How can pre-Islamic poetry be used as a source to reconstruct the history of central Arabia at the dawn of Islam?

University Lecturer Ahab Bdaiwi:

Conference, Workshop

The aim of Leiden Islam Academy is to share the broad knowledge of Islam existing in Leiden University with various parties within society, and to bring people together. After three years of preparation, the launch meeting will take place on 7 December.

A number of different course curricula were presented at a training conference on ‘Islam in the Class’ op 17 November. The course materials were developed by Leiden academics in collaboration with teachers involved in pre-university education.

In recent decades, a more radical Islam has been on the rise in Indonesia, but the government now promotes a moderate form of Islam. In his inaugural lecture, Professor Nico Kaptein will analyse the dynamics of Islam and the influence of the Middle East in this the largest Muslim country in the world.…

Primary-school teachers who aren’t Muslim themselves but do have Muslim children in their class sometimes face dilemmas and cultural or religious differences. The ‘Islam in the Classroom’ course at the Leiden Islam Academy can help them resolve these. A new round begins on 9 September.

This book presents the results of a research about the Islamic courts of Cianjur in West Java, and Bulukumba in South Sulawesi and the role they play in local divorce practices.

Bij Amsterdam University Press verschijnt 'Imams in Western Europe. Developments, Transformations and Institutional Challenges' onder redactie van Mohammed Hashas, Jan Jaap de Ruiter en Niels Valdemar Vinding, een publicatie waarin tal van zaken met betrekking tot imams in Europa behandeld worden. De…

Professor Maurits Berger is presenting an online course, starting on 6 November, on the images that Islam and the West hold of one another. The course will be useful for diplomats from Teheran to Islamabad.

An international consortium of research institutes, universities and non-academic partners in six European countries has been awarded with a research grant from the Department for Research and Innovation of the European Commission in June 2018. MIDA is coordinated by the ‘Centre National de la Recherche…

The |0100| Project studies the discourses, practices and imaginaries of Islamic information society’s most debated component- Artificial Intelligence- using multimodal and mixed methods and comparing and contrasting narratives and imagery of AI-religious-futures in Muslim Southeast Asia.

The present monograph, spanning a wide range of world and local literatures represents a high academic standard of both literary criticism and philological analysis. By demonstrating her expertise as an Africanist conversant with the Arabic canon, Raia reveals how the narrative of Joseph has been re-narrated…

On Thursday 10 April 2025 Wahyu Widodo successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

A platform to research memory and culture in the Muslim world. This programme explores the ways modern memory studies methodologies can be applied to pre-modern Muslim societies to reveal the uses of the past and senses of tradition in diverse contexts of Muslim thought.

What does the excavated material tell us about the continuation and/or change of urban life during the transitional phrases from Antiquity to the Middle Ages on Crete and in the eastern Mediterranean more generally?

On February 20th, Gulnaz Sibgatullina succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Gulnaz on this great result.

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.

Book presentation

LUCIS funded several research programmes to boost interfaculty and interdisciplinary cooperation and to widen the involvement of LUCIS members.

What role do the Islamic courts play in protecting women’s divorce rights? How do they perform with regard to spousal support, child support and marital property? Stijn van Huis defends his PhD thesis on September 8, 2015

Now and then we organise book launches to present the latest publications, both academic and popular, in our broad field.

Muhammad Adlin Sila examines the range of ways Bima Muslims constitute their Islamic identities and agencies through rituals and festivals. In response to their surroundings, what it means to be a Muslim is constantly being negotiated.

In October, LUCIS and NIMAR will host a two-day workshop in honor of the 50th anniversary of Islam Observed, Clifford Geertz' comparative study of Islam in Morocco and Indonesia. Send in your proposal and get a chance to share your work in Rabat this fall.

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the Islamic State's use of images taken by drones, drawing on a dataset of ISIS propaganda images from October 2016 to December 2018.

This book is a result of the collective research project Urban Societies in the Port Towns of Atlantic Europe in the Late Middle Ages. It studies the connections between diplomacy and trade from a comparative and transnational perspective throughout medieval Atlantic Europe.

Is online radicalisation is an analytically useful concept when discussing contemporary cases of terrorism?

From now on, you can listen to the intriguing stories of our staff any time you wish! On this page you can find out more about the new podcast series of the faculty of Humanities.

Until 2019, LUCIS organised an annual conference to highlight state-of-the-art research on a central theme within the academic study of Islam and society. Researchers from around the globe convened in Leiden to share and discuss their work.

At LUCIS we offer a varied programme of scholarly meetings (conferences, workshops) which reflect our multidisciplinary and comparative view on Islam and Muslim societies in past and present.

Leiden University is a member of the Una Europa European alliance. This partnership of 11 research-intensive universities is working to shape the university of the future.

This research programme encourages the analysis of nascent Islam within the framework of religious studies.

Three international research projects involving Leiden University researchers will receive funding from the Una Europa university alliance.

While many European universities, Leiden included, have a proud tradition of research into Islamic studies, a topical and thematic focus on Shiʿi Islam in all its dispensation remains a desideratum.

A Jurist's Travelogue

This month, the NISIS publication “Islamic Studies in the Twenty-first Century: Transformations and Continuities” was published by Amsterdam University Press. This volume brings together contributions of various speakers at past NISIS Autumn Schools, providing an overview of important issues in the…

In the past we have held lecture series on themes within Islamic thought and history, such as our lecture series on apocalypticism and eschatology in early Islam in 2021. We endeavour to hold at least one thematic lecture series per academic year.

LUCIS affiliated members are researchers outside Leiden University who are actively involved in the study of Islam and/or Muslim societies and who regularly participate in LUCIS activities. LUCIS affiliate membership offers possibilities to cooperate with LUCIS as well as network opportunities. Contact…

Programme management of research programme “Strengthening knowledge of and dialogue with the Islamic/Arab world”

The Centre is the proud home of several research programmes.

Why is Arabic poetry relevant for our understanding of the Arabic-speaking world? Arabist James Montgomery explains this in the first video interview of the Leiden | Islam interview series produced by Leiden Islam Centre LUCIS. 'If there is anything which is going to make the situation worse, it is…

Chaider Bamualim defended his thesis on 9 September 2015

Mahmood Kooria shows in his dissertation that Islam often adapts to the regional context. PhD defense 14 December.

The premier LUCIS lecture series, running since 2021. Each year, two eminent scholars visit Leiden to deliver landmark lectures in Islamic and Middle East Studies. This forum for presenting and discussing cutting-edge research brings together researchers, students, and other interested participants…

Marietje Beemsterboer defended her thesis on 12 June 2018 (in Dutch)

On Tuesday 13 May 2014, Alexander Italianer, Director-General for Competition of the European Commission, delivered the second Europa lecture entitled: Competition: the heart of the European cause.

This book examines how Muslim communities in the Netherlands perceive and experience extremism, counter-radicalisation policies, and Islamophobia.