The Faculty of Archaeology ranks as the best on continental Europe and is in the top ten of the world. Our master’s degree in archaeology offers the most diverse programme of its type in the Netherlands.

Researchers using remote sensing technologies have characterized pre-Columbian regularly-shaped earthworks in forests in Central America and the Amazon. In tropical forested mountains in South America, two challenges arise when identifying archaeological sites through remote sensing. Firstly, sites…

The master’s specialisation Astronomy and Education at Leiden University prepares you to teach the subject of biology to secondary school students. The programme comprises a one-year Astronomy component, followed by an education component in the second year.

The Faculty of Archaeology ranks as the best on continental Europe and is in the top ten of the world. Our master’s degree in archaeology offers the most diverse programme of its type in the Netherlands.

The Faculty of Archaeology ranks as the best on continental Europe and is in the top ten of the world. Our master’s degree in archaeology offers the most diverse programme of its type in the Netherlands.

Within the two-year Astronomy master’s programme, you can choose from seven specialisations, ranging from fundamental or applied astronomy research in cosmology, instrumentation or data science, to combinations of astronomy research with education, management or science communication.

This research project focuses on the development of a popular national agency in late nineteenth century Amsterdam and the question how ‘ordinary’ citizens imagined ‘the Netherlands’ through the experience and use of their urban surroundings.

Speeches and speech acts have been crucial in settling the question at the centre of every political debate: who gets what, when and where?

The Faculty of Archaeology ranks as the best on continental Europe and is in the top ten of the world. Our master’s degree in archaeology offers the most diverse programme of its type in the Netherlands.

This project combines and reconsiders all the available evidence of the Scheurrak SO1, and use new archival databases and modern archaeological techniques to shed new light on the material culture of the Baltic grain trade and the Holland shipbuilding industry at the turn of the sixteenth century.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Team History of Africa and the Americas

Knowledge of Muslim societies is essential to function in a globalised world and to fully understand our own Dutch society. Leiden researchers explore the languages, cultures, religions, legal systems and history of Muslim societies and in this way contribute to a centuries-old tradition.

New Approaches to Understanding the Eastern Mediterranean during Byzantine and Ottoman Times

During the Latin American Studies Master's programme you will focus on key social, political, linguistic and cultural developments which are currently shaping the complex reality of Latin America.

Studying one another’s languages and cultures fosters understanding between groups of people, which leads to more equality, along with increased economic, administrative, and cultural cooperation.

This collection of essays explores processes of innovation in Greco-Roman technology and science.

Chinese materia medica (CMM), comprising a diverse array of natural substances from plants, animals, and minerals, has been integral to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) throughout history. This study investigates the dynamic evolution of CMM, noting shifts in species for improved therapeutic effects…

This dissertation develops an innovative approach to cultural transformation in the kingdom of Commagene (modern south-east Turkey) during the 1st c. BCE, focusing on a palatial context in the capital Samosata.

The Central Asia Initiative is funded by the Leiden research profile area Asian Modernities and Traditions with the purpose to establish Central Asian Studies at Leiden University.

In 'The Spirit of Matter', Peter Pels explores the significance of emotionally evocative objects, challenging the denial of their existence in modern 'mind over matter' ideology.

Large-scale excavations at Neumark-Nord 2 (Germany), a very rich Middle Palaeolithic site with excellent preservation of organic (faunal and floral) remains and lithics in fine-grained lake deposits, dating to about 125,000 years ago.

Perec’s Lieux project consists of texts describing the author's places of memory, photographs, personal documents and ephemera collected in the street.

Mathematical models of software systems enable characterizations, abstractions, simulations, and analysis of complex software during its development.

On 25 Februarry 2021 Hart Bloomsbury brings out a monograph by Frans-Willem Korsten: Arts as an Interface of Law and Justice: Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption. Its working title was 'Annoyance' but that did not sell. A sign in itself; most struggles for justice have been considered as annoying.

Religion, Class, and the Postwar Development of the Dutch Welfare State. Dennie Oude Nijhuis.

Subjects Barbarian, Monstrous, and Wild responds to a contemporary political climate in which historically invested figures of otherness—barbarians, savages, monsters—have become common discursive currency.

Links to related organisations, institutes, journals and archives.

In Voices on Birchbark Jos Schaeken explores the major role that writing on birchbark – an ephemeral, even ‘throw-away’ form of correspondence and administration – played in the vibrant medieval merchant city of Novgorod and other cities in the Russian Northwest.

Leiden University is realising a new and sustainable building with state of the art research and educational facilities for the Faculty of Science: the Gorlaeus Building. The new sustainable building will stimulate academic cooperation and knowledge sharing.

In his groundbreaking Imagined Communities, first published in 1983, Benedict Anderson argued that members of a community experience a

This publication by Cornelis van Tilburg, will be published at Sidestone Press on September 28, 2022. It discusses various aspects of city gates in the Western Roman Empire: Italy, Spain, Gaul, Germany and Britain.

Studying linguistics at the Leiden University Centre of Linguistics (LUCL) is a challenging but rewarding experience. There are few places in the world where such a broad range of languages are studied from so many different perspectives.

This book brings together phonologists working in different areas to explore key questions relating to phonological primitives, the basic building blocks that are at the heart of phonological structure and over which phonological computations are carried out.

Overview of the Leiden Asia staff per area or country.

The development of literary celebrity by focusing on five famous Dutch authors from the nineteenth century

With the rising tide of scholarly and societal interest in the history and legacy of colonialism and slavery, this collection offers a much-needed diachronic analysis of the cultural representations of the lives and afterlives of those subjected to slavery and indenture. It focuses on the history of…

Due to the fact that the Frisian lands lacked major political centers in the Middle Ages and also because most of its monasteries suffered complete destruction in the second half of the 16th century, relatively few written documents concerning medieval Frisian history have survived. To analyze them…

How did the life course, with all its biological, social and cultural aspects, influence the lives, writings, and art of the inhabitants of early medieval England?

Kralen spreken tot de verbeelding. Ze zijn aantrekkelijk en persoonlijk vanwege hun kleuren, materialen, patronen en associaties. Je draagt ze op je lichaam, waar je ze voelt en anderen ze zien. Kralen zijn waardevol en verplaatsbaar, tegelijkertijd reizigers en souvenirs.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Franx, Co-Promotor: Rychard Bouwens

This research develops and applies a new approach to study Aegyptiaca Romana from a bottom-up, Roman perspective.

In this dissertation the notions of category and type are studied through the lens of logical syntax.

This book presents a thorough analysis of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq’s memory culture, focusing particularly on commemorations and representations of the Anfal and Halabja atrocities.

This open access book investigates the transnationally connected history of Arab Christian communities in Palestine during the British Mandate (1918-1948) through the lens of the birth of cultural diplomacy.