On Tuesday 20 September, David Kilcullen, one of the world’s leading experts on modern warfare, visited Campus The Hague of Leiden University to discuss future developments in special operations and the escalating competition between great powers.

Sara Polak is a University Lecturer in American Studies and Modern English Literature at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. She is PI of the ERC Project Worlding America: How Play Shaped the United States from New Media to Politics, 1503-2028.

Nature News reported on the use of bow-and-arrow for hunting based on the research made on small points found in a 54,000-year-old cave site in southern France.

Lecture, Austrian Studies Fund Lunch Talk

What developments preceded modern Standard Dutch? PhD candidate Iris Van de Voorde conducted research on ‘pluricentricity’, or the idea that language norms arise in different places and spread outwards from there. PhD defence on 19 April.

Alisa van de Haar is Assistant Professor in historical French Literature. Her research focuses on historical multilingualism, the history of the language sector, and the intersection between language and migration. From 2022 to 2026, she conducted a Dutch Research Council Veni project titled ‘Languages…

For every period, it is a challenge to unearth the details of political trafficking; yet the effort needs to include all relevant persons, groups, and institutions – not only those wielding formal responsibilities. We hope to reinvigorate this effort by inviting specialists to present their research…

The war between Ukraine and Russia is playing out not just on the battlefield but also on the geopolitical playing field of gas. Conflicts at the start of this century about this energy source were, says PhD candidate Ilia Barboutev, a precursor to today’s war.

How can we tell whether and how a prehistoric weapon was used? How can we better understand the dexterity and combat skills involved in Bronze Age spear fighting? A research team from Leiden and Göttingen University present a new approach to answering these questions: they simulated the actual fight…

Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen is Associate professor at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

In less than a week’s time, millions of Turkish people are going to decide who will govern their country for the next five years. These elections promise to be the most closely contested in years, with the opinion polls showing very small differences and everything at stake, including for Europe. Alp…

Daphne Wouts is an external PhD candidate at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

Johan de Jong is assistant professor in Continental Philosophy at Leiden University. He also holds a research fellowship in the project “Nietzsche: Experiment en nihilisme” at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen.

Irene O'Daly is an assistant professor at the Centre for the Arts in Society specialising in manuscript studies, the history of ideas, and classical reception.

Ajay Gandhi is an Assistant Professor, teaching at Leiden University College and affiliated to the Institute for Area Studies. His research interests are in urban, political, and economic anthropology, with a geographical focus on South Asia. Extension number: 5125

Dusan Maczek is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Archaeology.

Wenxuan Peng is PhD candidate at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies.

Thato Magano is an External PhD Candidate at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

Anders Ottosson is an external PhD candidate at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

Miguel Mira is an external PhD candidate at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. His research investigates the intersection of cinema and virtual reality with a focus on narratology.

My work focuses on the large-scale representative and legitimising artworks and monuments created throughout Europe and the USA in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My PhD dissertation (forthcoming 2025) discusses the public sculptures that Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany created throughout…

Geert Onno Prins is an external PhD candidate at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

Manon is an interdisciplinary U.S. American studies scholar and lecturer, specialized in the U.S. American Evangelical Right and Televangelism, U.S. American Playful Apocalypticism and Conspiratorial Thinking, Memory and Colonial Violence. Currently they work as a PhD candidate on Dr. Sara Polak's…