The Great Rift Valley in Africa is a real treasure trove for discovering early human fossils. The fossils found in this part of Africa have determined our view of human evolution. But was the Great Rift Valley really the place where evolution took place or just a place where fossils are well preserved…

The project explores how changes in diet and food processing helped early humans expand beyond Africa into new environments of Europe.

This project explores how changes in diet helped early hominins expand from Africa into the colder and more seasonal environments of Europe.

Towards a Biological Understanding of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition

HomininSpace is an agent based modelling and simulation system in which fluctuating carrying capacity is the key attractor for hominin dispersal. A parameterized and spatially explicit reconstructed palaeo-environment models available energy in the form of secondary biomass using reconstructed climate…

Current status and future prospects

The Palaeolithic period extends from the earliest stone tools (and in Europe, earliest occupation) to the beginning of the current warm period.

The Leiden archaeologist Wil Roebroeks has been awarded the Spinoza prize for his original observations about early hominins and the development of human society, NWO (Netherlands organisation for Scientific Research) announced on Monday 4 June.

Around 1.8 million years ago, early hominins moved into Eurasia and adapted to colder climates and unfamiliar ecosystems. This project investigates whether innovations in diet such as eating new plants or applying new techniques for food processing (cooking or fermentation) contributed to this major…

Early Modern Medievalisms: The Interplay between Scholarly Reflection and Artistic Production

Death, fire and identity in North-West Europe

This collection of papers was compiled in celebration of the remarkable academic career of Professor Wil Roebroeks, who has established himself as one of Europe’s leading figures in Palaeolithic archaeology over the past three decades and founded the Human origins research group at Leiden University…

For early modern Europeans, the past was a measure of most things, good and bad. For that reason it was also hotly contested, manipulated, and far too important to be left to historians alone.

How did Anglo-Saxons reflect on the experience of growing old? Was it really a golden age for the elderly, as has been suggested?

What kinds of pan-European connections linked communities across early medieval Europe, and what social infrastructures allowed these networks to function beyond political, cultural and geographic boundaries?

Promotor: A. Achúcarro, Co-promotor: A. Boyarsky

This series of publications brings together new material on wellconsidered themes within the wide area of Early Modern Studies.

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What does it mean to perceive smell? This question fascinated poets and playwrights of the early modern period (ca. 1500–1700): their work abounds in references to and evocations of smell sensation and of specific scents. POEM maps the ways in which early modern writers put the language of smell – or…

This thesis explores several aspects of these Early Old Babylonian Amorites.

An Integrative Approach to the Hominin Record

In Europe, archaeological traces of fire become more frequent between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago; but could the earliest occupants have survived without fire for at least half a million years before this? How could the early occupants of Europe have kept warm and processed meat without fire?

The aim of the research project is to get insight in the biostratigraphical age and the palaeoecological setting of the Schöningen sites and hominin behavior and subsistence during the late Lower Palaeolithic.

The ‘Locke drawings’ collection and the representation of Brazilian native peoples in global perspective

This volume discusses practices of memory in early modern Europe.

A Study of Middle Palaeolithic Riverside Settlements at Maastricht-Belvédère (The Netherlands).

The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.

In the early universe, the dynamics of the Higgs field can give rise to many interesting phenomena.

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On 13 September 2023 Eline Scheerlinck successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

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

Practical applications for the reconstruction of the past

Leiden Early Drug Discovery & Development (LED3) is a multidisciplinary research network at Leiden University dedicated to advancing innovative approaches in early drug discovery and development. The initiative brings together 58 principal investigators from four institutes—the Institute of Biology…

Microwear and starch grain analysis on experimental and archaeological grinding tools from Central

How can we facilitate the early recognition of stress and anxiety in the classroom and collaborate with schools in providing low-threshold interventions?

The Register of Early Modernists aims to facilitate collaboration between early modern researchers at Leiden University.

Check our varied programme starting in May 2026

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

We explore the particle physics and quantum world at the time of the big bang.

In this thesis, both the obscured and unobscured star formation of high-redshift galaxies (UV-bright galaxies and serendipitously identified [CII]-emitters) is investigated.

The early modern and modern Europeanists at the Leiden Institute of History approach the past from comparative and transnational perspectives, frequently placing the history of our continent in global contexts. Our research covers the geographical and thematic breadth of Europe since ca. 1500, with…

Promotores: F.H. van Lunteren, F.P. Israel

The Leiden Institute of History approaches early modern and modern European history from comparative and transnational perspectives.

On 30 September 2021 Babette van Hazebroek defended her thesis 'Understanding delinquent development from childhood into early adulthood in early onset offenders'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.W. de Keijser and Prof. A. Popma (VUMC).

Crime is men’s business, isn’t it? Women are responsible for 10 percent of crime in Europe. Yet, if we look at the Dutch Republic in the early modern period, we find that in the towns of Holland women played a much larger role in crime.

Can epigenetic changes explain associations between early life stress and health outcomes?

The central aim is to systematically study differences in crime patterns and social control between migrants and non-migrants in early modern Frankfurt am Main.

In this thesis the links between allergy and intestinal health, the gut microbiome (GM), and external factors were studied by exploring the metabolome in longitudinal clinical studies and in vitro models.