This recently released book takes a critical view of conceptual issues and practical problems that inevitably emerge when ‘excellence’ takes center stage in science systems in the Global South. What is ‘excellent science’? And how to recognize and assess it? After decades of inquiry and debate there…

This book sheds new light on domestic forced migration by examining the experiences of American-born slave migrants from a comparative perspective.

On the 10th of November, Sara Petrollino succesfully defended her PhD-thesis and graduated. LUCL congratulates Sara on this great result.

Three Dutch research institutes - including the Leiden University’s KITLV - will conduct a follow-up study on the use of violence during the Dutch East Indies war of decolonisation (1945 – 1950). The government has designated 4.1 million Euros for this study.

The Dutch and English East India Companies were formidable organizations that were gifted with expansive powers that allowed them to conduct diplomacy, wage war and seize territorial possessions. But they did not move into an empty arena in which they were free to deploy these powers without resista…

How can historical archive sources by non-elite groups help us understand modern-day politics in South Asia? This is one of the main themes of Prof. Nira Wickramasinghe’s inaugural lecture on 14 March.

Investigating epistemic and ethical practices in medical experimentation on humans in the colonial period in Southeast Asia.

The one-year master in South Asian Studies, a specialisation of Leiden University’s master in Asian Studies, offers a large and varied selection of subjects and the freedom to choose the areas on which you will focus.

On Thursday 10 April 2025 Wahyu Widodo successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

How are contemporary art practices from Southeast Asia negotiating notions of art and tradition?

Professor Peter Bisschop, lecturer in Sanskrit and Ancient Cultures of South Asia, has been awarded a grant by the NWO Free Competition to fund his research into the rapid growth of Saivism in the sixth and seventh centuries in South and Southeast Asia. The research project, entitled ‘From Universe…

Who is funding African science? How are different African and international funders interacting and contributing to develop scientific research in the continent? Are there potential inadvertent synergies among research funders that can be identified? These and similar questions are at the heart of this…

Mathilde Mechling defended her thesis on 28 january 2020.

VODAN Africa started as a platform to enable access to critical data needed from Africa to fight the novel COVID-19. The initiative was inspired by the experience from the Liberia Ebola Virus outbreak in 2014: early detection requires contact tracing. Inclusion of the most vulnerable is critical to…

New policies, institutional configurations, and state-market relations are emerging outside of East Asia, as new developmental states move beyond the historical experience of East Asian development. Yet, the ‘developmental state’ is still relevant. This book, edited by Jewellord Nem Singh (Institute…

The Hortus botanicus Leiden has one of Europe’s largest collections of living plants from the Asian region. This rich resource is no longer the sole domain of botanists. Multidisciplinary research, teaching and the general public are equally at home in the Hortus. This is the view of Paul Kessler, professor…

From gay rights in Asia to water management in the Philippines and from the Silk Road to current tensions with North Korea. Come to the Tour of Asia on 14 September to find out all you wanted to know about Asia and more.

As part of the Paris Agreement, countries across the world agreed to support developing countries to invest in climate mitigation and adaptation through a Green Climate Fund. However, developed countries have failed to meet funding commitments for the Green Climate Fund–the flagship program financing…

In tracing the deeper historical roots of what Xi Jinping contemporarily frames as a “Chinese dream” of “wealth and power,” the article discerns key actors, events, and organizing principles in a long process toward restoring China’s deemed rightful place in the regional system.

'The Routledge Handbook of Civil and Uncivil Society in Southeast Asia' explores the nature and implications of civil society across the region, engaging systematically with both theoretical approaches and empirical nuance for a systematic, comparative, and informative approach.

In this article Vanessa Newby discusses how the ANZUS states of United States, Australia, and New Zealand that sit on the fringes of the Asia-Pacific, are increasingly using their armed forces to deliver Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Response (HADR) as a way of engaging with the region.

This project, South American population history revisited: multidisciplinary perspectives on the Upper Amazon (SAPPHIRE), investigates population dynamics in western South America on the basis of traces in the geographical, genetic, archaeological, ethnological, and linguistic record.

On 25 January 2024 H.J. Pak successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This PhD research aims to trace the impact of the Arab conquest, both immediate and long-term, on the material and social organization of Central Asia from 651 to 821 through an “urban change” perspective in four cities: Merv, Paikent, Balkh and Samarkand.

Writing under Wartime Conditions is a study into North and South Korean literature written during the Korean War.

The bachelor’s in South and Southeast Asian Studies is a unique multidisciplinary programme that integrates the culture, religion, history, sociology, economics and politics of the region. As a student, you can choose to study Hindi, Sanskrit, Tibetan or Indonesian.

2017 was the Leiden Asia Year. Leiden has had connections with Asia and built up extensive knowledge of the continent over many centuries. This Leiden-Asia link has been in the spotlight for the past year.

This comparative study investigates court politics in four kingdoms that succeeded the south Indian Vijayanagara empire during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: Ikkeri, Tanjavur, Madurai, and Ramnad. Building on a unique combination of unexplored Indian texts and Dutch archival records, this research…

What did colonial officials and missionaries think they were doing?

This omnibus brings together some old and some recent works by Jos Gommans on the warhorse and its impact on medieval and early modern state-formation in South Asia.

On the 442nd anniversary of the foundation of Leiden University, and at the start of the Leiden Asia Year, lawyer Jan Michiel Otto, an expert in the field of law in developing countries, delivered the first Dies lecture. He compared demagogues in Asia who call upon Muslims to turn against their governments…

Reproducing past, present and future: colonial visions and experience in Asia in the residencies

In this book Adam Fairclough chronicles the odyssey of black teachers in the South from emancipation in 1865 to integration one hundred years later.

A thorough description of the relationships among languages and their social environment in a given context, reflecting an ecological perspective, involves attention to the agency of local actors, and the policies, discourse, and ideologies that surround them.