Situated at the crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Spanish Philippines offer historians an intriguing middle ground of connected histories that raises fundamental new questions about conventional ethnic, regional and religious identities.

On the 26th of May Pao-Yi Yang successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Vietnam is a comprehensive resource exploring social, political, economic, and cultural aspects of Vietnam, one of contemporary Asia’s most dynamic but least understood countries.

Freshwater and brackish water ecosystems are arguably the most vulnerable ecosystems on earth, due to concentrated human developments in and around them. The Pontocaspian (PC) region located at the border of Europe and Asia contains a variety of brackish water ecosystems and unique inhabitants, known…

The Hague Journal of Diplomacy regularly publishes reviews of recent books within the field of diplomacy and global affairs.

New Approaches to Understanding the Eastern Mediterranean during Byzantine and Ottoman Times

The deadline for the final round of AMT2 Research Funding is 15 September 2018, 17 hrs CET. Application is open to all academic staff of Leiden University. IMPORTANT: THE AMT RESEARCH FUNDING SERVES FOR PROJECTS THAT PREFERABLY ARE IMPLEMENTED IN 2018 AND OTHERWISE MUST BE COMPLETELY ORGANISED IN…

Yusen Yu wins the prestigious Graduate Student Prize of the Middle East Medievalists (MEM) with his article

Debate

Book presentation

The Case of the Painted Plaster

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo is an academic centre providing services for scholars and students from the supporting universities.

Understanding the history of Islam and Muslim societies sheds a clear light on the complex and changing social structures of the Middle East, including the current trouble spots whose effect spreads all the way to Western Europe.

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

How did free agents in the Dutch Republic react to the creation of colonial monopolies (VOC and WIC) by the States-General? This project answers this question by looking at the role individuals played in the construction of an informal global empire parallel to the institutional empire devised by the…

Since the end of the nineteenth century Arabic book designers have influenced the social and cultural situation in the Middle East with their work. Huda Smitshuijzen Abi-Farès has written the first global overview of this neglected field of science. PhD defence 10 January.

Jelle van Buuren, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, discusses the death of Al-Baghdadi and whether this could also mean the end of IS.

Frans Stoelinga defended his thesis on 19 November 2020.

How did Angkor interact with regional urban centers? How did the settlement system impact the society's agricultural system and regional resilience?

The socio-political and cultural memory of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire played a very important role in Antiquity and later ages. This book is the first to systematically chart these multiform ideas and associations over time and to define them in relation to one another, as Persianism.

An overview of Professional Associations and Journals

Documenting and describing languages of the world.

The present monograph, spanning a wide range of world and local literatures represents a high academic standard of both literary criticism and philological analysis. By demonstrating her expertise as an Africanist conversant with the Arabic canon, Raia reveals how the narrative of Joseph has been re-narrated…

This dissertation contains a detailed description of the Carib language, including the most extensive dictionary of the language to date. This knowledge is based on work from earlier sources and field work which was carried out by the author over a ten-year period, particularly in Galibi, a Carib village…

At LUCL we study almost all aspects of a wide range of African languages. From phonology to anthropological linguistics, from theoretical syntax to urban youth languages, we study it all.

Studying Sumerian grammar in your free time: Bram Jagersma did it. He described centuries-old Sumerian using a modern method he devised himself. For this PhD research he was awarded the De La Court Award for Independent Research by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science (KNAW).

No matter how hard Chinese communists tried to control the economy, they could not stop the free market from flourishing. This was the message given by historian Frank Dikötter on 7 February during a lecture on the Cultural Revolution. He will be awarded an Honorary Doctorate on 8 February.

On 13-14 October, Dr. Joris Larik, Assistant Professor for Comparative, EU, and International Law at LUC, took part in the Duke-Pretoria Conference on Comparative Foreign Relations Law. During these two days in the South African capital, draft chapters for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Comparative…

The Leiden Institute for Philosophy has a unique profile in the Low Countries and is one of few of its kind worldwide. It takes a global and comparative perspective of philosophy, whereas most philosophy programs restrict themselves to European and Anglo-American philosophical traditions rooted in Greek…

The basic program comprises a total of thirteen courses organized by the Research School, that have been purpose-developed for training and support of PhD students and Research MA students who specialize in Medieval Studies (history, art history, and literary history, in particular). The courses have…

The Turin Humanities Programme of Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura has launched a call for applications for 4 post-doctoral fellowships focused on the topic: “Political Thought and the Body: Europe and East Asia, ca. 1100-1650”. Deadline for submission: February 15, 2022.

On 27 November the official opening of LeidenGlobal will be celebrated in the Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde/National Museum of Ethnology. LeidenGlobal is a platform for global expertise that responds to the call from Minister of Education and Culture Jet Bussemakers that academic and cultural institutions…

Inequality and violence are the two biggest issues in South Africa. What is the underlying cause? Could they be linked to rivalling groups, economic factors, government policy or all of the above? To understand social issues, it is important to study them within their context. The extended case study…

SciSTIP was established on 1 April 2014 as part of the DSI-NRF Centres of Excellence Programme funded by the South Africa’s National Research Foundation (https://www.nrf.ac.za/). SciSTIP is hosted by the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST) at Stellenbosch University and…

A project aimed at understanding the complicated process of religious transformation in one of the centres of the early Muslim world.

The research programme of the Prehistoric Farming Group (European Prehistory) has several research projects. The largest and longest in terms of continuity is the Maaskant project directed by prof. dr. Harry Fokkens.

In the South and Southeast Asian programme you gain a thorough understanding of the history, cultures, politics and languages of the region, home to almost a third of the world’s population (and two-thirds of its Muslims) and some of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

Lecture, Interactionality seminars

Landscapes of mobility in the northern Chilean altiplano: from chiefly networks to colonial markets (AD 1100-1800).

The research involves the application and combination of archaeological and archaeometrical methodologies. Petrographic analysis and isotopic provenance studies of raw materials and exotics, and the study of the distribution patterns of these materials are used to gain insight into the exchange of goods…

This project launches a research program into the theoretical status and the terminological basis of evidentiality systems.

This article examines how the threat of terrorism has been addressed at the policy level through an analysis of a specific case in Mali.

This book questions the accepted origins of the field of International Relations (IR). Commonly understood to have emerged from the horrors of WW1 with the goal of bringing about world peace, the authors argue that on the contrary, IR came from a somewhat less noble tradition – that of the Round Tab…

The Revolt in The Netherlands erupted in 1566 and tore apart the Low Countries. In Memory Wars in the Low Countries, 1566-1700 Jasper van der Steen explains how public memories of the Revolt in the Habsburg Netherlands in the South and the Dutch Republic in the North diverged and became the objects…

Building a lively Humanities Campus with renewed and sustainable buildings surrounded by a green outdoor space.