In an article by the New York Times, cultural heritage law specialist Evelien Campfens discusses the difficulties surrounding the ownership of looted art.

On 3 and 4 June 2024, GTGC acted as the host for the Eighth GIG-ARTS Conference. This edition had the theme ‘Thirty Years of Multistakeholderism in Internet Governance: Assessments and Prospects'.

In his art, Rafael Martig shows how drastically human activity changes nature. Fieldwork during his studies reinforced this view. ‘On Ameland I found masses of meadow birds, but the greenery on the mainland was often a grass desert.

Baroque flautist Jed Wentz followed two years of dancing classes in order to develop the right feeling for the gestures required for the Baroque French opera genre ‘tragédie en musique’. In his dissertation, the links between gesture affect and rhythmic freedom in the performance of the tragédie en…

Professor of Law and Society Maartje van der Woude is searching for innovative ways to facilitate dialogue about topics that are usually experienced as ‘difficult to talk about’ – such as racism, ethnic profiling, exclusion, crimmigration – with a wide audience.

What does it mean to be a migrant in a big city? According to assistant professor Kamila Krakowska Rodrigues, artists have the answer to that question. In a new ERC-funded project, she will explore the representation of contemporary urban diversity in films, performance art, written literature and spoken…

LUC is honoured to announce that its Liberal Arts & Sciences: Global Challenges programme is one of the highest ranked Liberal Arts and Sciences programmes in the Netherlands and has been awarded the ‘Top Rated Programme’ quality seal by the Keuzegids Universiteiten 2017!

The Research Catalogue (RC) is a searchable database for archiving artistic research. It comprises an open source, online, collaborative workspace application for the archiving, designing and publishing of artistic research.

In a remote cave on the Indonesian island of Borneo, a series of rock art paintings have been discovered. The oldest painting might be the oldest-known example of figurative cave art. Wil Roebroeks, not himself involved in this project, reflects on the findings in several media.

Leiden-Yale collaboration uncovers a tale of samurai same-sex love in a library manuscript.

How to keep 80 students with different backgrounds motivated for 3 hours? Stefano Cucurachi knows how! By incorporating current developments, lively discussions and even some improvisation theatre, this assistant professor managed to become Teacher of the Year 2018. ‘You have to find ways of gaining…

How did the Arabs manage to maintain an empire based on Islamic principles for three hundred years? Arab expert Petra Sijpesteijn and her team will be examining this question over the coming five years, focusing on the correspondence of ordinary people. The research is being funded by an ERC Consolidator…

The debate on migration and criminalisation concerns everyone from citizens and policymakers to academics. The Crimmigration in an Age of Authoritarian Drift conference in Leiden in July aims to offer new insights and encourage collaboration. Artists are playing a key role.

A passion for video games, visuals and science: it almost seems impossible to bring all of this together. Yet, scientific animator Vera Williams found that dream combination at NeCEN's microscopy lab. 'An image or animation can help clarify the content of complex research.'

In the 16th and 17th centuries, many Northern-Netherlandish artists drew outdoors to train their hands and eyes, and to record landscapes and nature. In her inaugural lecture on 21 March 2022, Yvonne Bleyerveld, Professor by Special Appointment of Art on Paper and Parchment, draws our attention to a…

An X-ray scanner, some small metal balls, and a newly developed algorithm. That is all you need to make a 3D model that enables you to look inside art objects without dismantling them. Thanks to the research of Francien Bossema (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica and Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer…

Call for Papers for the Conference to be held on November 29th and 30th at Leiden University and coordinated by Prof. dr. M.A. (Marcel) Cobussen, involving Keynote speakers Salomé Voegelin, Gascia Ouzounian, Holger Schulze, and Jean-Paul Thibaud.

For the twelfth consecutive year, Leiden University College The Hague has been awarded the 'Top Programme' quality label by the Keuzegids Universiteiten 2025. With an impressive overall score of 89 out of 100 points, the Liberal Arts and Sciences: Global Challenges (BA/BSc) programme has earned five…

Ominous witches, gruesome monsters, and hideous freaks: from Saturday 15 June, Kunsthal Rotterdam will be putting the spotlight on the shady depths of human imagination in the exhibition Hello darkness, my old friend. Seventy works on paper from the collection of the Leiden University Libraries confront…

LUC The Hague is honoured to announce that, for the fifth time, its Liberal Arts & Sciences: Global Challenges programme has been awarded the ‘Top Rated Programme’ quality seal by the Keuzegids Universiteiten 2018!

