What was the social function of the colonial civil law courts in eighteenth-century coastal Sri Lanka? Why did people choose to have their disputes settled by Dutch law courts?

The ability to create objects and structures with our hands has been essential to human development. This ability is something modern society is at risk of losing. Leiden archaeologists gather knowledge about ancient processes of ‘making and creating’ over the centuries, knowledge that helps our current…

Subproject of

How did local lifeways and crafting practices persist and develop in the diverse environments of the increasingly interconnected Gulf of Fonseca (AD 400-1521)?

Mashaghi lab conducts research at the interface of physics, engineering and biomedicine. We develop and use theoretical and experimental approaches to address basic and applied research problems.

Vaccines are an extraordinary category of biopharmaceuticals. They are usually prophylactic and come in many types, from whole bacteria to peptides and nucleic acids. They are very cost effective and almost every human on the planet is vaccinated. The latter mandates that vaccines have to be extremely…

Having encountered a series of shocks that pose an existential threat to our livelihoods, our societies have become increasingly polarized.

Here you'll find selected publications and media attention from our group.

Featured Reviews published on the HJD blog offer an accessible platform for scholars and practitioners to share reflections, spark dialogue, and highlight innovative ideas shaping the study and practice of diplomacy.

This project investigates the full ecosystem of Middle Dutch prayerbooks in order to answer questions about their role in – and impact on – religion, culture, and society in the late medieval Low Countries.

Bones hold a wealth of information about a person’s life, revealing details about where they came from, how old they were when they died and what diseases they may have had. Scientists can use this data to piece together aspects of an individual's life, offering valuable insights that can help address…

We investigate the molecular basis underlying health and disease and provide answers to existing and emerging health problems. Within this theme, we study diseases ranging from rare genetic disorders to cancer and infectious diseases. We make use of a wide variety of model systems and pursue diverse…

This one-year, English-taught Master's programme offers insights on general developments as well as the specific challenges in the field of the governance of crisis and security, with in-depth knowledge of sub-fields of crisis and security management.

This one-year, English-taught Master's programme offers insights on general developments as well as the specific challenges in the field of the governance of crisis and security, with in-depth knowledge of sub-fields of crisis and security management.

Fieldwork

Learn to use a visual ethnography framework in each phase of the research process.

LUCDH are delighted to offer students of the Humanities a range of courses to develop their digital skills and critical thinking. Keen to learn more about our Digital Humanities minor 2026? All of our course descriptions will be updated in March. Check back soon!

After obtaining your bachelor's degree, you are ready for the next step: continuing your studies or entering the labour market. Completing the Urban Studies programme will provide excellent preparation for both options.

Are you keen to develop your digital skills and critical thinking? Then the Digital Humanities and Cultural Analytics minor might be something for you.

LUCDH are delighted to offer students of the Humanities a range of courses to develop their digital skills and critical thinking. Keen to learn more about our Digital Humanities minor 2026? All of our course descriptions will be updated in March. Check back soon!

The Tappino Area Archaeological Project aims to map and analyze ancient settlement patterns and dynamics in a small valley in Central-Southern Italy, in modern Molise (province of Campobasso). The first sites in the area date to the Bronze Age. In the Iron Age to Classical period, it was reportedly…

Labour is back as a significant social and political force in Indonesia, as was shown in the recent 1 May trade union demonstrations in Jakarta. Over the past years major changes have taken place in Indonesian labour law, leading to new forms of judicial and political resolution of labour disputes.

Some MPs are very active, while others are not. The number of proposals and questions that MPs in the Netherlands put forward is determined in part by the level of activity of their fellow committee members rather than by electoral incentive, which is the case in other countries.

When psychologists repeated a hundred studies in 2015, their results differed in two-thirds of the studies. ‘Research into research is not a luxury but a necessity,’ says Professor of Methodology and Statistics of Psychological Research Mark de Rooij. ‘My aim is to improve psychological research, to think…

Knowledge and culture subproject 4:

This subproject, carried out by post-doctoral researcher Dr. O. Nieuwenhuyse, investigates changes and continuities in the functional, social and symbolic uses of the material culture, c. 6800-5800 BC. A contextually oriented approach is adopted, which pays attention to the local socio-economic and…

The International Criminal Law programme prepares you for a successful career within a multidimensional field, in Europe or around the world.

How to access the end-of-supply risk of spare pares using big data analytics

How do you ensure that research is performed, evaluated and managed in a responsible way? This question is also of the utmost important to the University itself. The Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) studies scientific research and its relationship with technology, innovation and soci…

Explore an interactive i-doc platform for virtual navigation of ethnographically investigated case studies in Gdańsk, Turin, and Rotterdam.

In the summer of 2011, from June 14th until August 5th, the Laboratory for Human Osteoarchaeology conducted an excavation on the former cemetery of Middenbeemster in cooperation with archaeological company Hollandia. The cemetery, which is located next to the church of Middenbeemster can be dated between…

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.

It has been argued that the Internet presents numerous new opportunities for crime, including homicide. So far, empirical scholarly research in this domain is rather limited. In order to discover how perpetrators have used the Internet in the homicides they have committed, we conducted an international…

The main research objective is to map the cities of Roman Asia Minor in terms of location, size, urban amenities and juridical status, with the specific aim to understand the reasons how this urban settlement pattern arose.

Experimental research

The Biomedical Microscale Analytics group is led by Dr. Rawi Ramautar. In present-day metabolomics, and bioanalysis in general, the analytical toolbox used encounters difficulties for the analysis of limited amounts of biological samples. As a result, a significant number of crucial biomedical/clinical…

Psycholinguistic research

What can continuity and change in the manufacturing of locally made ceramics from the early colonials Spanish towns of Concepción de la Vega, Cotuí and Nueva Cádiz (1492-1600) tell us about the choices people made in ceramic production as a reaction the the changing social environment?

Dynamics of material, social and ideological relationships in the pre-Columbian insular Caribbean

The main purpose of this book is to give a description of the Cholón language as represented in the Arte de la lengua cholona (ALC), a colonial grammar written in 1748 by a Franciscan friar, named Pedro de la Mata. The ALC was transcribed by Fray Gerónimo Clota in 1772. This grammar is kept in the British…

This MA offers in-depth insight into the history of the book—both manuscript and print—as well as publishing and digital textual media. You’ll gain strong academic and practical skills in the field of Book Studies.

To be eligible for Global Ethnography at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

This PhD project investigates how automatic sign language recognition technology can be further developed to analyse static images and textual descriptions of signs.

We study the structure, dynamics and physics of complex networks emerging from the intricate interconnectedness of the constituents of large systems.

Research in the Natural Computing and Optimization cluster covers theoretical foundations, the development of new algorithms, and interdisciplinary applications of natural computing methods.

Together with researchers from over the world, the ENIGMA-Anxiety Working Group endeavors to unravel the neurobiology of anxiety disorders and related constructs.

Exploring the value of data-driven approaches in education: collecting, analysing, and interpreting data from educational environments to improve teaching and learning outcomes.

This problem analysis raises the importance of a two interlinked questions: (1) what are important digital skills in the public sector? and (2) how well do different organizational and individual factors explain differences in skills levels?