PhD, Staff

Western countries still tend to view Africa as the periphery, says anthropologist Mayke Kaag. In her inaugural lecture, she calls for a shift in perspective: to see Africa as a mirror of global developments.

Song Tan is a PhD candidate at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. He works on adaptations of classical works in the Middle Ages.

Glyn Muitjens is a PhD candidate at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

Louis Verreth is a PhD candidate at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

Ariëlle Reitsema is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Linguistics. In the NWO-funded project

Annelies Schulte Nordholt is a University Lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

Rutger Hoekstra is an associate professor at CML who is an expert on environmental input-output modelling and beyond-growth debates. He leads the WISE Horizons project which works on metrics and models for sustainable and inclusive wellbeing (brede welvaart in Dutch). In 2019, he published his latest…

Anna Dlabacova is Associate professor in Book History and PI (Principal Investigator) of the ERC-Starting Grant project ‘Pages of Prayer. The Ecosystem of Vernacular Prayer Books in the Late Medieval Low Countries, c. 1380-1550 [PRAYER]’. She is also Vice Chair of the COST Action PRAYTICIPATE - Participation…

Yiya Chen is a Professor of Phonetics at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. She studies the sounds of languages with an interdisciplinary approach. The broad goal of her research is to understand the language structures and cognitive mechanisms that underlie speech and speech communication.…

Peter Webb is University Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Arabic Literature and Culture at Leiden University. He specialises in early Arabic poetry and prose, combining philology, literary analysis, and anthropological approaches to examine how poetic, narrative, and historiographical traditions shaped…

Several of the most important manuscript collections in the Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Special Collections, comprising 443 extremely rare and often unique volumes, have been made available in Open Access via Digital Collections. The available manuscript collections include the private collections…

Study information

A bloody civil war has raged for years in the Central African Republic. PhD candidate Crépin Mouguia points out a tragic pattern: young people have been recruited as fighters or soldiers for generations and thus fuel the conflicts.

On Thursday, May 16, Leiden University Libraries is organizing a workshop on early photography of the Middle East. In the workshop, curator Maartje van den Heuvel shows photos of three adventurous Dutch nineteenth-century travel and photography pioneers. They created beautiful photos and photo albums…

On 9 December, a lottery to conclude the first call of the Leiden University Global Fund (LUGF) Seed Fund has granted 14 project proposals €15.000. These projects will be working to enhance the relationship between Leiden University and her partners in Africa, Latin America, North East and South East…

Climate and human rights will again become major issues on the world stage by the end of 2023. The new series of lunch seminars by the interdisciplinary research programme Global Transformations and Governance Challenges (GTGC) seamlessly tie into these events. All Leiden researchers and students are…

Maartje Janse is associate professor at the Institute for History.

Didactics

Jeffrey Fynn-Paul is a university lecturer at the Institute for History.

Are we going vegetarian this year? Shall we keep the dessert the same? Where do I find inspiration for a festive meal during the holidays? For readers who like to postpone these questions, for those who like to tell a good story with their culinary contribution, or for those who simply want to know…

The Middle East has a rich literary tradition, which is steadily gaining a foothold in the West. Modern literary works deal with contemporary issues, such as the legacy of colonialism, the struggles between traditionalism and modernity, the place of women in society and the war in Israel/Palestine.

Didactics

Caroline Waerzeggers is Professor of Assyriology at Leiden University. She specializes in the history of Mesopotamia in the first millennium BC, with a focus on imperial transformation under Neo-Babylonian, Persian and Seleucid rule. She is particularly interested in studying local responses to empire.…

A better balance between teaching and research duties, greater recognition of team performances and the elimination of simplistic assessment criteria. The ‘Academia in Motion’ paper published by the Leiden University Recognition and Rewards describes the main problems with recognition and rewards in…

‘What if we switch off all the lights one evening? That idea crossed my mind from time to time. And when I mentioned it to a taxi driver one day, he said: “Oh, you mean: lights out, stars on!” That’s not completely true, of course, because the stars are always on, but his phrase summed up the idea n…

How can the academic world best handle the new political reality in the United States? This is the question that managers, lecturers, researchers and students at Leiden University discussed on Friday afternoon at a gathering in the Kamerlingh Onnes building. ‘Don’t just give in; defend academic free…

Since April 2023 the current war in Sudan has brought larger death, destruction, and displacement than any other ongoing armed conflict on earth. And yet, international media coverage of the conflict remains limited.

Using enslaved people as servants, becoming an administrator in the Dutch West India Company or making uniforms for the colonial army. Many people from Leiden played a role in colonialism and slavery. Historians are conducting preliminary research and finding striking examples.

Many saw the UN Summit of the Future as the moment of truth for the United Nations and its plans for the world. Joris Larik, Assistant Professor of Comparative, EU and International Law, explains the results.

NATO not only safeguards our security and stability, but also defends Enlightenment principles, promoting prosperity, health and freedom. This is what eminent psychologist and thinker Steven Pinker argued to a packed Great Auditorium.

The Covid pandemic has had a considerable impact on academics’ work and well-being. They have had much less time to spend on their research. The Young Academy and the Dutch Network of Women Professors have conducted research into how the situation has been for academics. The two organisations have recommendations…

Personal development

Leiden University has had a diversity policy since 2014. The aim is to create a diverse and inclusive learning and working environment for all students and staff. Diversity Officer Aya Ezawa updates us on the process and the results. It’s now 2022, what has already changed?