Professor Jan Kolen was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology on September 1, 2018. We sat down with him and interviewed him about his background, the challenges he sees, and the future of our Faculty.

During a well-attended Studium Generale lecture at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, Professor Ellen de Bruijn demonstrated how hormonal fluctuations influence the female brain. 'We urgently need more attention for the mental health of girls and women during transitional periods.'

To observe nature at work, LUC students taking the Earth, Energy, and Sustainability major spend two weeks of their summer break in the Tauern Alps of Austria. In brief, seventeen students, two student teaching assistants, and one instructor went off-campus to explore Alpine landscapes at altitudes…

Dr. Ahmad Al-Jallad and Prof.dr. Peter Akkermans have been awarded with the NWO Free Competition Grant for their research project 'Landscapes of Survival: Pastoralist Societies, Rock Art and Literacy in Jordan's Black Desert, c. 1000 BC to 500 AD'. Together, they study settlements, burials and inscr…

Scientific research, heritage management and public outreach intertwined.

For thousands of years, beavers had a big influence on the Dutch ecosystem and the people that lived there. This is the conclusion of research by archaeologist Nathalie Brusgaard.

Uniting an international consortium of scholars, the Skandapurāṇa Project comprises a team of researchers working in fields across the Humanities. We are creating a critical edition of a foundational work of purāṇic literature and, in doing so, tracing the dynamics of a textual tradition to better understand…

Global Interactions sponsors a number of research projects of Leiden University researchers.

The faculty has been investigating hundreds of ancient stone tombs in Jordan’s Black Desert.

The Chlorakas Palloures Excavation on Cyprus, run by Dr Bleda Düring, was featured on Cypriot national television. In the item Düring had the chance to explain the importance of the site and highlight the team's finds.

The project investigates the landscape organization of Corded Ware groups in north-western Europe during the 3rd Millennium BC.

The School for Advanced Research organised an onlne conversation between Dr Bleda Düring and his co-editors of the publication Archaeologies of Empire and the editors of the publication Imperial Formations. Watch the resulting video.

The Hortus Talks is a podcast series as well as a botanical college tour, recorded in the greenhouse in the middle of the Hortus Amsterdam. The theme of the podcast was plant migration. In this context Anastasia explained the importance of understanding how hunter-gatherers impacted past landscapes…

The ‘Stans Prize 2015' (for the best thesis, report or article produced by a CML student) has been awarded to Kevin Groen. Other CML prizes were awarded to Laura Bertola, Patrik Henriksson and Rene Kleijn.

The changes that humans are making to the landscape are beneficial for mosquitoes that spread diseases such as Zika, chikungunya and dengue. This is what biologist Maarten Schrama and his colleagues write in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. ‘If we know in which living environments mosquitoes thrive…

A consortium led by Leiden University has been awarded 6.75 million euros to research traumascapes: physical places associated with collective trauma and loss. The research team aims to make these places more visible, accessible and inclusive.

PhD defence

PhD defence

From 6-8 April 2026 the conference

We invite proposals for the conference entitled ‘Ruins and Memory in the Muslim World: Typologies and Motifs (622-1800 CE)’ to be held in Leiden between 14-16 September 2026.

Leiden University College (LUC) staff and students collaborate with societal partners in The Hague through research, coursework, internships, and volunteering, fostering strong connections that continue even after graduation.

Drones are proving to be a good means of mapping man-made changes in the landscape. Geophysicist Till Sonneman and his colleagues (archaeology) are experimenting with drones in inaccessible areas of the Caribbean.

Historical figures such as Columbus have returned to the centre of public debate. Much remains to be discovered about his legacy and current impact on our society. A new study shows the ecological footprint that the arrival of Europeans left in the Caribbean islands.

How do you compare the living environment of Dutch dairy cows with that of Masai cattle in East Africa? And how can we reverse biodiversity loss? These questions are central to CurveBend, an international research consortium in which ecologist Michiel Veldhuis plays a key role.

The ancient Roman province of Lusitania, more or less contemporary Portugal, has been the focus of a joint research project by Leiden University, Évora University and the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. The research project has now been provided with a new boost by a large Regato grant managed…

Dr Sara Brandellero, Assistant Professor in Brazilian Studies (LUCAS), was invited by the State University of São Paulo (UNESP/Araraquara) and the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCAR) as visiting professor for the week of 8-12 June 2015.

