Lecture

53rd Huizinga Lecture On Thursday, December 12, 2024, historian and terrorism expert Beatrice de Graaf will deliver the 53rd Huizinga Lecture at the Stadsgehoorzaal in Leiden. Under the title "We Are the Times: History in Times of Crisis," De Graaf will explore how history is used during crises to give…

From memorials to the armed forces to memory stones for individual victims. It was only later that the Holocaust took a central role in Western remembrance culture, Cleveringa Professor Frank van Vree notes. ‘Nationalists and human rights activists both invoke the experience of the Holocaust.’

As museums, archives and other cultural institutions make their colonial collections available online—giving contested materials a digital afterlife—unresolved histories and new ethical matters are bound to emerge. What can be traced, remembered and imagined through archives rife with omission and harm?…

The West, the story goes, was built on the ideas and values of Ancient Greece and Rome, which disappeared from Europe during the Dark Ages and were then rediscovered by the Renaissance. But what if that isn't true? I argue that the real story of the West is much bigger than this established paradigm…

Opening Hester Bijl, Rector Magnificus of Leiden University, will open the seventh ENIUGH Congress. The opening will be followed by a keynote speech by Giles Scott-Smith. Keynote Speech Can citizens be diplomats? This talk addresses this question through the lens of New Diplomatic History (NDH),…

Organised in association with NIMAR. The change in the meaning of Haratin (black Moroccans) into the synonym of “ex-slaves” occurred with Sultan Mawlay Isma‘il’s project (1672–1727) to create a royal army by enslaving all black people in Morocco either by purchasing those who were already “slaves” or…

Five Leiden research projects in history, law and AI have received SSH Open Competition M 2024 funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The researchers have up to five years to work on a promising idea.

In 1808, the United States banned the transatlantic slave trade. Not everyone was happy about this, as Marcella Schute discovered. In her thesis, she shows how politicians from Louisiana made serious attempts to restart the slave trade in the mid-nineteenth century.

Lecture

Would you like to do collection-oriented research, but do not have sufficient resources? Every year, the Museums, Collections and Society (MCS) research group makes several research scholarships available for this purpose. Researchers Elizabeth den Hartog and Marika Keblusek previously received an MCS…

Too expensive groceries, diseases suddenly breaking out: from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, hundreds of people documented the world around them in chronicles. A significant number of these texts have been digitised in recent years. Professor of Early Modern Dutch History and project leader…

The excuses for the slavery past? It would have been better if the cabinet had taken some more time on that, thinks university lecturer and Atlantic slavery expert Karwan Fatah-Black. 'Too bad they didn’t wait for the results of the study.'

How should the Quran be read? The manuscript of this holy book makes different interpretations possible. Researcher Marijn van Putten has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant of two million euros to explore centuries-old recitations.

In the Netherlands, when we talk about the United Nations, the conversation is almost always about the member states from the northern hemisphere. But the most interesting players come from the ‘Global South’, Professor Alanna O'Malley and her team argue in a podcast.

Theft, prostitution, fortune-telling or murder. Historian Manon van der Heijden and a group of students are researching court records from The Hague from 1600 to 1800. They are tracing crimes and offenders and shedding new light on The Hague’s Gevangenpoort (or Prison Gate). Among their many discoveries…

It is exactly one year ago that the university had to close, bang in the middle of the academic year. Suddenly, on that third Monday in March, we found ourselves at home, working and studying online – many of us from that cramped attic or student room. The momentous coronavirus year in pictures.

An extra-long procession with musical accompaniment will mark the beginning of the university’s 450th birthday celebrations on 7 February.

A discount on textbooks is always welcome. But for these students joining a study association has meant much more than that alone.

For decades, the trade in pocketbooks prescribing how to be a good Muslim flourished in East Africa, but in recent years the number of books in circulation has been declining. University lecturer Annachiara Raia is the recipient of an Impact Explorer grant to revive this tradition, in cooperation with…

Costanza Franceschini discusses the Sea-ing Africa project, offering unique anthropological research opportunities in Ghana and Morocco for Masters students.

