The aim of the project is to contribute to the process of archive formation ongoing in Post-Apartheid South Africa through the inclusion of photographs that have been either unacknowledged or excised from the national canon.

Monday 29 January, the annual meeting of Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Safety and Security (LDE CSS) took place at Wijnhaven. The conference started with pitches of projects financed via seed money of LDE CSS. Followed by interaction in small groups to formulate research and education topics for the…

The University of Limerick (Ierland) is looking for a postdoctoral researcher to explore aspects of nonconformity and deviance in the early modern world of learning. Deadline for proposals: May 11.

In Nature researchers at Leiden University and Utrecht University show how 47 teeth from Southern China indicate that anatomically modern humans where present at least 80,000 years ago in the region. This is 40,000 years earlier than in Europe.

Scientist looked for the genetic footprint of fire use in our genes, but found that our prehistoric cousins - the Neanderthals - and even the great apes seem better at dealing with the toxins in smoke than modern humans.

Two Vidi subsidies for Faculty of Archaeology.

The University’s Executive Board (College van Bestuur) has decided to continue the Leiden University profile area Asian Modernities and Traditions for another four years, from 2015 to 2018. By 2018, AMT2 commits itself to achieve demonstrable results in enhancing the visibility of Asian research both…

For a long time, even many researchers thought that guide dogs were a relatively modern invention. An accidental encounter with archival material showed university lecturer Krista Milne that guide dogs helped their blind owners as far back as the Middle Ages. Milne now has received an NWO XS grant to…

Leiden University's Asian Modernities and Traditions research area will be presented on 9 September, in the form a conference. The keynote speaker is Professor Prasenjit Duara, Director of the Asia Research Institute of the Singapore National University. The title of his address is Sustainability and…

Neanderthals and modern humans in Belgium, a bone story

Barbarism: from the 18th century to the present.

Radboud University is looking for a PhD researcher who will investigate the afterlife of medieval thought in early modern Europe through the study of concrete instances of intellectual transfer, for instance the appropriation of specific medieval authors or early modern revaluations of specific themes…

Studying Sumerian grammar in your free time: Bram Jagersma did it. He described centuries-old Sumerian using a modern method he devised himself. For this PhD research he was awarded the De La Court Award for Independent Research by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science (KNAW).

Individual traders should be at the forefront of the study of early modern world trade rather than institutions such as states and companies, argues Professor of Global Economic Networks Cátia Antunes. Inaugural lecture on 9 June.

The book on Turkey. A Modern History written by Professor Erik-Jan Zürcher, Professor of Turkish Studies, is now available in nine different languages. Arabic and Polish versions have now been published.

Recently, Hans-Martien ten Napel was in the news on the above subject several times.

The Modern Migration Policy Act aims to ensure that the admission of regular migrants is effective and manageable.

This study offers a new view on public services in the early modern Low Countries and answers the following questions: who provided public facilities in urban communities and in which ways did public amenities change in the period between 1500 and 1800?

On 5 September 2017, Alessandro Tonutti defended his PhD dissertation

The Middle East has a rich literary tradition, which is steadily gaining a foothold in the West. Modern literary works deal with contemporary issues, such as the legacy of colonialism, the struggles between traditionalism and modernity, the place of women in society and the war in Israel/Palestine.

Neanderthals were able to make fire on a large scale with the aid of pyrite and hand-axes. This means they could decide when and where they wanted fire and were not dependent on natural fire, as was thought earlier. Archaeologist Andrew Sorensen has discovered the first material evidence for this. Publication…

How did “free agents” (entrepreneurs operating outside of the myriad of interests of the centralized, state-sponsored monopolies) in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire react to the creation of colonial monopolies (royal monopolies and chartered companies) by the central states in the Early Modern…

In 2016, Marcel Cobussen successfully applied for two trainee positions at ACPA, funded by the Humanities Research Traineeship Programme at Leiden University. One of the results, a multi-media essay 'In Search of the Public. Exploring Contemporary Performance Practices of Classical Music in The Netherlands'…

From 16 to 26 July, the Leiden Institute of Physics organizes its annual summer school, titled ‘Modern Physics at all Scales’.

An interdisciplinary and innovative research group combining History, underwater archaeology, GIS and wood provenancing methods.

Leiden University is home to over a hundred specialists studying the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. From 2017-2018 onwards, they will join forces to offer two new options for specialisation within existing MA programmes: Medieval Studies and Early Modern Studies.

Onlangs verscheen het boek ‘Afgrond zonder vangnet’ van Yra van Dijk, hoogleraar Moderne Nederlandse Literatuur. In haar boek analyseert ze verschillende thema's in het werk van Arnon Grunberg.

In a new article in the journal Scientific Reports, Leiden archaeologist Wei Chu and colleagues report on recent excavations in Western Romania at the site of Româneşti, one of the most important sites in southeastern Europe associated with the earliest Homo sapiens. The site gives an important glimpse…

Ahab Bdaiwi, University Lecturer of Islamic history, religion and philosophy, was received the first Faculty Impact Award. His interest lies in ‘everything that has to do with antiquity’, especially the religious and philosophical ideas that arose at that time. ‘They can move people. And many of those…

The first biennial symposium Environmental History in the Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries is scheduled for October 25 and 26, 2024. This event aims to facilitate the exchange of recent research, ongoing projects, and key discussions within the realm of environmental history among scholars from…

Lecture and Masterclass with Alexandra Sapoznik (King's College London) Connecting economic and environmental histories in the pre-modern world 12 and 13 May 2025, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Deadline for submissions: 29 April 2025, 13:00

In early modern England, courts of law were working overtime. University lecturer Lotte Fikkers delved into the records of centuries-old court cases involving women. In Early Modern Women's Life-Writing and English Law, she reconstructs how the story they told in court differs from the one they wrote…

The Scientific Research and Documentation Centre (WODC) has commissioned the Institute of Immigration Law to evaluate the Modern Migration Policy Act. The purpose of this law was to develop a modern, selective and innovative admission policy for legal migration, which is welcoming for economically desirable…

On 25 and 26 October 2024, the first biennial symposium Environmental History in the Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries, is scheduled to take place at Leiden University.

Jonathan Powell came to Leiden from England to conduct research into the role of women in early modern court cases. In addition to all kinds of exciting documents, he also discovered the biscuits from the Water & Bloem bakery and the wild flowers at the Groenesteeg cemetery.

Who doesn't love to turn on a horror film on a rainy evening? Fortunately, it is only fiction - or is it? According to university lecturer Evert Jan van Leeuwen, modern horror says more about our society than we think. He has been nominated for the Klokhuis Science Prize for his research into addiction…

On October 11, the Austria Centre Leiden teamed up with the Leiden Jewish Studies Association to welcome Dr. Lena Sadovski for a lunch time talk. Fifteen colleagues from across the university, including retirees and graduate students, attended Dr. Sadovski's fascinating lecture entitled “When religion…

The central aim is examining gender differences in recorded crime, particularly in relation to interpersonal violence, in early modern Bologna.

On Monday, April 24 the Austria Centre Leiden and the Leiden Jewish Studies Association hosted a special seminar with Prof. Edyta Gawron entitled “Politics and the Holocaust in Modern Poland.” Gawron is a historian and professor of Jewish Studies at Jagiellonian University in Kraków and a noted expert…

How did nineteenth century scholars evaluate each other and each other’s work through more or less informal practices of peer review?

Blood, Sweat and Tears: The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe

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.