PhD defence

PhD defence

The brief removal of Rein Dool’s ‘cigar-smoking white men’ painting generated a storm of reactions last November. Students, staff and alumni reflected on this at a symposium on Friday 26 May.

November marks exactly 100 years since the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. To celebrate this special discovery, the Faculty of Humanities, together with various parties, is organising the 'Month of Tutankhamun': a month full of activities around Egypt's most legendary pharaoh.

The LUCAS Dissertation Prize has been awarded to Dr. Renske Janssen for her PhD thesis Religio Illicita? Roman Legal Interactions with Early Christianity in Context.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

When we think about ancient Egypt, the first things that come to mind are usually mummies and sarcophagi. According to researcher and Rijksmuseum van Oudheden curator Lara Weiss, that impression is unjustified. She made an audio tour for the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden that focuses on living Egyptians…

Pablo Merayo Montes recently joined the Institute for History as a PhD candidate within the NWO-funded project 'Dutch guest workers in 18th century Spain’ under the supervision of Raymond Fagel. Below, he introduces himself.

Translating ancient texts, filling in missing parts of clay tablets: articles are popping up more and more often about the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence for researching documents in the oldest scripts. Are we better off leaving the deciphering of ancient texts to computers from now…

How can we tell whether and how a prehistoric weapon was used? How can we better understand the dexterity and combat skills involved in Bronze Age spear fighting? A research team from Leiden and Göttingen University present a new approach to answering these questions: they simulated the actual fight…

Training

Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker will retire on 8 February. If there’s one theme running through his career, it’s the links between the University and society. In this series of pre-retirement discussions, Stolker will talk one last time to people from within and without the University. This edition…

Workshop

Faculty Lecture

Following the retirement of Roswitha Manning, a vacancy arose at Faculty of Archaeology for the role of Research Policy Advisor. We found one in the person of Jimmy Mans, a well known face for longer-serving Faculty staff. In this interview we reconnect with Jimmy, who calls himself ‘a homegrown Leiden…

Conference

An education grant may be available for collaboration with universities outside The Netherlands. This webpage contains information about the available grants, application procedures and where to look for help and advice.

A team of developmental psychologists and educators are involving young people in the communication about brain development. A second team of Leiden neuroscientists conducts research into music and spatial skills and searches for healthcare applications. Both teams were awarded a sum of 10,000 euros…

Archaeological finds off the coast of Java, Indonesia provide insight into the world of Homo erectus, 140,000 years ago. Skull fragments and other fossil remains provide a unique picture of how and where these early humans lived, says Leiden archaeologist Harold Berghuis.

University lecturer Steven Lauritano has been awarded a Comenius Teaching Fellow grant. Lauritano will use the grant of 50,000 euros to improve hybrid education in classes featuring particular objects.

The Faculty of Archaeology used to be involved in several excavations in Syria, before the outbreak of civil war made travel to the region impossible. One of these excavations is the one of tell Hammam al-Turkman, which started in 1981. Student Ruben Hartman, together with archaeologist Dr Diederik…

On 8 March, International Women’s Day, equal opportunities for women worldwide, empowerment, and gender equality take centre stage. For years, the role of women in the past has been nearly invisible. Four archaeologists reflect on this inequality of focus, from hunter-gatherers in the palaeolithic to…

The first year students of Bachelor Security Studies finished their final block with the course Integrated Project 1. As part of the programme's teaching philosophy ‘Explore, Understand, Do’, students were required to combine the knowledge and understanding they’d gathered throughout their first year,…

From sponsored runs to festivals and from open days to concerts: Leiden University hosts lots of events each year. We are highlighting six of them for 2023.

Find out how indigenous knowledge contributes to climate solutions. Anthropologist Marja Spierenburg explains in the KlimaatHelpdesk why local insights are essential for effective climate adaptation and how equal collaboration between science and indigenous communities can be achieved.

How do you move 3,000 fragile clay tablets that date back thousands of years? This was the challenge faced by staff from the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO). After years of preparation, the Liagre Böhl collection has been moved on trolleys to its new home.

The Epic of Gilgamesh was a lifelong inspiration to artist Harry van Kruiningen. This tale from Mesopotamia about the adventures of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk, and his friend Enkidu is one of the oldest surviving epics in world literature. Despite its almost 4,000 year age, it still captures…

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Expert meeting

When discussing enslavement, attention often focuses on Africans forcibly shipped to South America. Researcher Timo McGregor's new Veni research sheds light on a lesser-known method, whereby indigenous populations were enslaved through the households of colonisers.