This centre brings together the research of the members of the Institute of Philosophy and affiliated academics whose work focuses on the history of philosophy broadly conceived. Research interests range from ancient to near-contemporary philosophy in various regions of the world, and cover all subdisciplines…

Alicia Schrikker, Director of Research at the Leiden University Institute for History shed light on the importance of preserving archives of natural disasters. Her lecture titled History, Memory, and Archives of Disaster looked at the 1883 Krakatoa eruption through archival records of the colonial government…

PhD Programme of the Institute for History

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:

When people migrate, they leave an old environment behind and move to a new one. What exactly happens? How do the migrants feel? How does the host society respond to them?

How did our academic community position itself in relation to a system that deprived people of their freedom? What role did the university, as an educational institution, play with regard to colonialism and the system of slavery? How can we best engage with and manage our special collections?

MA History: Governance of Migration and Diversity specialisation at Leiden University

Ariadne Schmidt is professor by special appointment of the History of urban culture, in particular of Leiden (the Magdalena Moons Chair, funded by the Magdalena Moons Chair Foundation) and associate professor Economic and Social History. She is also Chair of Education of the bachelor, master and research…

MA History specialisation Governance of Migration and Diversity at Leiden University

The hypothesis of this research is that the municipality used the impressive the Town Hall to enforce its rule and represent its political ideas and make use of sources such as biographies, poems, pamphlets, sermons and governmental documents.

Articles are published in Open Access at no cost to the author.

The acquisition and administration of the possessions of the “Teutonic House” in Utrecht, and its dependencies, in the Middle Ages until c.1600.

John's research focuses on the history of colonial concessionary companies in sub-Saharan Africa between roughly 1880-1960.

How to related figures of savages to conceptions of history?

History of Africa and the Americas

As a critical commemoration of its centenary, this book presents a mosaic of one hundred carefully curated fragments by expert authors, shedding light on politics, economy, society, culture, gender, and arts in a hundred years of Turkey.

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural…

Archives were a common target during the Second World War, and hundreds suffered damages. Among these archival losses, the losses to medieval manuscript collections stand out.

Natural history collections provide invaluable sources for researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds, aspiring to study the geographical distribution of flora and fauna across the globe as well as other evolutionary processes.

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural…

Promotores: Prof.dr. P.M. Brakefield, Prof.dr. B.J. Zwaan (Wageningen Universiteit)

Maps play a crucial role in our view of the past, yet few historians are sufficiently skilled in cartography to genuinely integrate maps into their research. This project breaks down the long-standing barriers between history and cartography by inviting emerging scholars (ResMA) to reflect on maps as…

In comparing a selection of 18th-century histories to a representative sample of 19th-century histories of science, this project inquires: Which early modern vices persisted into the 19th century and to what extent were those vices embodied in anecdotes, conveyed through commonplaces, or symbolically…

Rafał Matuszewski is an assistant professor at the Institute for History.

Bianca Angelien Claveria is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History, and a member of Dr. Fenneke Sysling's ERC Starting Grant project COMET: Human Subject Research and Medical Ethics in Colonial Southeast Asia.

Christine Mertens (1994) is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History at Leiden University and at the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) in Middelburg.

Esther Zwinkels is an external PhD candidate at the Institute for History.

I am a historian of political history working on the impact of colonialism on Dutch and British political practice. Whereas most political historians deal with change and innovation, I am interested in how the political elite (re)claimed power after experiencing disruption. I cross historiographical…

How do Central African refugees navigate through uncertainty in a new and hostile environment in the DR Congo?

This collaborative project aims to explore the history of the concept “barbarism” in Europe from the 18th century to the present, with a particular emphasis on the role of literature and art in the concept’s shifting functions.

This research will investigate which aspects of On the sublime received attention in the intellectual milieu of the seventeenth century and how the sublime found its way in the political and artistic discourse of that time. Thus I aim to shed light on the role of art in politics and society in this…

This project will clarify how these concepts operated in theoretical writings on performance ,this broadened conceptual framework will not only give us a clear view on how sublime effects in performance were theorized, it will also provide us a concrete apparatus to understand the cultural and political…

Nichiran kankei-shi o yomitoku [Revisiting the History of Dutch-Japanese Relations] is a new, two-volume Japanese publication with a chapter written by Wulan Remmelink. Both volumes offer a new look on the historical relations between Japan and The Netherlands during the Edo period by examining various…

Manon van der Heijden is Professor of Comparative Urban History at the Institute for History.

Ann Marie Wilson is Assistant Professor of History at Leiden University College. She received her BA from the University of Michigan’s Residential College, her MA from San Francisco State University, and her PhD from Harvard University. At LUC she teaches courses in historical methods and environmental…

Stijn Bussels is Academic Director of the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society and Professor of Art history, especially before 1800.

Dario Fazzi is Professor of Transatlantic Environmental History at Leiden University and the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies in Middelburg, the Netherlands.

World History — a Genealogy charts the history of the discipline through twenty-five in-depth conversations with historians whose work has shaped the field of world history in fundamental ways.

This book provides an exploration into the historical transformations of women's interactions with state police in the Western world from 1800 to 1950.

Why does the history of dogmatism deserve our attention? This open access book analyses uses of the term, following dogmatism from Victorian Britain to Cold War America, examining why it came to be regarded as a vice, and how understandings of its meaning have evolved.

Islamic Thought and History (ITH) is a peer-reviewed book series that publishes new approaches to Islamic thought and the history of ideas in the Islamic civilisation.

The main aim of this project is to reveal and unravel the invisible histories of the UN, transcending the dominant Western perspective to recover the historical agency of Global South actors. The research will investigate how the UN has both facilitated and limited their role in shaping global order…

In a podcast episode of 'The Dissenter' Eric Storm talks about his book 'Nationalism: A World History'.