Together with four European partner universities heritage specialist Dr Monique van den Dries has been granted an Erasmus+ project (EU-CUL) by the European Commission. This project sets up a unique cooperation between educational scientists and academic heritage specialists. It will study how universities…

Who is Economic Man? Every economic paradigm presupposes an anthropology, a theory of human nature. This project explores the anthropologies presupposed and produced by ancient Greek economic texts, and the specific knowledge forms that shape these anthropologies.

The project aims to conserve and consolidate the entrance gate to the Roman Desert Frontier Fort Qasr Bshir.

Studying one another’s languages and cultures fosters understanding between groups of people, which leads to more equality, along with increased economic, administrative, and cultural cooperation.

Heritage Quest volunteers are awarded the second prize

Leiden University can build an alternative Humanities Campus on its own available land at the current location in the city. This is the conclusion of a feasibility study and is what the mayor and aldermen of Leiden write in a letter to the city council.

PhD defence

How can heritage institutions make their organisations, collections and exhibitions more inclusive and accessible? University lecturer Eliza Steinbock will investigate this using a NWO Smart Culture grant.

Conference

Crossing borders and connecting people in archaeological heritage management. Essays in honour of prof. Willem J.H. Willems

How should we address our colonial heritage? And how digital and accessible are our collections? Outgoing State Secretary Fleur Gräper spoke with researchers and heritage specialists about this on 25 January.

Imprint of Action is the first large-scale study focussing entirely on sociocultural impact in archaeology and, as such, is explorative in nature; it provides unique insights into the workings of interaction and participation in archaeological events, and openly shares qualitative and quantitative research…

Leiden University is a unique international centre for the advanced study of languages, cultures, arts, and societies worldwide, in their historical contexts from prehistory to the present.

NEARCH aims to explore the different dimensions of public participation in contemporary archaeology and uncover new ways to work and collaborate within this field of expertise.

This autumn The Centre for Global Heritage and Development will present a Massive Open Online Course or MOOC on the topic Heritage under Threat.

PhD defence

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Cultural heritage throughout the world is under threat from wars, neglect and looting. Learn more about it during a free online course.

On Monday 9 May, IIASL alumnus Adrian Young gave a very satisfying cross-disciplinary session between law and the arts, on the preservation of heritage in space.

Jelle Wouters (RTC Bhutan), Erik de Maaker (CADS Leiden) and Radhika Gupta (CADS Leiden) have been awarded a €260.000 grant by the Gerda Henkel Foundation for the research project ‘Perpetuating Highland Heritages of Bhutan’. This 4-year research project focuses on vernacular and unacknowledged heritages…

War and terrorism overshadow interest in the pre-Islamic heritage of the Arabic peninsula. The new Leiden Centre for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to make the general public more aware of the ancient history of this region.

Trinidad and Tobago, a twin-island nation, has over 300 identified archaeological sites that testify to its diverse history, covering pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. Many of these sites were discovered by archaeologists in the 20th century and have not been regularly visited and assessed.…

AI has huge societal and economic potential and is widely used. But it also brings challenges: how do we combine human values with AI, how do we make AI more transparent and understandable, and what can AI and human cognition learn from each other, for example about language learning?

Highland Bhutan is facing unprecedented challenges from a combination of climate change, new economic opportunities, and changing cultural aspirations of its residents. Today, what does highland heritage constitute, to who, and how does it matter?

Dr Gül Aktürk Hauser (Assistant Professor, Department of Heritage and Society, Faculty of Archaeology) and Dr Sophie Starrenburg (Assistant Professor, Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden Law School) organised a workshop titled ‘An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Heritage Reparations:…

Past, Present and Future of Nubian Communities in Sudan

Lecture

Ian Simpson is a relatively new face at the Faculty of Archaeology. Starting as an assistant professor in the Heritage and Society department in 2018, he is one of the faculty’s members in critical heritage studies and looks both at the past as well as the future. ‘I study how heritage can be employed…

Gelderland Heritage and Leiden University’s Faculty of Archaeology have won the European Heritage Award / Europa Nostra Award 2022 in the ‘research’ category with the Heritage Quest citizen science project. ‘Heritage Quest has shown that citizens can play an active role in protecting cultural heritage…

There is no heritage without emotional sharing and clashing. This article explores the involvement of divergent emotions in heritage making by discussing the debate series of Imagine IC and the Reinwardt Academy and zooming in on the commemoration of slavery and imagery of ‘Black Pete’ in the Netherlands.…

In a significant step toward restoring cultural heritage, PhD candidate Marie Kolbenstetter has played a pivotal role in repatriating a collection of 133 archaeological artefacts from the prestigious Musée du quai Branly in Paris back to their place of origin in southern Honduras. Her efforts underscore…

The construction of the new building for the Faculty of Science is in full progress. The Cell Observatory of the Institute of Biology Leiden will be moving to the new building in the beginning of 2016. Professor Annemarie Meijer and Dr. Marcel Schaaf had a sneak preview.

Explore how cultural heritage can proactively respond to global crises, from geopolitical conflicts to climate change, through innovative cross-cultural collaboration between Latin American stakeholders and Una Europa.

As of 1 September 2019, Prof. Pieter ter Keurs will assume the position of Scientific Director at the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Global Heritage and Development as well as that of Professor of Museums, Collections and Society at the Faculties of Humanities and Archaeology at Leiden University.…

Work has begun on an accommodation complex for international PhD candidates and postdocs at the Leiden Bio Science Park.

Grassroots heritage initiatives and community engagement

Professor Ian Lilley, the Faculty of Archaeology’s Willem Willems Chair in Archaeological Heritage, was invited by Her Excellency Mrs. Marion Derckx, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Australia, to present the 2022 commemoration speech for Netherlands Memorial Day on May 4th at the Netherlands-Australia…

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…

HERLING (Research Lab for the Study of Heritage Languages of the Netherlands) is a new centre that aims to bridge the gap between scientific research and language communities.

Dean Prof. Willem J.H. Willems will be travelling to Mongolia in september 2010, as participant of the Mongolian International Heritage Team (MIHT). Prof. Willems is co-president and expert member of ICAHM, the ICOMOS International Committee of Archaeological Heritage Management and will serve as evaluator…

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…

Debate

Education and Organisation Development

Two short documentaries by Till F. Sonnemann highlight the work conducted by Leiden archaeologists on Hispaniola as part of the Nexus1492 project.

What does it mean to be Aruban, Bonairian or Curaçaoan? In the Traveling Caribbean Heritage project historian Gert Oostindie studies this question together with PhD candidate Joeri Arion and heritage specialist Valika Smeulders. Other researchers and the islanders themselves are also collaborating…

Violent conflicts all over the world pose a great threat. Not only to the region’s inhabitants, but also to the cultural heritage in the area. This is the subject of the Europe Lecture in The Hague on 13 June.

Amy Strecker assesses the institutional framework for landscape protection, analyses the interplay between landscape and human rights, and links the etymology and theory of landscape with its articulation in law.

Theft, prostitution, fortune-telling or murder. Historian Manon van der Heijden and a group of students are researching court records from The Hague from 1600 to 1800. They are tracing crimes and offenders and shedding new light on The Hague’s Gevangenpoort (or Prison Gate). Among their many discoveries…