Those who apply for asylum at the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) are often asked about their main reason for migration. This process puts asylum seekers in a specific category, while their experiences are often much more complex and multifaceted. With his research on queer migration, PhD…

Climate change, social inequality, and the COVID-19 crisis are examples of wicked problems—issues that require collaboration across different disciplines. In partnership with the African Studies Centre, David Ehrhardt and Caroline Archambault (LUC), along with African partners, are researching the best…

Complex research with a generous sprinkling of jargon: PhD defences can be difficult for non-experts to follow. In the compulsory new lay talk, PhD candidates begin by explaining their dissertation in words of one syllable. And it’s not just the PhD’s family and friends who appreciate this.

The decolonisation war in Indonesia was violent partly because the Dutch military operated on the conviction that ‘an uprising had to be forcibly suppressed.’ This what historian Christiaan Harinck from the KITLV discovered in his PhD research.

On 10 May 1940, the Netherlands was taken completely by surprise by the attack of the German army. Wasn’t it? In his dissertation, Wouter Linmans debunks the idea that the Second World War took the Netherlands by surprise. ‘From 1935 onwards, all major political parties wanted to invest in the military.’…

For too long the Dutch collective memory has judged the Jewish Council too harshly. This perspective needs to be adjusted, Bart van der Boom argues in his new book ‘De politiek van het kleinste kwaad’ (lit. ‘The Politics of the Lesser Evil’).

In the 18th century, the French colonial empire teemed with protectionist laws. Nevertheless, businessmen from the Republic played an important role in the French economy, and thus in the colonial system. PhD student Tessa de Boer explored how this came about.

It is with great sadness that we have learned of the passing of our former colleague dr. Karin Willemse, who passed away on Saturday 18 March 2023.

All Leiden University students and staff are welcome to attend.

Writing a book on the recent history of Leiden University in corona times. For educational and policy historian Pieter Slaman (34), this has meant working in the attic of his parents’ house while they looked after his daughter, along with numerous online conversations and very few, if any, visits to…

Bachelor, Master

Thesis assessment is carried out according to faculty standards with associated assessment forms and manuals.

Bachelor, Master

If you have a guest or visitor who needs access to the network drives or a ULCN account, you can have him or her registered in the guest management system (GMS) via your GMS contact person.

Often landscape restoration is seen as a quick technical fix, when a long-term and more sensitive approach is necessary. Within her PhD research, conducted over the past five years in South Africa, Ancois de Villiers explored how we can change this approach. ‘A damaged ecosystem can’t be "fixed" in…

PhD

Lecture, Book Roundtable

Through court cases, fiction, and late-Qing newspaper accounts, Matthew Sommer considers a range of transgender experiences in Imperial China, illuminating how certain forms of gender transgression were sanctioned in particular contexts and penalized in others. People moved away from the gender…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Karen Smith recently joined the Institute for History as a lecturer in International Relations. She introduces herself.

Professor Mirjam de Bruijn will research digital warfare in the North African Sahel with an NWO Open Competition grant. The focus of the research will be on Fulani social networks in war and cultural violence.

Nancy Kula has been Professor of African Linguistics since 1 February. Now is a good time to hear more about her field of expertise and academic interests.

Political scientist Claire Vergerio (Leiden University) has made it to the final stage of the selection process for Central European University’s annual European Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Social Sciences and Humanities. As the 2019 Casimir Prize winner, Vergerio was nominated by the Faculty…

I am a Lecturer in Contemporary Military History and Security Studies, teaching in both the History and International Relations programmes here at Leiden. I grew up in Yorkshire, England and was interested in history and international politics from a young age. In 2003 I went to the University of Cambridge…

The Śrīkaṇṭhacarita is a 12th-century court poem (mahākāvya) in 25 cantos (sargas) written by the poet Maṅkha in Kashmir. While the narrative ostensibly depicts the gestures of the god Śiva against the demons of Tripura, it primarily serves as a pretext for Maṅkha to showcase his poetic ability and…