The film Blade Runner as part of the law curriculum? It’s not that weird to Maartje van der Woude, Professor of Law and Society, and Frans-Willem Korsten, Professor of Literature, Culture and Law. ‘The film raises a fundamental question: what’s a human and what’s not?’ From the next academic year onwards,…

From games to scavenger hunts: museums already do all sorts of things for children. But how do children really look at art? Do paintings affect them more if they receive information that is specially tailored to young visitors? Join psychologist Francesco Walker at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and see…

Are AI models such as Midjourney violating artists' copyright? Dirk Visser, Professor of Intellectual Property Law, spoke about this topic on Dutch current affairs news programme 'NOS Radio 1 Journaal' .

Jed Wentz is a University Lecturer at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts of the Leiden University. He earned a PhD from the docARTES programme and his doctoral thesis Gesture, Affect and Rhythmic Freedom in the Performance of French Tragic Opera from Lully to Rameau explored how historical…

The way the great masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries learned to draw is more similar to a present-day drawing class or book than you might think. Professor of ‘Art on Paper and Parchment’ Yvonne Bleyerveld tells us about the art of copying and model books.

A team of researchers has dated a prehistoric painting in Indonesia to at least 51.200 years ago, they have proposed in a study that this painting is the oldest known example of “figurative” art.

The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) is hosting an international conference on November 29 and 30 at Gravensteen on the role and position of sounds and sounding arts in public urban environments. This unique conference aims to increase the attention to the role of the sound, sound design,…

How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

In 2014 Argentinean pianist and researcher specialized in tango music, Bárbara Varassi Pega, obtained her PhD degree on the thesis titled 'Creating and Re-creating Tangos: Artistic processes and innovations in Music by Pugliese, Salgán, Piazzolla and Beytelmann'. The Art of Tango is the re-work of…

From a catastrophic fire to a flood that engulfs the earth. Mineke Schipper, Professor Emeritus of Literary Studies, has collected myths from the four corners of the earth about the end of humanity. These have inspired 30 striking paintings by Japanese artist Yuriko Yamaguchi. The Dutch premiere of…

From 22 to 24 October, researchers of the MARBLES-project informed museum visitors about microbes: bacteria and fungi that live all around us. The event was organised around the Micro-day of Leiden, which is this year’s EU City of Science.

Lecture, Seminar

A cannon, a sabre, guns: these Sri Lankan objects had been in the Rijksmuseum for centuries. In early December, they were returned to Sri Lanka. Associate Professor of Colonial History Alicia Schrikker led the research that formed the basis for the restitution and published a volume on the findings…

Knowledge and culture subproject 4:

Decent work involves opportunities for work that delivers a fair income, care for occupational health and safety, freedom for people to organize and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men. The Labour Law department at Leiden University conducts research and provides education on…

Demonstration experiments are a potentially powerful instrument to improve the micro-macro thinking of students in secondary education. Therefore we want to design a practical and generative approach to assist teachers to develop lessons with a demonstration experiment.

What is effective viewing behavior for foreign language learners and how can teachers effectively train language learners to apply effective viewing strategies that will maximize their learning when viewing subtitled materials?

Beginning teachers often experience difficulties making activating lessons. This study investigates how and if the practical teaching model can offer them a hand in learning to design lessons.

At our regular panel discussions we bring together scholars and other experts to discuss a current topic that captures the interest of the general public as well as academics.

Leiden has a long history in the treatment of blood cell cancer. Research to find better therapies never stands still. One of the potential treatments currently being worked on is a ‘living medicine’.

This study investigates and analyses didactical approaches in theory and practice of both scholars and expert teachers in Religious Education/Life World Orientation (for secondary level) in their role as Identity Agents in order to discover and develop didactical key components contributing to religious…

The Minor in Teaching was introduced in 2009 as a new initiative to introduce and prepare bachelor students for teaching. Student numbers are low, however, especially of mathematics and science students.

How can reciprocal learning of mentor and mentee about PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge) during the secondary school internship be established?

The Dutch Center for Travel Writing Studies s a scientific center that develops and coordinates initiatives to promote research into travel writing. It actively seeks contact with external (scientific and social) partners to collaborate on issues surrounding cultural / national identity, cultural contact…

For the eleventh time in a row, Leiden University’s unique liberal arts and sciences programme has been awarded the ‘Top Rated Programme’ quality seal by Keuzegids universiteiten 2024.

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

Lecture