The Dutch Research School Art History (OSK) and Utrecht University organize the Technical Art History Days. On April 4 and 5, experts present and discuss current research at Utrecht University that brings together material and digital approaches for the study of art and heritage.

PhD defence

Pakistani archaeologist Abdul Ghani Khan (MPhil) and Dr Marike van Aerde (Leiden University) have been awarded the Prince Claus Heritage Emergency Grant for the rescue and preservation of ancient rock art in the Karakorum mountain range of the Pakistani Himalayas. The project will run for a year, from…

Last year, the Art History program, led by lecturers Laura Bertens and Elizabeth den Hartog, started the course The Academic Art of Publishing, in which students work on editing and publishing an academic journal: 'Panoramic. The Leiden Art Review'.

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections and interactions between a variety of artistic expressions and society. It focuses not only on objects (artistic, literary, cinematic, and medial), but also on practices (aesthetic, political, and cultural).

Law researcher Evelien Campfens is calling for a better legal treatment of looted art. ‘For lawyers, ownership is a very absolute concept. There is one legal owner and that is that.’ Campfens is a PhD candidate at the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Global Heritage and Development.

From March 27 to 31 Byvanck Professor Carrie Vout gave the intensive masterclass Classical Art - Definitions, Politics, Limits. This special lecture series was open to students and PhD candidates in Archaeology and Classics. One of the attendees, Nicky Schreuder, on the class: 'It was a critical and…

Come to IMAGINARY at Administration and Central Services (Rapenburg 70) and discover the beauty of mathematics. This exhibition is open to the public until 24 March.

Many students dread writing a thesis. Master’s student Laura Robustella's practice-based thesis shows that it is well worth the effort. She developed an art exhibition based on her master’s thesis.

Children are generally not drawn to abstract art, research shows. But how exactly does abstract art affect our emotions? Through empirical research, psychologists from Leiden University are investigating at the Josef Albers Museum in Germany how this form of art can be made more relatable to the world…

Students from the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) can combine their visual arts program from the academic year 2017-2018 with the bachelor program Arts, Media and Society at Leiden University.

This doctoral trajectory explores sound, its image and its role in relating humans and our technologies to the environment.

Where in the model of contemporary art, which can be described as a hybrid and joint undertaking between artists, institutions, curators, theory and discursivity, is the actual 'object' of art located and generated? Where and by whom and in what configuration of positions is it produced? Who or what…

The second and final volume of this co-authored study has just been published by J.B. Metzler. This second monograph explores the history of the concept of barbarism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Appointment of three professors represents jewel in the crown of 15-year partnership between Leiden University and the University of the Arts The Hague.

Steven Frost defended his thesis on 6 June 2017

The publication Making Matters - A Vocabulary for Collective Arts marks the end of the NWO project 'Bridging art, design and technology through Critical Making', led by Janneke Wesseling and Florian Cramer. The book contains the outcomes of this project.

How does a Leiden alumnus end up working at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)? In the case of Daniëlle Kisluk-Grosheide, it was partly down to chance, luck, fate. But that was preceded by a unique degree in decorative arts in Leiden.

Bruno Munari (1907–1998) was a prolific and influential artist, designer, and writer. Alessandro Colizzi’s study is the first extensive, detailed record of Munari’s graphic design production, and as such provides a substantial base for a full understanding of his oeuvre.

Two statues of gorillas abducting women: they were what led PhD candidate Dick van Broekhuizen to write a new type of history of nineteenth-century sculpture. ‘If you view nineteenth-century art history from a less narrow perspective, the narrative changes completely.’ PhD ceremony on 21 June.

Barbarism: from the 18th century to the present.

Audible Absence: Searching for the Site in Sound Production

Colonial art and artefacts were not necessarily looted. Pieter ter Keurs, Professor of Museums, Collections and Society, calls for more nuance in the debate on art and collectors’ items from a loaded past. Inaugural speech on 2 December.

A new outreach initiative for the communication of artistic research!

The subject of the research is ‘difference and repetition’, an area which bears a direct relationship to Wjm Kok’s practice, in which the production of work always emerges and passes through series.

In his Inaugural lecture of February 10th Prof. dr. Henk Borgdorff advocated positive understanding of artistic research, of reasoning in and through art, within academia.

How important is art in the community? And which role can the University play in this? At the first open brainstorming session of Uni for City, artists, students and policymakers discussed the theme of art in the community.

On January 25th, artist Jonas Staal will defend his dissertation which explores the development of propaganda art from the 20th to the 21st century.

On 16 May 2023, Jan Aart Scholte presented research on the Regional Internet Registries to the annual conference of GIG-ARTS in Padua.

This book concerns cultural production in contemporary Latin American cities: chaotic cities where the ideal of order has become fragmented and the walls of the lettered city have become porous. New and multifarious urban trajectories—intersecting, colliding, superimposing—trace the image of the postmodern…

The Groot-Auditorium of the Academy building was recently stage to the graduation of the first cohort of the BA-track Arts, Media and Society. This impressive room, normally only used for PhD defenses and inaugural lectures by professors, was accommodated a ceremony attended by 17 students and their…

Koen de Ceuster, university lecturer for Korea Studies at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, was interviewed on the NKNews Podcast about art in North Korea. He speaks about the role of art in North Korean society, art ‘business’, and argues why it is not possible to separate propaganda…

What practical steps can we take to resolve cross-border claims to looted art and prevent illicit trafficking in cultural goods? That's what the European Parliament asked Leiden legal scholar Evelien Campfens. Her advice: develop a registration system, issue art with a ‘passport’ and set up a European…

In 2021, the KABK, KC and ACPA established a joint research platform, called the Platform for Arts Research in Collaboration (PARC). How did PARC move forward the last year?

Pastoralist Societies, Rock Art and Literacy in Jordan’s Black Desert (200 BC to 800 AD)

On Thursday 12 October 2017 Janneke Wesseling will give a lecture as part of the Studium Generale Programme at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).

For twenty years, the Art History study programme had its own journal, the highly successful Decorum, which was written and edited by students. When the last editor left, the magazine ceased publication. Now, more than 20 years later, it’s time for a new Art History journal.

How do you depict the importance of the Humanities? In honour of the faculty's 444th anniversary, 25 Humanities students, alumni and employees sent in a variety of works of art inspired by the theme 'Humanities matter'. You can come to look at the works from 25 May to 28 August via an art route through…

To achieve societal impact, you need to do more than solely writing academic articles. That's the idea behind the Master Honours Class 'Leiden Revisited', in which students demonstrated with art how residents at the outskirts of Leiden experience the city. 'It's the perfect way to start the debate.'

This research cluster aims to analyse and interpret the formation and transmission of Graeco-Roman culture by exploring the relationships between cultural products (texts, objects, practices) and their societal and historical contexts.

Students who also want to develop their artistic talents can take a year-long art class – Practicum Artium – at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. ‘I can express my creativity and am learning to approach subjects in a visual way.’

Anna Loh is a third-year student of the BA in Arts, Media and Society. We spoke with Anna about what it’s like to write a thesis during COVID-19, Instagram selfies at the museum and growing up abroad.