealogy research. Abdullah…

Fanny Wonu Veys was appointed Professor of Art and Material Culture of Oceania on 1 August. Time for an introduction.

Carsten Stahn has just published Confronting Colonial Objects: Histories, Legalities and Access to Culture. The book is part of the OUP Cultural Heritage Law and Policy Series.

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

Who still remembers that Leiden attracted a lot of reds from Suriname during the 1970s? The exhibition ‘Dynamic Suriname’ offers a number of surprising insights on the links between Leiden University and Suriname, which is celebrating the fortieth anniversary of its independence this year.

This dissertation the role of the English dissenting minister Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) as a grammarian is studied.

It recently emerged that a Swiss firm secretly owned by the CIA and the West German intelligence service BND had been selling manipulated coding equipment to numerous governments, including allies, to spy on them through a Swiss cover firm for years.

Investigating the contribution of interpreters, informants, hunters and guides in the making of colonial scientific knowledge.

This work analyzes ritual practices and knowledge related to the Mesoamerican calendar with the aim of contributing to the understanding of the use and conceptualization of this calendar system in the contemporary K’iche’ community of Momostenango, in the Highlands of Guatemala.

How was the future United Nations Organization promoted to global publics during WW II?

Resilient Diversity: the Governance of Racial and Religious Plurality in the Dutch Empire, 1600-1800

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

The aim of this project is to foster a historiography that does justice both to the realization that scientific knowledge is constructed by local, contingent, and contextual processes, and the claims of science to objective validity.

Victoria Nyst's love for sign language was sparked when she accidentally ended up at a deaf school while studying African linguistics. The university lecturer has since been awarded a Vici grant to research the history of these languages.