On November 16 a festschrift in honor of Dr Olivier Nieuwenhuyse was presented in a moving event at the Faculty of Archaeology. Professor Bleda Düring, a personal friend of Nieuwenhuyse, was one of the initiators. ‘If he had been here, he would have loved this book.’

Land van Ons, a cooperation that buys agricultural land for the restoration of biodiversity and landscape, and Leiden University join forces. Together, they will investigate over a longer period of time which agricultural management leads to the best restoration of biodiversity. The research will start…

The Faculty of Archaeology has a new Centre of Archaeological Studies in Italy.

Dr Amy Strecker (Heritage Dept., Faculty of Archaeology) has recently been awarded a LGI BREED grant to develop her project on property and spatial justice in international law. Building on her previous research into landscape protection from cultural heritage, environmental and human rights perspectives…

The Heritage Quest project begins on Monday 6 April. Heritage Quest is the first large-scale citizen science archaeology project in the Netherlands: anyone can help find archaeological remains at Utrechtse Heuvelrug, a heavily forested region in the Netherlands. Citizens can thus get involved in scientific…

The Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research has honored the application of Prof. Harry Fokkens for the research project entitled

During the summer, staff and students of the Faculty of Archaeology travel to all parts of the world, initiating or joining fieldwork projects. Read some of our students' stories here!

Fat is a very valuable food component, packed with calories, especially important when other resources might be scarce. Our earliest ancestors in Africa already cracked open bones to extract the fatty marrow from bone cavities. But now a new study published in Science Advances demonstrates that our…

Recent fieldwork at the vast desert region in north-eastern Jordan has revealed an immensely rich heritage of an area that is difficult to access and archaeologically less known. Professor Peter Akkermans was interviewed about his groundbreaking research in this area, known as the Black Desert.

The subsidy funds new research into the: Economies of Destruction. The emergence of metalwork deposition during the Bronze Age in Northwest Europe, c. 2300-1500 BC.

As Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS-KNAW) fellow, Tesse Stek will explore the intricate relationship between the history of ideas about Roman imperialism and contemporary archaeological interpretation.

The Jordan Times has interviewed Peter Akkermans about the damage done to the Early Islamic archaeological site of Khirbet Al Umari, Jordan.

The Tides of History is a history podcast that takes listeners into the past while trying to identify how it echoes today. The current season centers around the Iron Age and the new episode features an interview with our own Bleda Düring.

Ancois de Villiers, PhD candidate at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, received the PeerJ Award for Best Student Presentation at the International Mediterranean Ecosystems Conference.

For the next three years the municipality of Epe will contribute to the research on the Epe barrow alignment. The city complements funds that NWO made available for the Networked Landscapes (2015-2018) research project by dr. Quentin Bourgeois. The objective of this project is to unlock the principal…

Systematic aerial surveys carried out in Jordan’s Eastern Badia region since 1998 and about 10 years of simplified satellite image analysis have led to the discovery of multiple prehistoric sites, according to archaeologist Peter Akkermans. The Jordan Times interviewed him about the new insights.

Bleda Düring was interviewed alongside researchers working on ancient religions and primates, for an article in the Swiss magazine bref on the emergence of social inequalities. Although perspectives on the rise of social inequalities differ between these researchers they all agree more research on how…

Our GTGC community joined climate finance experts to discuss how climate finance landscape has changed since 2015. During this panel, researchers shared the findings of one of the Global Transformations and Governance Challenges (GTGC) Programme's seed grand projects.

Less meat and dairy means more space for nature, leisure, climate, biodiversity, more justice, and it's good news for the economy. That's according to the thought experiment conducted by Strootman Landscape Architects and Leiden environmental scientists. They presented their findings on 11 April.

After the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the Islamic Empire expanded at a tremendous pace. Within a hundred years, it stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian subcontinent. How did such a rapidly conquered territory become one empire? Professor Petra Sijpesteijn has been awarded a Vici grant…

The Faculty of Archaeology has a long research tradition in the municipality of Oss. Since 1974, researchers and students have been carrying out archaeological research here. In Januari 2019, an enormous replica of one of the top local finds was unveiled standing in the middle of a roundabout.