This book offers a clear and accessible exposition of Hayden White’s thought. In an engaging and wide-ranging analysis, Herman Paul discusses White’s core ideas and traces the development of these ideas from the mid-1950s to the present.

What are the humanities? As the cluster of disciplines historically grouped together as “humanities” has grown and diversified to include media studies and digital studies alongside philosophy, art history and musicology to name a few, the need to clearly define the field is pertinent.

How do we account for historical power dynamics when writing new histories of slavery and emancipation? What critical methods can we employ when studying preserved archives and collections? A new book series aims to address these questions. The initiators Karwan Fatah-Black and Ilse Josepha Lazaroms…

Professor of Contemporary History Wim van den Doel has won the 2024 Boerhaave Biography Prize. Van den Doel receives the prize for his book 'Snouck: Het volkomen geleerdenleven van Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje'.

What are the immediate and lasting effects of the colonial encounters on indigenous Caribbean cultures and societies and what were the intercultural dynamics that took place during the colonisation processes? How can the study of indigenous Caribbean histories contribute to a more sophisticated awareness…

The research focuses on the understanding of symbolic stratigraphy of the land (through time) from the worldview of the People of the Rain (one of the Indigenous Peoples of southern Mexico), by studying contemporary cultural heritage in communities of the Mixtec Highlands.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of Chinese labor migrants crossed the seas to the Dutch East Indies. On the tobacco plantations of northeastern Sumatra and in the tin mines of Bangka and Belitung, they endured long hours and harsh conditions. Their journeys formed part…

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…

Three years ago, Associate Professor Alicia Schrikker published 'De vlinders van Boven-Digoel', in which she chronicled several stories about colonial life in present-day Indonesia. Now there is a translation, by Rianti Manullang, who is also an assistant professor at Universitas Indonesia and doing…

The role of material culture in early colonial encounters in the Caribbean

French title: Communication et violences dans le Guéra et le Moyen-Chari (Tchad) de 1940 à 2010. This research investigates the relationship between the introduction of new means of communication and violence experienced by the local populations in the Moyen-Chari and the Guéra regions in Chad from…

Une étude archéo-anthropologique de la céramique des sociétés caribéennes multiculturelles de la période précoloniale à nos jours

Four years of protracted negotiations and bitter warfare passed between the declaration of Indonesian independence on 17 August, 1945, and the official transfer of sovereignty on 27 December, 1949.

Bandura Witharana defended his thesis on 27 September 2018

Wim Klooster and Gert Oostindie present a fresh look at the Dutch Atlantic in the period following the imperial moment of the seventeenth century. This epoch (1680–1815), the authors argue, marked a distinct and significant era in which Dutch military power declined and Dutch colonies began to chart…

With the rising tide of scholarly and societal interest in the history and legacy of colonialism and slavery, this collection offers a much-needed diachronic analysis of the cultural representations of the lives and afterlives of those subjected to slavery and indenture. It focuses on the history of…

Southern Africa has a rich tradition of social history, one inspired by the tumultuous changes that have regularly convulsed the region from the 1780s onwards. Scholars have always sought to understand what these changes meant for everyday life and emphasised a perspective of marginal groups, how these…

Linking botanical collections, peoples, and illustrations in seventeenth century Dutch Brazil

Lecture, LUCDH Lunch Lecture

On 1 July – Keti Koti, in the year ahead, our university community will be able to reflect extensively on the history of slavery by engaging in research, education and many other activities.

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…

Historical figures such as Columbus have returned to the centre of public debate. Much remains to be discovered about his legacy and current impact on our society. A new study shows the ecological footprint that the arrival of Europeans left in the Caribbean islands.

What was the social function of the colonial civil law courts in eighteenth-century coastal Sri Lanka? Why did people choose to have their disputes settled by Dutch law courts?

Spirited narratives of purpose and progress: church-society engagement alongside the (Company-) state

This lecture will be hosted on Thursday, 14 May 2026 at 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm.

Investigating the intercultural connections that shaped practices of knowledge production in colonial Dutch Brazil.

Few people would associate the name Anton de Kom with Leiden. Yet the Surinamese freedom fighter is the subject of an exhibition at Museum De Lakenhal.

The Tatiana Afanassjewa-lecture series is a series of public talks in Dutch by Leiden physicists on wednesday evenings, intended for everyone with an interest in physics.

Non-urban settlement organization and Roman expansion in the Roman Republic (4th-1st centuries BC)

Lecture, Global Histories of Knowledge Seminar

Amerindian intra- and inter-insular relationships and social organization in the pre-colonial Windward Islands.

This PhD project develops and applies a GIS procedure to use legacy survey data in settlement pattern analysis. As part of the research by the LERC project (NWO, Leiden University, KNIR), legacy data produced by surveys in central and southern Italy are examined in a comparative framework to investigate…

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Early Christian Encounters with Town and Countryside - Essays on the Urban and Rural Worlds of Early Christianity.

Hermeneutics and the Humanities: Dialogues with Hans-Georg Gadamer / Hermeneutik und die Geisteswissenschaften: Im Dialog mit Hans-Georg Gadamer

Family, Work, and Household presents the social and occupational life of a late medieval Iberian town in rich, unprecedented detail. The book combines a diachronic study of two regionally prominent families—one knightly and one mercantile—with a detailed cross-sectional urban study of household and…

From 1550 onwards, a great interest in the natural world developed across Europe. This interest was not only stimulated by a growing knowledge of local flora and fauna, but also by the import of numerous exotic animal and plant species. Think, for instance, of researches and collectors like Gessner…

In the Brill series Intersections a new volume has been published, entitled Ronsard and Du Bartas in Early Modern Europe.

Paul Hudson, Associate Professor of Physical Geography at Leiden University College, examines human impacts on lowland rivers in his new book.

The Europa Instituut is pleased to announce that on 21 November 2016 a new handbook “EU State Aids” (31 Chapters, 1500 pages) was published.

On the occasion of prof Paul van der Heijden’s stepping down as Rector Magnificus and President of the Executive Board of Leiden University in 2013 the Chair bearing his name on Social Justice was established. It was a “farewell present” of the Leiden University to it’s Rector.

This book addresses the definition of history and how people are influenced by it.

The 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities differs markedly from other forms of international human rights law: it not only protects the rights of individuals but also addresses interpersonal relations and social structures. How did the convention attain this broad…

This book addresses the definition of history and how people are influenced by it.