From Persia and Arabia to North Africa: as early as the nineteenth century, there were Dutch people who used the camera themselves in various regions of the Middle East.

Festival

Luca Bruls has received a Catharina Halkes Fonds fellowship grant to finalize her fieldwork in Chad and Senegal and to complete her first ethnographic film.

A fresh semester means a fresh faculty calendar. There is plenty to do at the faculty again in the coming months. Five interesting activities are listed below.

Earlier this year, the Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Scaliger Institute announced a new fellowship: The Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship. The fellowship programme is part of the Lingling Wiyadharma Fund.

It is mid-July and as I sit in my office in the Herta Mohr building, I notice how quiet it is around campus. Yet, this is in direct contrast with a flurry of activity by LUCSoR colleagues and students in recent weeks. I highlight just a few examples here.

Researchers from Leiden and Indonesia work together on a range of projects on topics such as disappearing languages and cultures, the role of Islam, circular economy, biodiversity and medicine. They also work on projects to improve legal education and make Dutch sources and Indonesian heritage accessible…

Alumni event, Lezing

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Study support

Hunter-gatherers acquire their food through complex gender-specific foraging techniques for a relatively stable and diverse supply of energy. New research indicates that this specialisation by boys and girls starts at a very young age. Most likely, this enabled the human species to evolve much larger…

Bringing together chemists and physicists to thoroughly investigate how electrochemical processes work on the smallest scale. That is the goal of the new Advanced Nano-electrochemistry Institute of the Netherlands, or ANION for short. The consortium receives a Gravitation funding of 23.6 million euros…

Last week, the sad news reached us that Dr Jan Schmidt passed away on 11 August 2025. We wish his partner, friends and family strength and comfort as they cope with this loss. Jan Schmidt will be remembered as one of the most prolific and learned scholars in the field of Ottoman codicology and histo…

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Ten Leiden researchers will receive funding of up to 280,000 euros from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). They will use this grant to develop their research ideas in the coming three years.

After two years of corona restrictions, it was ‘back to normal’ in 2022. Migration, elections, the history of slavery, Russia, and Ukraine were much-discussed topics. We compiled an overview of the most-read news items and other events of the past year.

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With the help of the JEDI fund, Fatima al Moufridji and Thijs Porck went in search of cultural contacts between early medieval England, Northern Africa, and the Middle East. Together they made four knowledge clips that can now be seen on YouTube.

With her Veni research, investigator Rosanne Baars from the Institute of History aims to demonstrate that women played a role in the eighteenth-century diplomatic circles of the Ottoman Empire. ‘We already know that one woman led the entire embassy.'

With the help of a LUF grant, archaeology student Anne Wagemakers investigated an archaeological assemblage in Spain. Now her research report has won the annual LISF prize.

On 5 May we celebrate freedom, a basic human right that should not be taken for granted. We asked international students and staff what it means to them.

Recently Professor Joanita Vroom’s book Feeding the Byzantine City was published by the prominent academic publishing house Brepols. This volume is the fifth in a series called Medieval and Post-Medieval Mediterranean Archaeology, of which she is the editor. ‘This series aims to offer new perspectives…

This summer, the COBRA Museum will be focusing on Moroccan art. 'The other story' exhibition presents for the first time Moroccan modernism in the Netherlands. The Netherlands Institute Morocco (NIMAR) contributed to its exhibition

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded an Advanced Grant to six Leiden researchers. It awards these significant grants to established principal investigators for ground-breaking, high-risk research.

An exhibition at Oude UB takes visitors to the historical Silk Road. Old maps, clothes and jewellery reflect the rich heritage of the cities of Central Asia and their inhabitants.

Neilabh Sinha was awarded a subsidy from NWO Promoties in de Geesteswetenschappen and started as a PhD candidate at the Institute for History in September. He introduces himself.

Leiden alumnus Emma Govaart (24) wanted to make an impact on society, so she took a job in the non-profit sector after graduating.

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The digital age offers unprecedented opportunities: information is always accessible, systems are interconnected, and processes are automated. However, these developments also give rise to new threats. During the Night of Digital Security on 26 May at the Wijnhaven building, more than experts shared…

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Eighteen researchers from Leiden University have been awarded a Veni grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This grant gives promising young researchers the opportunity to develop their ideas for a period of three years.

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Conference

A delegation from Leiden University visited the Netherlands Institute Morocco (NIMAR) in Rabat at the end of February.