The Dutch museum landscape is among the most forward-thinking worldwide, in terms of innovations in engaging diverse audiences and stakeholders. Building on the museum studies and art history programmes at Leiden University, the Museum Lab furthers students’ engagement with museums.

In late medieval and early modern times, books, as well as the people who produced and read (or listened to) them, moved between regions, social circles, and languages with relative ease. Yet, in the multilingual Low Countries, francophone literature was both internationally mobile and firmly rooted…

Home to a rapidly rising superpower and the two largest economies in the world after the US, a global East Asia is seen and felt everywhere. This dynamic text views the global square from the perspective of the world’s most important rising global center.

Western thought has often dismissed shadows as fictional, but what if fictions reveal original truths?

Representations of violence have subliminal contagious effects, but what kind of unconscious captures this imperceptible affective dynamic in the digital age?

In this latest contribution to mimetic studies, Nidesh Lawtoo joins forces with leading international theorists of the posthuman to broaden the reach of the mimetic turn beyond human imitation.

The west side of the campus square is occupied by the Lecture Hall, known as ‘the dish’. This building houses the largest lecture halls of Leiden University, which welcome hundreds of students every day. It also has Leiden’s largest solar panel roof, with 1241 solar panels.

Book Launch

Do you want to discover a language and culture that is completely different from the Netherlands? In the Bachelor's programme Middle Eastern Studies you will study the connections between the different cultures in the Middle-East in the past and present. You will be able to choose from the languages…

In a modernist interpretation of migration controls, nation states play a major role. This book challenges this interpretation by showing that comprehensive migration checks and permanent border controls appeared much earlier, in early modern dynastic states and empires, and predated nation states by…

Rebecca Tompkins defended her thesis on 21 March 2019

How was FDR's image constructed—by himself and others—as such a powerful icon in American memory?

Situated at the crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Spanish Philippines offer historians an intriguing middle ground of connected histories that raises fundamental new questions about conventional ethnic, regional and religious identities.

Haunting the future through poetry

On 25 January 2024 H.J. Pak successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

How did the Dutch Empire compare with other imperial enterprises? And how was it experienced by the indigenous peoples who became part of this colonial power?

On the 22nd of February, Ami Okabe successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Ami on this achievement!

Central to the research of several cluster members are the social function and contexts of the production and consumption of medieval and early modern art, literature and media:

How do we experience sensual wonder and enchantment and to what extent can (early) modern imagination-techniques be implemented to create an artwork and performance, which offer a sensory and novel experience.

The Global Politics of Confucianism, a monograph contracted with Columbia University Press, analyzes the interaction between Confucianism and globalism in past and present, using history to critically engage Confucianism’s place in contemporary international relations and policy debates.

The master’s in Philosophy is a one-year, English-taught programme. The programme offers five specialisations:

The specialisation in Modern Languages explores the structure, acquisition, history and use of five languages.

In the spring semester, NIMAR offers university and university of applied sciences students two English-taught tracks worth 30 ECTS each. In both tracks, the emphasis is on enhancing language and linguistic skills, yet they also provide an in-depth introduction to Moroccan culture and society.

In the Global Conflict in the Modern Era specialisation of International Relations you will explore the security measures that have been instituted locally, regionally and globally in the modern world.

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.

Debate, Panel Discussion

Lecture, Book Launch

Asian Studies at Leiden University is unparalleled in the Netherlands and combines the very best of Asia-related research in North-West Europe.

Svetlana Gorshenina, Associate Lecturer at Collège de France, Paris, will be the Central Asia Visiting Scholar from 17 February until 25 February 2018. Svetlana Gorshenina will deliver a guest lecture on Tuesday, 20 February and a masterclass on Friday, 23 February within the Central Asia Initiative…

How can theories about modern disinformation help to understand how Roman documentary fictions functioned?

This project, executed by Marieke Hendriksen MA MRes, aims at an analysis of how the early modern anatomical collections of Leiden University were rooted in ideals of perfection in different fields of knowledge and expertise.

Ceramics and Society in the Aegean from the 7th to the 20th century A.C. A Case Study from Boeotia, Central Greece (2003)

The researchers in the World Archaeology department of the Faculty of Archaeology concentrate on a range of different periods and regions: from humanity’s origins to the Middle Ages and the modern age, and from Asia to South America.

Learn the newest insights from established scholars.

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

The research programme Statistical Science is concerned with the analysis and interpretation of masses of data, the quantification of uncertainty using probability models, and the development and benchmarking of algorithms and methods with these aims.

Water, Urbanism, and Sustainability in Roman Ostia

Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on Eastern Cuisine and Western Foodways

Researchers within the cluster are committed to the close and expert analysis of the materiality and content of the arts, literature and media they study. Different types of media bring various aspects of this core interest to the fore.

Most degree programmes at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences are based in the Pieter de la Court building on the Wassenaarseweg in Leiden. Besides this location, some degree programmes are based in The Hague, at Campus The Hague’s Wijnhaven building.

The second and final volume of this co-authored study has just been published by J.B. Metzler. This second monograph explores the history of the concept of barbarism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

At Leiden University you can study Islam and Muslim societies within two Dutch-language BA and various MA programmes and specializations.

Discover the MSc Democracy and Representation at Leiden University: a structured and intensive programme focusing on democratic challenges like populism and polarization, with electives, research thesis, and small-group teaching.