On 5 July, Mark Klaassen provided the introduction to the webinar of the Family Reunification Network (FRUN) on Unaccompanied children in the family reunification context.

‘Islam and Muslims are not something that happened to Europe; they are part of Europe. In fact, Islam is one the biggest constants in European history,’ argues Professor Maurits Berger in the new eight-part Matters of Humanities: History of Islam in Europe podcast series of the Leiden University Faculty…

Jasmijn Rana demonstrates in the article 'Secular-religious self-improvement: Muslim women’s kickboxing in the Netherlands' that young Muslim women who kickbox develop agentive selves by challenging gender norms and living out their religious subjectivities.

Muslims have lived in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe for centuries. Their arrival in Western Europe, the two Americas and Australia is however relatively recent. Studying how Muslims relate to their Western environment (and vice versa) and the mutual influences of Western and Islamic philosophies…

Muslim scholars work in a long and rich tradition of knowledge-production in their own culture.

Thirteen Centuries of Creed, Conflict and Coexistence

Khadija Kadrouch-Outmany defended her thesis on 16 September 2014.

LUCIS is an interfaculty knowledge centre offering a multidisciplinary and comparative view on Islam and Muslim societies.

On the 9th of November Syahril Siddik successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

What forms does Muslim religiosity take in daily life? What is the relation between representations of Islam and Muslims by scholars and the views that exist in the ‘real world’?

A platform to research memory and culture in the Muslim world. This programme explores the ways modern memory studies methodologies can be applied to pre-modern Muslim societies to reveal the uses of the past and senses of tradition in diverse contexts of Muslim thought.

The present volume focuses on the political perceptions of the Hajj, its global religious appeal to Muslims, and the European struggle for influence and supremacy in the Muslim world in the age of pre-colonial and colonial empires.

The study by Tahir Abbas and Liselotte Welten reveals a structural and nuanced understanding of how the question of Salafism in the Netherlands has become an increasingly discussed phenomenon and the types of threats that ought to give genuine concern to security, intelligence and policing services.

Sharia Incorporated: A Comparative Overview of the Legal Systems of Twelve Muslim Countries in Past and Present

Systematic investigations into religious precepts, worldly rules of law and legal practices in the Muslim world show clearly how these societies deal with justice and injustice. Sharia, the Islamic ‘legal system’, plays an important role in this context.

Islam is often studied as a distinct and uniform phenomenon that is or should be kept private, and stands apart from any other human activity, be it in the field of economics, law or politics.

From the formative period of Islam to the contemporary world, Muslims have negotiated changing modalities of being Muslim.

Punching Back is a detailed ethnographic study that demonstrates that young Muslim women who kickbox develop agentive selves by challenging gender norms, challenging expectations, and living out their religious subjectivities.

By examining the impact of Islam on the daily life of those living under its rule, the goal of this project is to understand the striking newness of Islamic society and its debt to the diverse cultures it superseded. Questions will be the extent, character, and ambition of Muslim state competency at…

This book examines how Muslim communities in the Netherlands perceive and experience extremism, counter-radicalisation policies, and Islamophobia.

With Leiden University Press, LUCIS publishes a peer-reviewed book series “Debates on Islam and Society” aimed at a broad audience. A number of books in this series are available in open access.

A measured yet theoretically innovative exploration of how Islamophobia and radicalisation intersect and reinforce each other.

On 13 December 2023 Alf Farabi successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

LUCIS funded several research programmes to boost interfaculty and interdisciplinary cooperation and to widen the involvement of LUCIS members.

Until 2019, LUCIS organised an annual conference to highlight state-of-the-art research on a central theme within the academic study of Islam and society. Researchers from around the globe convened in Leiden to share and discuss their work.

On the 9th of June Bahaddin Budak successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Until 2019, LUCIS hosted one annual lecture, inviting an eminent scholar to give a large-scale lecture in one of the finer halls at Leiden University. Because of their success, we now organise four larger lectures every year, entitled LUCIS Keynotes.

The premier LUCIS lecture series, running since 2021. Each year, two eminent scholars visit Leiden to deliver landmark lectures in Islamic and Middle East Studies. This forum for presenting and discussing cutting-edge research brings together researchers, students, and other interested participants…

This book offers a new direction for the study of contemporary Islam by focusing on what being Muslim means in people’s everyday lives.

Every year, in the last month of the Islamic calendar, millions of Muslims from around the world come together in Mecca to perform the Hajj, the pilgrimage that all capable Muslims should perform at least once in their lives. In 2013, the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden organised the exhibition…

A Biography of Sayyid ʿUthman (1822–1914)

Dating back more than 400 years, Leiden University has the oldest continuous chair of Arabic outside the Arabic-speaking world. Today the MENA region is studied at Leiden from before the coming of Islam up to today from a wide array of disciplines. And Arabic is studied within the diverse linguistic,…

This project explores how Muslim authorities and writers use Russian to transmit Islamic contents, and whether this leads to a specific

The international bachelor's programme in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology covers three years, allowing you to establish a firm foundation and specialise in topics that you find interesting.

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Study information

Study information

The project aims to build upon cultural studies of digital design and looks at AI’s ethical dilemmas from the viewpoint of Muslim Southeast Asia.

Are you interested in the minor Global Affairs? Find out more about admission and application below.

Are you interested in the minor Cybersecurity & Cybercrime? Find out more about admission and application below.

Are you interested in the minor Sustainability, Climate Change, and Food? Find out more about admission and application below.

Are you interested in the minor American Studies? Find out more about adimission and application below!

This minor is developed for third year students and is only accessible for bachelor students who have obtained their ‘propedeuse’, we are sorry to tell you HBO students cannot apply.