Since its beginnings, Leiden University has been home to scholars with a broad and diverse expertise in the histories, languages, literatures and material cultures relevant to the study of Jews and Judaism from antiquity to modern times.

The NWO-funded Vidi project “American foreign policy and liberalism” challenges the idea that the United States has created and sustained a “liberal international order” since World War II. It instead explores the ways in which illiberal ideologies – such as those underpinning racial hierarchy at home…

Overview of Leiden publications on Central Asia. For additional publications dedicated to a single country, please go to individual pages of the researchers, which you can access through the Researchers page.

In the depots of the Faculty of Archaeology, many artifacts, accumulated after decades of fieldwork across the world, are stored. A new project, the Leiden Inventory Depot (LID), aims to unlock this wealth of information to the outside world. Our Master’s students Sam Botan and Rishika Dhumal are currently…

Conference, Call for papers

Lecture, Seventh Annual Austrian Studies Lecture

In this study, the formation of the Tocharian subjunctive is described, its use and meaning are analysed and its origins are investigated.

Water Management, Agricultural Practices, and Social Complexity in Southern Turkmenistan during the Bronze Age

This thesis describes how to scale down concepts of macroscopic mechanical metamaterials to the thermal scale using a system of flexibly-linked colloids.

This is the first reference work to describe the history of embroidery throughout Central Asia, the Iranian Plateau and the Indian Subcontinent from the medieval period through to the present. It offers an authoritative guide to all the major embroidery traditions of the region and a detailed examination…

In this project, we use social network analysis to analyze the behavior of users in online forums and associated marketplaces over time.

Since the Middle Passage is in the North Atlantic, and the North Atlantic has a relationship with the arctic, what relationship does the Arctic have with the Middle Passage? How can this relationship be used to provide a space of healing by uncovering Afro/diasporic counter narratives?

Could an emergent Cinema of Un-Belonging discover forms of narrative time relevant to the long-term, inter-generational fractures caused by forced traumatic dispersion?

What determines civic engagement in transboundary hydropolitics and why has it been muted in the Eastern Nile Basin?

Andrea Giolai defended his thesis on 3 May 2017.

The study of language in change.

Cody Bahir defended his thesis on 1 June 2017.

Ramesh Ganohariti, PhD student and Ernst Dijxhoorn, Assistant Professor at Leiden University, researched the relation between international relations and sports, with sport and sports events increasingly being used for various diplomatic and political goals.

On the 22nd of April, Liszt Vianna Neto successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Liszt Vianna Neto on this achievement.

On 16 November 2022 ms. Eftychia Mylona successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This book provides a grammatical sketch, glossed texts and a glossary of Tarifiyt Berber, which is the main heritage language of the Moroccan community in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

The project Multimedia Research and Documentation of African Oral Genres: Connecting Diasporas and Local Audiences (Director: D.Merolla) focuses on multimedia as technology that allows scholars to share documentation and scientific knowledge with the cultural owners of the collected oral genres.

This book is a much-needed update on our understanding of public diplomacy. It intends to stimulate new thinking on what is one of the most remarkable recent developments in diplomatic practice that has challenged practitioners as much as scholars.

The one-year master in South Asian Studies, a specialisation of Leiden University’s master in Asian Studies, offers a large and varied selection of subjects and the freedom to choose the areas on which you will focus.

Lecture, LIAS After-Lunch Talk Series

Marten Soolmans (1613-1641) studied law in Leiden at the same time that Rembrandt lived in the city. Rembrandt painted Soolmans and his wife Oopjen in 1634, after all three had moved to Amsterdam. This remarkable portrait of the sumptuously dressed Soolmans can be seen at the Kamerlingh Onnes Building,…

During the 1980s and early 2000s, authors like Alex Schmid and Andrew Silke demonstrated the paucity of first-hand insights being used to study terrorism and the consequences this had for the reliability of the findings beings presented. But to what extent have these issues endured?

Rising geopolitical tensions are causing states and national elites to innovate their use of the past for present-day political ends. This is certainly true for the People’s Republic of China, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2024 amid mounting superpower rivalry, ideological tensions with the…

In the media, we hear a lot of worrying news from Africa: refugees, attacks, Ebola, starvation, corruption... But Africa is much more than that: it is a continent in transition, with developments occurring at breakneck speed. African Studies scholars from different academic disciplines in Leiden conduct…

Leiden University is a centre of migration research, bringing together historians, economists, lawyers, political scientists and anthropologists. They conduct research on who migrates and why, and the impact on societies. They analyse government policy, the role of media and how societies respond to…

The Dutch Center for Travel Writing Studies s a scientific center that develops and coordinates initiatives to promote research into travel writing. It actively seeks contact with external (scientific and social) partners to collaborate on issues surrounding cultural / national identity, cultural contact…

Reconfigurations of Practice, Community and Authority in Contemporary Aceh

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of the Faculty of Humanities with the Anton de Kom University in Paramaribo.

On young Muslims seeking to understand their place and make their way in a transformed world.

LUCSoR has chairs in Comparative Religion, Islam in the West, Christianity, and Judaism. Main areas of expertise include ancient Mesopotamian religions, the Enlightenment, Islam in the West, and new spiritual movements.

Can we really speak about Jewish musicological, musical thought and what is the essence of this thought?

Many conflicts in Africa have been studied and described as location and time bound. Yet conflict is rarely confined and contained, and instead reaches across communities, borders, and generations.