The LIAS Advisory Council is chaired by prof.dr. Gabrielle van den Berg and meets with the LIAS Management Team twice per semester.

Leiden’s expertise on the Middle East spans from ancient history to contemporary tensions in the region. By studying languages, cultures, religions, literature, art, and philosophy in in conjunction, we create an indispensable, in-depth understanding.

The Passion in Profession series features researchers who are specialised in Islamic, Middle Eastern and Central Asian studies. With the series, LUCIS aims to show what inspires them in their work by highlighting an object or concept that they feel passionate about.

Contact details secretariaat

In ancient times, the steppe in the hinterland of Petra (Jordan) was transformed into a green oasis. This project tries to shed insights in the agricultural, water management and societal processes resulting in this transformation. This will be accomplished by practicing an interdisciplinary research…

This project aims to excavate and date the setting of the east gate of the Roman fortress of Udhruḥ. This will be compared with other Diocletianic military installations from the region. We also hope to retrieve another gate inscription which can shed light on the function and political embedding of…

Facts, Fears and the Future of Islamic Rules on Family Relation in the West

Contacts between Tocharian A and B and Khotanese and Tumshuqese, four languages once spoken in today’s Xīnjiāng Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China, lack a comprehensive treatment and are still a controversial topic. This work contains the first systematic investigation of the matter from a…

Synthesis and application of chemical biology tools to study immunomodulatory signaling lipids.

On the 23rd of March, Alessandro del Tomba successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Alessandro on this achievement!

Key publications of the Biologics Formulation group

Leiden University is famous for its library’s large collection of Oriental manuscripts. Part of this collection is a group of 104 Arabic documents written on papyrus and paper (Or. 8264 and 12885). These documents date from the 7th through 10th century CE and cover a wide range of subjects (private…

This NWO-funded VICI project (2025-2030) led by Prof.dr. Petra M. Sijpesteijn examines the place-making processes in the early Islamic Empire.

Context and contents of the Izcatqui manuscript in the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam

Policymakers and Academics Speaking with Each Other

An overview of new research project: Politeness in Arabic Papyrus Letters

-

This study helped to identify and summarize how value-based healthcare (VBHC) is conceptualized in the literature and implemented in hospitals. Furthermore, an overview was created of the effects of both the implementation of VBHC and the implementation strategies used.

LUCIS’ research on Islam and society is guided by three overarching themes, which are fundamental to our research programmes.

On Friday 2 October journalist Sander van Hoorn starts his lecture series ‘The Middle East doesn't exist’, which was organised by the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society (LUCIS). ‘If all goes well, people will understand the Middle East that bit less after my lectures.’

Mr. J. Sun defended his thesis on 21 March 2018.

In this thesis, the discovery and optimization is described of chemical tools to study the N-acylethanolamine (NAE) biosynthetic pathway.

The research presented in this thesis makes use of small molecules (as H2 , D2 and O2 ) on well-defined single crystal surfaces (flat Pt(111), flat Cu(211) and curved Pt(111)) to elucidate the role of surface structure and degrees of freedom in the reactant in specific surface reactions.

Due to the modern techniques of combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening, data on the biological activity of many millions of compounds is known. However, it is still very difficult to transfer this data into knowledge: if we know that compounds A and B bind to a certain protein with high…

Promotor: Prof.dr. A.G.G.M. Tielens, Co-Promotor: J.B.R. Oonk

Promotores: Prof.dr. C.A.M.J.J. van den Hondel, Prof.dr. V. Meyer (Technische Universität Berlin)

On 21 September 2022 Arfiansyah successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Operators in the Lexicon opens with an old chestnut: why are there no natural single word lexicalizations for negations of the propositional operator and and the predicate calculus operator all: why neither *nand nor *nall?

Below are some of the scholarly works published within the context of the Institutions for Conflict Resolution programme.

The Cyber Security lecturers are scholars and lecturers of Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and The Hague University of Applied Sciences.

The European Research Council has awarded five Leiden researchers an ERC Consolidator Grant. These subsidies of up to a maximum of two million euros will enable the researchers to further expand their scientific research.

Understanding the history of Islam and Muslim societies sheds a clear light on the complex and changing social structures of the Middle East, including the current trouble spots whose effect spreads all the way to Western Europe.

Thanks to its early civilisation and continuous mix of influences, the Muslim world has a rich and varied culture. The study of material culture, books, stories, films and increasingly television series teaches us about the structure of modern-day Muslim societies.

Papyrology+, founded in 2014, is a collaboration of Leiden scholars studying (Abnormal) Hieratic, Demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Arabic papyri from a socio-historical, economic and linguistic perspective. Papyrology+ aims to explore new opportunities and directions in the study of ancient…

How and under what conditions Dutch primary school principals' managerial networking activities affect the performance of their school

During the period 500–1000 CE Egypt was successively part of the Byzantine, Persian and Islamic empires. All kinds of events, developments and processes occurred that would greatly affect its history and that of the eastern Mediterranean in general. This is the first volume to map Egypt's position in…

Assessing Learning in Higher Education addresses what is probably the most time-consuming part of the work of staff in higher education, and something to the complexity of which many of the recent developments in higher education have added. Getting assessment ‘right’– that is, designing and implementing…

Below are resources which provide a short primer on the subject of active learning.

The programma structure of the advanced master International Children's Rights of Leiden University can be found on this page.

Study information

This summer school is for graduate (MA and PhD) students and researchers who have an interest in handwritten materials, editing, and the tradition of editing in the Muslim world. It offers theoretical lectures as well as hands-on practice with samples from the world-famous collections of the Leiden…

Did you know that Arabic was for centuries the lingua franca in an area stretching from the south of Spain to the Chinese border? And that the Middle East under Muslim rule was the world’s beating heart of trade, but also of science and scholarship?

Nuran Buket Cengiz defended her thesis on 13 June 2017

Studies on representative bureaucracy have often confirmed the positive performance effects of bureaucracies mirroring the demographic characteristics of their clientele. However, little is known about the underlying individual level mechanisms leading to these outcomes.

The basic concern that informs every part of the research is in wonder of what happens when sound happens as an aesthetic force. The emphasis of each query lies on the active occasion, the radical empiricism, the moment of encounter, how the sonic event comes to pass as aesthetic force.

Petra van der Bekerom, Joris van der Voet, and Johan Christensen, three assistant professors at Leiden University, conducted a large-scale survey experiment about whether citizens are more negative about failing service delivery than private organizations.

The Editors of PAIR are always interested in suggestions for themed editions. Anyone wishing to propose a theme and/or to assist as a ‘guest editor’ should contact one of the editors of PAIR.

LUCIS is an interfaculty knowledge centre offering a multidisciplinary and comparative view on Islam and Muslim societies.