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Yearbook of Women's History.

Study information

Study information

Leiden has much to celebrate: first, 450 years of the Relief of Leiden and then 450 years of Leiden University. And that is no coincidence.

The MA in Middle Eastern Studies provides intensive and comprehensive training to prepare you for a range of careers requiring specialist language, cultural, or political knowledge.

Dutch troops, judges and politicians collectively condoned and concealed the systematic use of extreme violence during the Indonesian War of Independence. Historians have now shown how this could happen. ‘It was scandal management rather than prevention,’ says Leiden historian and research leader Gert…

How can archaeological datasets reveal the interplay between past indigenous understandings of the surrounding world and resilient and sustainable ways of life in the Isthmo-Colombian Area?

In 1960, not one but 17 African countries became independent. Sixty years later the African Studies Centre Leiden (ASCL) is offering a wide programme to mark this celebration. African Studies itself proved to be a topic of conversation at the kick-off conference on 30 January.

The decolonisation war in Indonesia was violent partly because the Dutch military operated on the conviction that ‘an uprising had to be forcibly suppressed.’ This what historian Christiaan Harinck from the KITLV discovered in his PhD research.

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…

Laura van Broekhoven always knew she wanted to study archaeology, and that’s exactly what she did. Now this Leiden alumna is director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, one of the four museums of the University of Oxford.

Carolien Stolte lectures at the Institute for History within the Faculty of Humanities in Leiden. She intends to use her Veni grant to research the international networks of Indian activists during the period of decolonisation. We spoke to Carolien about her reaction.

Thalia Hoffman is a visual artist and researcher working in film, video, performance, and public interventions in the area she lives in, east of the Mediterranean. In 2020 she graduated from the Leiden University PhDArts programme, with the thesis Guava, a conceptual platform for art-actions.

The research group Science Communication and Society has been physically within the Institute of Biology (IBL) since 2012 and has become a formal part of the institute in 2018. The mission of this group is understanding how science communication works to improve the interaction between science and s…

The main research question of this PhD project focus on how educational policies and practices can contribute to the promotion and understanding of archaeological indigenous heritage among teachers and students in the Caribbean?

Open up a world of opportunities with your master's degree in Archaeology from Leiden University!

With an MSc degree in BPS and Science Communication & Society you are well prepared for a broad array of career prospects in research or industry. The master’s degree is an excellent preparation for a career at the interface of science and public affairs.

Seven large reproductions of works by Rembrandt on seven University buildings in the centre of Leiden reveal the relationship between the painter and the University. Rembrandt van Rijn enrolled in the University in 1620 and painted the portraits of various alumni of the University. The exhibition runs…

The Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) is an internationally oriented institute for research and education in biology. We are part of the Faculty of Science at Leiden University.

Rembrandt painted this Flora, the Roman goddess of spring, in 1635. She is on display above the archway leading from the Academy Building to the lush flora of the University’s Hortus Botanicus. Rembrandt, who had his own cabinet of curiosities, almost certainly knew this botanical garden, the oldest…

Classics and Ancient Civilizations (Research) covers two years and can be studied in four programmes, one of them is Egyptology. When you choose to study this programme, you will both be guided through the broadness of Egyptological sub-disciplines, as well as gradually led to develop your own specific…

Book by Dr. Mariana Françozo resulting from her research into the collection of count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen, governor of the Dutch colony in Northeastern Brazil between 1637 and 1644.

The Faculty of Archaeology ranks as the best on continental Europe and is in the top ten of the world. Our master’s degree in archaeology offers the most diverse programme of its type in the Netherlands.

The Faculty of Archaeology ranks as the best on continental Europe and is in the top ten of the world. Our master’s degree in archaeology offers the most diverse programme of its type in the Netherlands.

In developing cooperation with Indonesia, Leiden University focuses on projects that benefit culture, nature, society and economy, in Indonesia as well as in the Netherlands.

The Faculty of Archaeology ranks as the best on continental Europe and is in the top ten of the world. Our master’s degree in archaeology offers the most diverse programme of its type in the Netherlands.

After graduation you have a lot of opportunities: the field of science communication is very broad. You can also aim for a career in industry or research.

Faculty Lecture

On Thursday 26 June 2025, the Pavilion of the Wereldmuseum Leiden featured the first joint meeting of Leiden University and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam around the shared research theme Collecting Global Heritage. Some 50 researchers, students and collection managers came together to share knowledge,…

This research project is an integral part of its mother-programme NEXUS1492 ERC Synergy Project directed by Prof. Corinne Hofman. Overarchingly, it aims at understanding and bridging from the archaeological perspective the late pre-colonial and early colonial history of the Southeastern Caribbean macroregion…

The general aim of the project is a description and analysis of the Leiden anatomical collections from a humanities perspective. The project investigates how historical and cultural practices and concerns have shaped anatomical preparations and how exhibitions of the anatomical body have informed cultural…

We enjoy working with a variety of partners: with other knowledge institutions, the business community, government, civil society organisations, NGOs, museums and charities. Close by, in our cities of Leiden and The Hague, but also regionally, nationally and internationally.

In all the 444 years since Leiden University was founded, almost nothing has been written about women at the University. That's why a group of 25 female students have prepared the exhibition Herstory: Leiden's Leading Ladies. University history through women's eyes. Now open to the public in the Oude…

It was more than two years in the making, but despite the delays, giving up was not an option. In May, eighteen staff members of LUCAS and the Faculty of Archaeology visited NIMAR.

This dissertation develops an innovative approach to cultural transformation in the kingdom of Commagene (modern south-east Turkey) during the 1st c. BCE, focusing on a palatial context in the capital Samosata.

How did the slave peculium function in the socio-legal context of the Roman Empire?

Computer applications and quantitative methods in archaeology CAA95.

This book provides an overview of critical scholarly reflections on the history of Dutch slavery and colonization, as well as how this translates into critical cultural practices.

Of jars and gongs deals with the traditional ritual art of Ot Danum Dayak subsistence farmers from a stretch of tropical rainforest in the heart of Borneo. Together with the Ngaju, their neighbours to the south, they gloried in one of the most elaborate secondary mortuary rites in the world.

The material and intellectual presence of Egypt is at the heart of Western culture, religion and art from Antiquity to the present. This volume aims to provide a long term and interdisciplinary perspective on Egypt and its mnemohistory, taking theories on objects and their agency as its main point of…

The Leiden Human Evolution Collective (LHEC) is a network of researchers from Leiden University, LUMC, and Naturalis with an interest in human evolution. The collective brings together existing expertise in Leiden to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in research, teaching, and public outreach.

This special issue of Politique européenne 2019/4 (N° 66) contains, among others, a contribution by Astrid Van Weyenberg.

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.