In this dissertation Itandehui Jansen examines the ‘Voice’ of the filmmaker from a political and aesthetic perspective.

The different kinds of cultural perspectives on health and disease of the participants are related to their knowledge, beliefs, values and practices manifested in various forms of lifestyle in Indonesia. The cultural diversity of the population is also related to differences in health behaviour.

The production, use, and exchange of bodily ornaments through the lenses of the microscope

As museums face more scrutiny and are being demanded to decolonize, there are opportunities for Dominican museums to adopt a critical perspective and turn their collections and exhibitions into connections to our cultural past, present, and future.

Marvel at our rare collections.

Silk Road Virtual Museum - A virtual museum of the art and culture of the regions that lay on the trade routes between Europe and Asia, popularly known as the ‘Silk Road’.

Travel back in time and learn about how the University has changed over the centuries.

In Indigenous Ancestors and Healing Landscapes Jana Pešoutová presents new interpretations of current healing practices in Cuba and the Dominican Republic juxtaposed against the European colonization of the Caribbean after 1492.

Exploring the intersection of environmental conservation, indigenous cultural expectations, and human-nonhuman relationships in the Eastern Himalayas. Developing inclusive approaches to ecological preservation through community-centered research.

Researcher: Hieke Huistra MSc. This PhD-project is directed at the historical and educational import of the Leiden University nineteenth-century pathological collections.

Indigenous Latin American artifacts have attracted the interest of Europeans since the earliest moment of contact between Europeans and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The ERC-funded BECACO project uses an innovative multidisciplinary framework to investigate the provenance of ethnographic and…

Museum Temporalities analyzes how museums relate to time. It explores the hidden temporal assumptions and practices that define museums. How might these assumptions help us to better understand and address museums’ often problematic and painful relationship to the colonial past?

The 2011 disasters precipitated widespread concern among heritage scholars about the fate of Tohoku’s cultural properties, tangible and intangible. Damage to not only buildings and landscapes but also ‘formless’ heritage, some worried, could weaken social infrastructure and thus slow or undermine re…

The type of question that museums ask about objects in their collection influences conversations between parents and children. Researchers from Leiden University and Naturalis Biodiversity Center studied how questions influence conversations. Publication in Visitor Studies on 2 July.

Research on the global field of museums, heritage, commemoration, consumption and material culture

Subproject of the NWO Smart Culture Grant research project 'The Critical Visitor'.

The general aim of the project is a description and analysis of the Leiden anatomical collections from a humanities perspective. The project investigates how historical and cultural practices and concerns have shaped anatomical preparations and how exhibitions of the anatomical body have informed cultural…

Subproject of the NWO Smart Culture Grant research project 'The Critical Visitor'.

The project ‘Founding an Inclusive Space’ investigates the histories of various LGBT+ archives in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Doctoral research on the history of the critical visitor and their efforts at founding alternative archives including LGBT+-focused, feminist, disability and digitizing projects, resulting in a traveling exhibition on findings (with audio-guides), popular and scholarly article, and a dissertation.

The Leiden Human Evolution Collective (LHEC) is a network of researchers from Leiden University, LUMC, and Naturalis with an interest in human evolution. The collective brings together existing expertise in Leiden to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in research, teaching, and public outreach.

This study attempts to understand how indigenous community institutions pose an important role in sustainable community-based development, including the integration between local culture and development.

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.

Sharing Collections and Connecting Histories

The Netherlands returned 478 artefacts to Indonesia and Sri Lanka this week, on the advice of a Dutch committee. Rightly so, says Leiden professor Pieter ter Keurs from the Museums, Collections and Society interdisciplinary research programme. ‘But do make it clear why you are returning something.’

On the 23rd of September, George Saad successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates George on this achievement!

Promotor: Prof.dr. L.J. Slikkerveer

The new Middle Eastern Library (MEL) will bring together the UBL's own Middle Eastern collections and the collections of the library of The Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), which has been part of the Leiden University Libraries since 1st January 2018.

The knowledge held by indigenous people is essential if you want to study the history or the language of a particular region. Leiden archaeologists and linguists are now looking for ways of involving local people more systematically in their research.

In times of hardships or crisis, local people know how to deal with it using their resourcefulness. Although efforts are sometimes made by the government to help them, they are fully aware that community support is at least equally important.

Are you thinking about studying Arts and Culture: Art History and Museum Studies? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Traces of a Colourful Past

Bringing Dominican indigenous collections back to the community

Doctoral Thesis

This research combines archaeological, archaeometric and ethnohistorical research to study the organisation of settlement space and residence rules among the Taino Indians during the Late Ceramic Age (AD 1000-1492).

In educational settings such as museums, universities and schools, white, male, able-bodied and rational subjects still dominate. Although there has been a lot of theoretical work on processes of in- and exclusion through racialization, sexualization, and disabilization, we still know very little about…

This book explores the intellectual and cultural flows between Asia and Europe which occurred during – and were formative of – the political and social changes of the first half of the twentieth century.

How do the starchy botanical foodways reflect upon previous archaeological understandings in the northern and circum-Caribbean?

Call for Papers: Imperial Artefacts. History, Law, and the Looting of Cultural Property

On Thursday 11 January 2018, Xiang Li defended her doctoral thesis: “Collective Labour Rights and Collective Labour Relations of China”. The supervisors are Professor Guus Heerma van Voss and Professor Barend Barentsen.

The Heritage Sector at a Crossroads: The way of Intersectionality. This project investigates how heritage institutions can achieve inclusion and accessibility within their organization, collection, and exhibition spaces that meets the breadth of demands placed by today’s “critical visitors.” Fifteen…

The foundation of the ‘Leids Papyrologisch Instituut’ took place on 19 January 1935. Prior to then, the founders – J.C. van Oven (1881-1963, Roman Law), B.A. van Groningen (1894-1987, Greek) and M. David (1898-1986, Legal History) – had already been teaching Greek papyrology at Leiden University.

The living plant collections form the heart of the Hortus botanicus Leiden and serve as a vital resource for scientific research. By studying these collections, researchers can explore biodiversity in a unique way and conduct experiments on living material.

Welcome to the webpage of the Decolonising Collective of Leiden University, aka the Decolonising Collective Leiden. We are a bottom-up initiative of academic staff, support staff, and students who collaborate and share diverse knowledges for the aim of decolonising all aspects of knowledge production…

We are a community of researchers from diverse backgrounds who explore becoming and being human, in relation to the world around us and other living beings.