Inaugural lecture

The Europa Institute organized, in collaboration with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, on the 3rd of May 2021, a Holocaust Survivor Talk.

Holocaust scholars Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski will jointly hold the Cleveringa lecture on November 26. They were accused of defamation in Poland for a book they co-edited. How has this affected them? ‘This is an attempt to wear us down.’

Yra van Dijk obtained a NWO 'Internationalisation in the Humanities' grant. Together with Ernst van Alphen she will collaborate with 8 European and Israelian partners in researching 'Digital Memory of the Holocaust'.

In Poland the commemoration of acts of resistance is being misused to distort the history of the Holocaust. That is what Cleveringa Professor Jan Grabowski said in his inaugural lecture on 26 November. In her lecture, the second Cleveringa Professor, Barbara Engelking, pointed to the often indifferent…

From memorials to the armed forces to memory stones for individual victims. It was only later that the Holocaust took a central role in Western remembrance culture, Cleveringa Professor Frank van Vree notes. ‘Nationalists and human rights activists both invoke the experience of the Holocaust.’

Lecture, Seminar

Nearly eight decades after the liberation of Auschwitz, we continue to learn more about how the Holocaust “happened” in central and eastern Europe. In Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey’s History MA Research Seminar “New Approaches to the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe,” a dozen Leiden students read what…

Lecture, Histories Connected: Work-in-Progress

Two Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) have been placed in front of the University Library in memory of the Jewish Cosman family. At the time of the Second World War, they lived in one of the houses where the library is now located.

Everything you need to know about the minor Cultural Memory of War and Conflict.

The Austrian Studies Fund supports the Special Chair for Central European Studies, invites visiting professors from Austria and connects with Austria Centres over the world.

Leiden University commemorates its victims of the war and pays tribute to all members of the university community who resisted injustice. Rudolph Cleveringa, for instance, the dean of the law faculty who gave a protest speech in 1940 after his Jewish colleagues were fired. We honour their memory through…

On 21 April 2022, Cleveringa Professor Jan Grabowski visited Leiden. The theme of his visit was the role of law and historiography in shaping collective memories.

More than 600 staff members and students of Leiden University did not survive the war. Two of them were Caroline van Loen and Elsa Oppenheim .

Despite the wealth of historical literature on the Second World War, the subject of religion and churches in occupied Europe has been undervalued.

German historian Katja Happe is the new Cleveringa Professor at Leiden University. She will give the Cleveringa Lecture on 26 November 2019. She conducts research into the persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, and wrote the critically acclaimed book 'Veel valse hoop' (Much False Hope).

In Uprooting the Diaspora, Sarah Cramsey explores how the Jewish citizens rooted in interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia became the ideal citizenry for a post–World War II Jewish state in the Middle East. She asks, how did new interpretations of Jewish belonging emerge and gain support amongst Jewish…

During the one-year master’s programme in Politics, Culture and National Identities, 1789 to the Present you will be studying an academic field that is an entirely new research area, putting you at the forefront of a new way of thinking about European history.

The Cleveringa chair was installed by Leiden University in memory of Professor Rudolph Pabus Cleveringa and the courage he demonstrated in November 1940 during the German occupation (1940-1945). It also commemorates the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945.

The Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) is devoted to the study of places in the human world from antiquity to the present time in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective.

The Leiden University Institute for History is responsible for the main part of the historical research carried out at Leiden University. The institute has a wide-ranging academic scope.

The key subject of the research programme Cities, Migration and Global Interdependence 1500 - Now (CMGI) is Inequality (at local, national and global levels).

During the two-year Politics, Culture and National Identities, 1789 to the Present programme you will learn from inspired academics and learn how to conduct quality research.

LUCIS affiliated members are researchers outside Leiden University who are actively involved in the study of Islam and/or Muslim societies and who regularly participate in LUCIS activities. LUCIS affiliate membership offers possibilities to cooperate with LUCIS as well as network opportunities. Contact…

The annual commemoration of the nation’s war dead on Dam Square and at Waalsdorpervlakte, the Dutch apologies for historical slavery and the Cleveringa Lecture itself: our relationship with history is often ritualistic, Cleveringa Professor Frank van Vree will say in his inaugural lecture on 27 Nove…

Impressions by Wouter Baas and Caroline Schep

The combination of global questions and a wide range of local sources characterizes the Leiden University Institute for History.

The motto of the Institute for History is: ‘Global questions, local sources.’ Its researchers use local sources to find answers to major historical questions. Without historical analysis, it is impossible to understand and explain the issues in society today. Leiden itself has a rich history, with big…

All players on the world stage operate strategically in order to safeguard their interests. Political scientists at Leiden University cast light on this volatile interplay of forces. Their research helps voters, NGOs, governments and international organizations make smart choices in this complex and…

Learn the newest insights from established scholars.

On Saturday 6 May 2017, Professor Stahn discussed the legacy of the ICTY on the crime of genocide in Courtroom 600 at Nuremberg.

The NWO has awarded four Leiden researchers with an Internationalisation in the Humanities grant.

On 15 April 2019 upon the invitation of SIB-Amsterdam- Dutch United Nations Student Association Monika Baár gave a masterclass on the contemporary political situation in Austria and its historical antecedents.

DIRTY PICTURES // 26 March 2021// Trigger, FOMU, Antwerp (BE)

Recently, a pro-Palestine demonstration was held outside the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam during its opening, which was being attended by President Herzog of Israel. Wilders’ response? ‘It smells like a political campaign by the far-left mayor of Amsterdam. Irresponsible.’

Authorities in Denmark and Sweden are examining whether it is possible to ban Quran burning following recent incidents. These have caused tension in many Islamic countries as well as in the countries where they occurred.

Thousands of Ukrainian children have been transferred to Russia from occupied territories in eastern Ukraine, reports say. Is this, as the government in Kyiv has claimed, an act of genocide? Defined as an intent to destroy a particular group of people, the term genocide was first coined amid the horrors…

During the Europe 1000-1800 programme you will learn from inspired academics. Find out more about the programme below.

During the two-year Europe 1000-1800 programme you will learn from inspired academics and learn how to conduct quality research.

During the two-year Cities, Migration and Global Interdependence (research) programme you will learn from inspired academics and learn how to conduct quality research.

The one-year History specialisation in Ancient History offers an attractive mix of theoretical knowledge and practical experience.

How were Spanish commanders fighting in the Low Countries between 1567 and 1577 portrayed in Spanish and Dutch narrative sources during the Eighty Years War?

During the two-year Ancient History (research) programme you will learn from inspired academics and learn how to conduct quality research.

Research conducted in this group aims at furthering our understanding of how communities and individuals deal with social change, conflict and trauma through remembrance and commemoration as well as forgetting in the arts.