Impressions by Wouter Baas and Caroline Schep

A multiple isotope approach to human-animal dynamics in the Lesser Antilles across the historical divide

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?

According to a new study by an international team of researchers from the Caribbean, Europe and North America, the Caribbean was settled by several successive population dispersals that originated on the American mainland.

Impressions by Martin Küster, Master of Arts.

Bringing Dominican indigenous collections back to the community

It is integral to many cluster members’ research to use Medieval and Early Modern Arts as a lens for studying the medieval and early modern periods at large:

On 24 November 2015, Prof. Carsten Stahn participated as external expert in a special plenary session of the Assembly of States Parties on the efficiency and effectiveness of Court proceedings, chaired by the co-chairs of the Study Group on Governance of the Assembly.

The precolonial inhabitants of the Caribbean islands communicated, travelled, and exchanged objects and ideas along an expansive inter-island network. New methods of computer modeling shed light on these networks. Emma Slayton is set to discuss her work on this topic at her Defense on the 12th of Se…

Beyond the immediately visible plenum, parliaments are highly complex institutions. They work through various venues in which decisions are prepared or even taken. The two main institutions in this regard are parliamentary party groups, which comprise legislators who are elected under the same party…

Evidencing academic policy to everyday practice from the Erasmus COALITION project

This project investigates how the first generation of Dutch printed books (the incunabula, 1473-1501) affected late medieval spirituality, religious practice and visual culture in the Low Countries.

The focus of this programme is the inter-community social relationships and transformations of island networks in the Lesser Antilles across the historical divide.

ASLU 13

A core interest of our cluster members concerns processes of reception, transformation and (interlingual and intermedial) translation in medieval and early modern art, literature and media from diachronic and synchronic perspectives (in time, space, and between media).

Astronomical observations in Chile, research into native heritage or the treatment of eye diseases in Brazil - Leiden is researching a large number and a wide variety of different topics in Latin America and the Caribbean. Researchers and representatives from 20 countries met on 11 May in Leiden to…

Amerindian settlement patterns and early colonial cartography in Northern Hispaniola

Amerindian intra- and inter-insular relationships and social organization in the pre-colonial Windward Islands.

Organisation of settlement space and residence rules among the Taino, the indigenous people of the Caribbean encountered by Columbus

the production, use and exchange of bodily accoutrements through the lenses of the microscope

The research involves the application and combination of archaeological and archaeometrical methodologies. Petrographic analysis and isotopic provenance studies of raw materials and exotics, and the study of the distribution patterns of these materials are used to gain insight into the exchange of goods…

What are the capabilities or limitations of traveling between islands and how does this reflect seasonal variation? Is it possible to show higher levels of connectivity between islands based on generated pathways between several sites on two separate islands?

Subproject of

Drones are proving to be a good means of mapping man-made changes in the landscape. Geophysicist Till Sonneman and his colleagues (archaeology) are experimenting with drones in inaccessible areas of the Caribbean.

December marks the 15th anniversary of the Dual PhD Centre (DPC). Director Johannes Tromp and associate professor Mark Dechesne look back and ahead. Dechesne: ‘The DPC forms a 'community of knowledge' in which science and society are connected.’

Important dates in the Academic Language Centre calendar

It is difficult to imagine a society other than a hierarchical nation-state. This is in part because we neglect alternative forms from the past, argues archaeologist Lewis Borck in the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology.

Online competitions, online sports, dietary advice for staff and students and 'What do they eat for lunch?' The first 'volunteer' is Vice-Rector Hester Bijl. What does her lunch usually consist of? The University Sports Centre is celebrating its fifty-year anniversary with a whole - corona-proof - programme…

This thesis aims to enhance our understanding of galaxies by testing theoretical models of galaxy formation against observations, particularly in the cases of extreme systems which have been found to have an excess of baryonic mass in their central regions, in the form of either supermassive black holes…

Last Friday, June 3rd, students, professionals and academics put their knowledge to the test during the Leiden Leadership Pubquiz/Leiden Leadership Summer Café. The pubquiz, hosted by Eduard Schmidt, touched upon public leadership in the news, posed statements about remarkable leadership research, and…

A new study published in Archaeometry describes the unexpected results obtained from analyses of five human teeth discovered in a ritual cache at an enslaved African plantation site on the island of Saba in the Caribbean.

This book expands on the existing literature on the international dimension of democratization by introducing the concept of democracy projection. Democracy projection is defined as the projection of (democratic) norms through the every-day practice of interactions-beyond any donor-recipient relationship-between…

In this thesis we use state-of-the-art observations and simulations to provide the best constraints to date on the HVS ejection rate and constraints on the stellar content and dynamics at the GC, including the progenitor binary populations and their star formation history.

A Centre for Global Heritage will be set up at Leiden University, that integrates the unique global breadth and quality of academic expertise at the University and the Leiden Museums with the global infrastructure of practical consultancy expertise built up over the past years by the Centre for International…

The Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for BOLD Cities uses multidisciplinary big data research to help find solutions for urban problems. ‘BOLD’ stands for ‘Big, Open and Linked Data’. Data science is one of the Centre’s main disciplines.

Corinne Hofman (Professor in Caribbean Archaeology) has been awarded 15 million euro by the EU for her archaeological research on the colonisation of the Americas. She will lead the ‘NEXUS 1492’ project together with colleagues Davies (VU), Brandes (Konstanz) and Willems (Leiden).

Leiden heritage expert Sjoerd van der Linde is carrying out research on the heritage of the Caribbean region. This research forms part of the international Nexus 1492 project on the consequences of colonisation for the Americas. ‘We first have to find out what the local population wants.'

Archaeologist Eduardo Herrera Malatesta reflects on the unfamiliarity with the pre-Columbian past that he encountered during fieldwork in the Montecristi province in the Dominican Republic.

A sustainable building that is both sports and examination centre. In September, a design team including architect Atelier PRO will begin to develop the plans for the new University Sports Centre (USC). Construction will begin in 2021, and the building is expected to be completed before September 2022.…

Leiden University is happy to announce that it has won a prestigious Jean Monnet grant for a Centre of Excellence. The Centre, called CompaRe, focusses on comparative regional integration.

The new student centre in The Hague, the Beehive, will be opening its doors in stages starting from 1 October. The name Beehive was chosen because it stands for connection, an individual identity, activity and belonging. This meeting place for students is dedicated to improving the living environment…

Language evolution, targeted drugs or archaeological interpretation. Researchers are making increasing use of supercomputers that can rapidly process large quantities of data. This is one reason why the University data centre will be extended and updated. ‘Datamining means we can get a better picture…

To enjoy the Winter holidays, the Leiden Leadership Centre has selected several interesting illustrations of leadership.

Target selectivity is an important aspect of any drug molecule, and certainly a parameter to be optimized. That is not trivial for a number of reasons. First of all hundreds of drug targets (receptors, enzymes, ion channels) exist, and no single lab in the world has assays for all of them.

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