What are the career prospects after the PhD?

The Modern and Contemporary Cluster is the largest within LUCAS and home to more than 100 staff members and PhD candidates. Hosting a diverse group of young and advanced scholars, it offers an especially fruitful and dynamic environment for interdisciplinary collaboration.

A team of researchers has dated a prehistoric painting in Indonesia to at least 51.200 years ago, they have proposed in a study that this painting is the oldest known example of “figurative” art.

At Leiden University many staff members and students value making sustainable and responsible choices in their personal lives. Making these choices in our professional lives may feel a bit more complicated. But is that feeling justified? Archaeologists Gerrit Dusseldorp and Roos van Oosten share their…

How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

Study information, On Campus Experience

In 2014 Argentinean pianist and researcher specialized in tango music, Bárbara Varassi Pega, obtained her PhD degree on the thesis titled 'Creating and Re-creating Tangos: Artistic processes and innovations in Music by Pugliese, Salgán, Piazzolla and Beytelmann'. The Art of Tango is the re-work of…

The Royal Academy of Art and the Royal Conservatoire together with the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) at Leiden University are developing a new platform for research in and with the arts, with an emphasis on collaboration.

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NTER-SECTION is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal focusing on contributions from junior archaeological researchers at Leiden University. The journal offers an accessible platform for the publication of individual research by undergraduate and graduate students. The Editorial Board consists of PhD…

Representations of violence have subliminal contagious effects, but what kind of unconscious captures this imperceptible affective dynamic in the digital age?

Unlike most city histories, this book focuses exclusively on the city’s connections with colonialism and slavery.

From a catastrophic fire to a flood that engulfs the earth. Mineke Schipper, Professor Emeritus of Literary Studies, has collected myths from the four corners of the earth about the end of humanity. These have inspired 30 striking paintings by Japanese artist Yuriko Yamaguchi. The Dutch premiere of…

A cannon, a sabre, guns: these Sri Lankan objects had been in the Rijksmuseum for centuries. In early December, they were returned to Sri Lanka. Associate Professor of Colonial History Alicia Schrikker led the research that formed the basis for the restitution and published a volume on the findings…

For the eleventh time in a row, Leiden University’s unique liberal arts and sciences programme has been awarded the ‘Top Rated Programme’ quality seal by Keuzegids universiteiten 2024.

Atte Ahola, who graduated last year from the bachelor’s programme in Urban Studies, has won the award for Best Undergraduate Thesis in Europe in the category of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the Global Undergraduate Awards 2025.

On June 14th, Jeroen Duindam, Professor of History at the Faculty of Humanities, was awarded an exceptionally high distinction for his achievements in the field of Austrian history.

Overview of the Asia Programmes offered at Leiden University.

What lessons can public leaders draw from crisis management? In the second Leiden Leadership Lunch in our series on ‘Leadership opportunities in times of crisis’ Dr. Jaap van Lakerveld and Dr. Jeroen Wolbers – experts in the field of crisis management – shared their insights from the recently published…

Many Humanities scholars keep a blog of their own. This summer, we’re putting these in the spotlight. For this week’s interview, we sat down with Annemarie van Sandwijk, editor in chief of the Leiden Islam Blog.

PhDArts candidate Ruchama Noorda will graduate on Wednesday 9 December 2015

Better pay and new agreements with streaming platforms: the actors’ strike that brought Hollywood to a standstill a few days ago is mainly about money. But there is something else that film actors are worried about: the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence. Is this fear justified?

Tracking early human behaviour through plant processing and -exploitation.

The toe bone of a prehistoric deer carved with lines by Neanderthals 51,000 years ago is one of the oldest works of art ever found, according to a study released Monday. Leiden archaeologist Dr Andrew Sorensen, not involved in the study, reacts on the find in a news article by NBC News.

Justin Bennett teaches in the Institute of Sonology of the Royal Conservatoire (KC) in the Hague. He is also a member of Jubilee, a platform for artistic research and production in Brussels.

The Computers, Privacy and Data Protection Conference (CPDP) is the world’s leading multidisciplinary event on privacy and data protection. CPDP brings together experts to explore cutting-edge legal, regulatory, academic, and technological developments in the field, providing a premier platform for…

Leiden University offers ambitious students a world-class environment in which to reach their potential.

Leiden University seeks to bring knowledge, academic top talents, and resources from Leiden and China together in mutually beneficial joint research projects that are content-driven, based on existing excellent research.

The master's programme in Modern European Philosophy at Leiden University focuses on continental philosophy ranging from German Idealism and Phenomenology via Deconstruction and Poststructuralism through 21st century developments in the field. It explores different approaches to thinking in a critical…

Leiden University offers ambitious students a world-class environment in which to reach their potential.

Long into the 19th century, seascapes were considered an expression of patriotism. Artists who painted in a 17th century style were valued more. This tradition stifled innovation in the genre, Cécile Bosman has concluded. She will defend her PhD thesis on 13 October.

This special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik (Brill, 2021) brings together articles that explore new digital ways of analyzing and annotating Old English vocabulary.

For her research, PhD candidate Liselore Tissen put one famous painting after another through a 3D scanner. The resulting reproductions were indistinguishable from the originals. But what does this mean for our interpretation of art?

The representation of death children in Dutch literature through time

As a PhD, there are many ways to participate in the academic life of the Institute and the University. We strongly encourage you to do this, as it will greatly enrich your PhD period. LUCAS has a vibrant PhD community, which organizes several initiatives. All PhDs are warmly invited to join, either…

The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology provides an overview of archaeological investigations in the insular Caribbean, understood here as the islands whose shores surround the Caribbean Sea.

This month, the volume Reading Russian Literature, 1980-2024, edited by Otto Boele and Dorine Schellens, was published at Palgrave Macmillan.

Research Experiments on Designing Objects with ‘Artistic’ Messages

Corporeality, intimately bound to the notion of space, to the diffuse border that connects, entangles, and fuses an inside and an outside, is understood in this book as a space which puts the individual at stake as a war machine that, in its fight for a form of life, redefines political territories.

The position of writing within the domain of artistic academic research is not self-evident. In academia, standard practice is to use writing for the transfer of knowledge: it is a means of communication. In the practice of (nonlinguistic) artistic research, the outcome is also often contextualized…

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…

Built Environment and Domestic Material Culture in the Medieval and Post-Medieval Cyclades, Greece (13th – 20th Centuries AD)

It is integral to many cluster members’ research to use Medieval and Early Modern Arts as a lens for studying the medieval and early modern periods at large:

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'.