From 2026-2027, the Faculty of Humanities will add a new core curriculum course to its education: Humanities in a Digital World. The new course will prepare all students for their role as humanities specialists in the digital society. The course has been developed by experts from different study programmes…

Literature – and films and social media too – helps us understand ourselves and society. That makes literary studies an eternally modern discipline, especially if you dare to combine it with other disciplines, says Nidesh Lawtoo.

Workshops, lectures

Brightspace is the heart of the University’s digital learning environment. Lecturers can use Brightspace to support a lecture or course with digital resources. They can post assignments, lecture slides and literature in the same place and keep them up to date, giving students access to all their teaching…

From experimental essays to comfort reads, and from manga to court literature in verse: Japanese literature has it all.

At a work meal HR Policy Adviser Petra Boerlage and Associate Professor Robert Stein got talking about the ‘worlds’ of academic and support staff: are they really that different, they wondered. And wouldn’t it be good if staff knew more about each other? The two put their money where their mouths are…

Course, Summer School

To truly understand Dutch literature, we have to look beyond borders. At least, that is the view of Sander Bax. From 1 August, he will be Professor of Contemporary Dutch Literature and Culture in a Transnational Dynamic.

When it comes to literature, people mostly talk about what characters see or hear. Rarely is it about what they smell. That’s a shame, thinks university lecturer Jan van Dijkhuizen. He has been awarded an Open Competition grant from NWO to expand academic knowledge about scent in literature, and to…

The interplay between literature and law is what Frans-Willem Korsten wants to address as a brand-new professor of Literature, Culture and Law. That means doing research, but certainly also teaching. 'The Hague is of crucial importance for the humanities.'

Conference

On the occasion of the Workshop organized last July to officially launch the Leiden Chinese Queer Collection (LCQC), the National Museum of Taiwan Literature (NMTL) donated 30 titles of Taiwanese LGBTQ+ literature to support this initiative. These works where published between 1971 and 2022 by authors…

Caribbean literature holds a unique position in the world. Literature produced in the Caribbean region is extremely diverse, not only because of the wide variety of languages spoken, but also due to distinct colonial legacies that exist in the archipelago. Despite cultural specificities, the region…

How do you recount historic events if you are not allowed to talk about them? For his dissertation, Taufiq Hanafi tried to find out how a period of mass murder – despite heavy censorship – found a place in Indonesian literature. PhD defence 31 March.

The Digital Lab is open! This new lab is meant for staff and students who are looking for a place to work, experiment, and find support for their digital research. There’ll be a kickoff event, with live digital demos and a roundtable on “the Humanities in a Digital World” on Friday October 29 in the…

Since 1 January Leiden has a new graduate school. The Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA), previously based at the University of Amsterdam, has moved to the Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS).

In 2011, the University of Hussein Bin Talal in Maan and Leiden University initiated the joint Udhruh Archaeological Project, led by Professors Fawzi Abudanah and Mark Driessen.

Gianclaudio Malgieri, Associate Professor of Law & Technology at eLaw, was interviewed by EUobserver and Al Jazeera English on the European Commission’s newly unveiled Digital Omnibus package – a set of proposals that would amend the GDPR, the AI Act, cookie rules and parts of the EU’s cybersecurity…

The National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden features a small photo exhibition on Mark Driessen's fieldwork research project in Southern Jordan. In this small exhibition you will see a selection of nine photos, made in Udhruh. This ancient Jordanian settlement lies fifteen kilometres east of Petra,…

Following the success of the Dutch version, the podcast 'Scandal and Controversy in Russian Literature' is now also available in English. Senior University Lecturer Otto Boele guides listeners through eight infamous texts in this version.