There is a growing demand throughout the world for ways to understand and preserve cultural heritage. Heritage has a crucial role to play because it strengthens societies and promotes understanding among cultures. Leiden expertise in the area of heritage spans the whole world.

Opportunities, challenges, and future perspectives of people-centered approaches in dynamic historic urban landscapes

This thesis explores the value of cultural and archaeological heritage through a focus on multinational corporations (MNCs) across industries and their involvement with cultural heritage.

The fourth volume of Ex Novo has the pleasure to host Heleen van Londen, Marjo J. Schlaman, and Andrea Travaglia as guest editors of the special issue titled The Natural and The Cultural. Integrating Approaches in Landscape Heritage Management. This timely collection of peer-reviewed papers and short…

Heritage knowledge that offers insight into identity and cultural diversity.

The head of MCS is also Director of the Leiden-based LDE Centre for Global Heritage and Development, President of LeidenGlobal, and staff member of the Heritage and Museums department of the Faculty of Archaeology. Joint activities are being developed at the interface between heritage and museum stu…

This dissertation presents a legal geographical analysis of the heritage laws of the independent English-speaking islands of the Lesser Antilles.

The 2011 disasters precipitated widespread concern among heritage scholars about the fate of Tohoku’s cultural properties, tangible and intangible. Damage to not only buildings and landscapes but also ‘formless’ heritage, some worried, could weaken social infrastructure and thus slow or undermine re…

This project investigates diversifying and democratizing heritage through practices of “home-making”. We propose to research ‘home-making’ as a non-binary practice of combining memories of roots and routes, dwelling in the present, and desires for the future.

Bringing Dominican indigenous collections back to the community

The Centre for Digital Heritage undertakes collaborative international research in the field of Digital Heritage. It is an initiative of the University of York.

In Europe a number of production and communication strategies have long tried to establish local products as resources for local development. At the foot of the Alps, this scenario appears in all its contradictions, especially in relation to cheese production. The Heritage Arena focuses on the saga…

This 4-year research project focuses on vernacular and unacknowledged heritages of the highlands of Bhutan. It seeks to make a major contribution to the preservation of these heritages, to create a cultural resource for current and future generations.

Funded by NWO, 'Futuring Heritage: Conservation, Community and Contestation in the Eastern Himalayas' explores how environmental conservation initiatives in the Eastern Himalayas intersect with the cultural expectations of ‘indigenous’ ethno-linguistic minorities. Focusing on human–more than human relationships…

The Heritage Quest project is a citizen science project in which volunteers participate in archaeological research. Discover the aims and methodology of the project, the sub-projects and how to participate yourself.

The heritage of Indigenous Peoples has long been researched and commented upon from the outside. This book adopts an innovative approach by engaging with the heritage of Indigenous Peoples from the ‘inside’.

This catalogue is the result of the EU_CUL project (2018-2021), which explores the use of cultural heritage in Europe for fostering academic teaching and social responsibility in higher education.

The Heritage Quest project is a citizen science project in which volunteers participate in archaeological research.

This pilot project will initiate research on how heritage has been and can be mobilized to address climate change governance in Himalayan Asia. Climate adaptation strategies frequently include the sourcing of heritage, encompassing landscapes, built environments 4 and cultural practices. However, effective…

global challenges and possibilities

The Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society focuses on the relationships between past and present, the role of heritage in society, and how heritage can contribute to the improving quality of life and our (future) environment.

The researchers and students at the Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society at the Faculty of Archaeology study the role of the past in modern societies. They want to find out more about the relationships between the past and the present, and the role that heritage plays.

The Heritage and rights of indigenous peoples focuses on the living heritage of indigenous peoples and its safeguarding, connecting the past and the present in local communities.

Museums are powerful and influential institutions in their ability to shape knowledge and contribute to our identity. What we preserve and how we present our collections and heritage is closely connected to our identity and culture. In the multidisciplinary Museums, Heritage and Collections, you'll…

This project introduces primary school children (8-12 years) to science and archaeology.

Archaeological heritage management is concerned with the identification, protection, management and preservation of the material remains of human activity in the past (of whatever period and in whichever region of the world) and with the interaction that this involves with all kinds of stakeholders.

Heritage Quest has featured in several media. Read and watch the items made by others about the project.

Platform for research about heritage languages spoken in the Netherlands

Read all papers and other types of publication created by the project.

Visualizing the internal structure is a crucial step in acquiring knowledge about the origin, state, and composition of cultural heritage artifacts. Among the most powerful techniques for exposing the interior of cultural heritage objects is computed tomography (CT), a technique that computationally…

This project investigates ancient water management of streams, springs and runoffs on the archaeological site of Monte Albán, Mexico, as a means to contribute with different stakeholders in the development of sustainable solutions to water problems today such as floods and scarcity.

The master's programme in Heritage and Museum Studies at Leiden University focuses on the relationships between past and present, the role of heritage in our society, and how our heritage can contribute to improving the quality of life and the environment.

This project aims to identify, quantify and map the exposure of Dutch national monuments to four climate change effects: flooding, waterlogging, drought and heat.

A study of Dutch Fort at Galle, Sri Lanka

Exploring the intersection of environmental conservation, indigenous cultural expectations, and human-nonhuman relationships in the Eastern Himalayas. Developing inclusive approaches to ecological preservation through community-centered research.

This project involves research into the oeuvre of the Sundanese sculptor Iko, who has worked for the Catholic mission in Java and has carved sculptures for a chapel and church in Ganjuran. The images were designed by the Catholic layman Jos Schmutzer and are characterized by a fusion in style and symbolism…

Researchers have the whole world as their work area. Dutch researchers collaborate with Chinese, Australians give lectures in Lithuania, Koreans move to America and back. Who can contribute to academic knowledge, who benefits from it and who pays for it? A fair and effective system for this has not…

Climate adaptation strategies frequently include the sourcing of heritage, encompassing landscapes, built environments and cultural practices. However, effective climate change governance requires taking seriously the stakes of local communities and the power relations that structure heritage initia…

The fifth volume of Ex Novo has the pleasure to host Flaminia Bartolini as guest editor for the special issue titled Heritage in the Making. Dealing with Legacies of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. This collection of peer-reviewed papers stems in part from the successful workshop held at McDonald Institute…

The main research question of this PhD project focus on how educational policies and practices can contribute to the promotion and understanding of archaeological indigenous heritage among teachers and students in the Caribbean?

A research agenda

As part of Nexus 1492 Subproject 4: A Future for Diverse Caribbean Heritages, which seeks to shed light on how local communities interpret and engage with heritage in the present day, this doctoral study aims to gain insight into how indigenous heritage is represented in the school curriculum for social…

Research on the global field of museums, heritage, commemoration, consumption and material culture

Archaeological and Anthropological perspectives

How can we make the information in handwritten historical research reports accessible and searchable? Data scientists at Leiden University are working with other universities on a method that will improve access to cultural heritage.

This book provides an overview of critical scholarly reflections on the history of Dutch slavery and colonization, as well as how this translates into critical cultural practices.

This study offers a new approach to the history of sites, archaeology, and heritage formation in Asia, at both the local and the trans-regional levels.

The research focuses on the understanding of symbolic stratigraphy of the land (through time) from the worldview of the People of the Rain (one of the Indigenous Peoples of southern Mexico), by studying contemporary cultural heritage in communities of the Mixtec Highlands.