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…

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

This volume discusses practices of memory in early modern Europe.

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

These courses deal with all language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary are discussed thoroughly.

Assembling State, Space and Society on the Urban Margins in Morocco

In the specialisation in Modern Languages you will explore the structure, acquisition, history and use of one or more of these five languages in depth: Chinese, English, French, German and/or Italian.

During the master’s programme in Modern Dutch Literature at Leiden University you will learn to scientifically analyse literary texts, as well as other Dutch cultural texts, such as those found in hiphop songs and diaries.

The master's programme in Modern European Philosophy at Leiden University focuses on continental philosophy ranging from German Idealism and Phenomenology via Deconstruction and Poststructuralism through 21st century developments in the field. It explores different approaches to thinking in a critical…

How are new drugs developed? This question is central to the Minor Modern Drug Discovery (MDD), which covers the entire trajectory from disease to drug molecule and vice versa. The various research groups involved offer a complementary and interdisciplinary perspective by connecting the diverse subjects…

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

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections and interactions between a variety of artistic expressions and society. It focuses not only on objects (artistic, literary, cinematic, and medial), but also on practices (aesthetic, political, and cultural).

This project focuses on the study of Neanderthal and early modern human behavior, primarily on the basis of stone tools, fauna and spatial patterns

This synthesis brings together strands developed in the four studies, sets out memories of the Revolt and presents the Low Countries as a case study.

The research profile ‘Asian Modernities and Traditions’ (AMT) aims to raise the strength and visibility of research, teaching and dissemination on Asian studies at Leiden University. AMT focuses on those areas where there are clear strengths or exciting new developments ahead, bundled into five them…

Do you want to discover a language and culture that is completely different from the Netherlands?

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.

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

A research into how people eat and drink during their daily routines, and the circumstances under which these activities take place.

The specialisation Global Conflict in the Modern Era of the master’s in International Relations at Leiden University engages you with the scholarly debates about global conflict today and in the recent past.

Risk has become one of the defining features of modern society. This course examines various types of safety and security risks, and how these are perceived and dealt with in a wide array of professional and academic fields, ranging from criminology, counter-terrorism and cyber security, to philosophy,…

Jews and Christians in the Middle East

An Introduction and Field Guide, Second and Revised Edition (15 December 2014)

This book explores the intellectual and cultural flows between Asia and Europe which occurred during – and were formative of – the political and social changes of the first half of the twentieth century.

The project explores the role of modernization theory in the development of two foreign and domestic service programs: the Peace Corps and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA).

This is the physics summer school of Leiden University. It is part of the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION). The summer school is intended for Bachelor (BSc) students in physics. It covers topics from quantum matter and optics, to biological & soft matter physics and cosmology and theoretical physics.…

The conquest by Rome brought profound changes to large parts of Europe. Unprecedented infrastructural works were created, towns sprang up, a ribbon of fortresses was laid out along the frontiers.

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…

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.

The aim of this research was to establish if Ebeling's semiotactic theory and method of semiotactic analysis, as described in his works Syntax and Semantics (1978), Een Inleiding tot de Syntaxis (1994) and Semiotaxis, over Theoretische en Nederlandse Syntaxis (2006), could be applied to Modern Japanese…

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections between a variety of artistic and cultural expressions and their role in society from 1800 onwards.

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume project, authored by an international team of researchers, and offering the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe.

In the South African context, certain iconic images have been a dominant source for public understandings of historical events. The emphasis given these images tends to overshadow the historical value of other more personal photographic sources – like studio or amateur photography. This project looks…

On 21 September 2022 Arfiansyah successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Much has been said regarding the global flows of information that are characteristic of modernity; it has been frequently stressed that these conduits are so deeply embedded that local or national environments may be imagined as having a global span. Thus, while we are now well aware that the imagination…

This research cluster explores processes of cultural creation, reception and transformation within a wide range of societal contexts from the early Middle Ages until c. 1800.

On 1 September 2022 Afke van Ewijk successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The Phantom of the Ego is the first comparative study that shows how the modernist account of the unconscious anticipates contemporary discoveries about the importance of mimesis in the formation of subjectivity.

During the early modern period, many medieval manuscripts were cut up into strips of parchment which were reused to reinforce the bindings of newly printed books. Until recently, these reused pieces of medieval manuscripts only came to light when the early modern book binding was damaged and/or subjected…

Are you thinking about studying Global Conflict in the Modern Era? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

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…

Huda Abi-Fares defended her thesis on 10 January 2017.

In the Brill series Intersections a new volume has been published, entitled Ronsard and Du Bartas in Early Modern Europe.

Built Environment and Domestic Material Culture in the Medieval and Post-Medieval Cyclades, Greece (13th – 20th Centuries AD)

In this 3-volume set of primary sources, Lionel Laborie and Ariel Hessayon bring together a wide range of vital sources for the study of prophecy in the early modern world. This meticulously edited collection includes rare material and fascinating manuscripts published in English for the first time.

The contributions in this volume seek to highlight the atypical features of the Hanse, and place them in a wider context of common roots, influences and parallel developments.

The figure of the ‘politician’ occupies a central yet fraught position in the media landscape of contemporary Europe.

This programme adopts a new approach based on the paradoxical nature of these responses in early modern Italy: it draws on rhetorical discussions of lifelikeness and living presence, and it uses the anthropological theory of art as agency developed by Alfred Gell.