We deeply cherish our natural and cultural World Heritage, so it seems; when historical monuments and sites are destroyed by war or natural disaster, we are mourning collectively. But what if this World Heritage status is not just a preservation label, but a smokescreen for social and political conflicts…

Leiden University kicked off the first PhD Symposium ‘Institutions for Conflict Resolution’ (COI). COI is a nation-wide partnership that serves to implement the Dutch Legal Sector Plan (2019 – 2024). This partnership aims to preserve the authority and legitimacy of government institutions and the judiciary,…

I am Sijmen Wals and this semester I'll be the new intern at the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo.

NOSTER, the research school for Theology and Religious Studies, organizes a Coptic Course in the fall of 2023. Students can enroll until October 1.

Lars Brummel explains in The Conversation that Rutte is a good candidate to counter threats to NATO's cohesion.

For the next three years the municipality of Epe will contribute to the research on the Epe barrow alignment. The city complements funds that NWO made available for the Networked Landscapes (2015-2018) research project by dr. Quentin Bourgeois. The objective of this project is to unlock the principal…

The recently opened ICPA (International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine) in The Hague will be responsible for coordinating the prosecution of Russia for the crime of aggression and possibly also the prosecution of Vladimir Putin. The ICPA aims to close the gaps…

Greek papyrology is the science that is concerned with deciphering and studying all texts written in Greek on papyrus. Papyrus was the writing material of antiquity and was made from strips of the papyrus plant stuck together.

Whereas when we started the first Project the chief aim was pure research, to find out more about the past in a region, now we see that the countries of Europe are faced with the great problem that there are far too many archaeological sites for them to deal with by excavation, but yet some kind of…

The Middle Paleolithic site of Neumark was first discovered in the 1980’s by German geologist Matthias Thomae.

Central to Nuranisa’s PhD project is the cultural diplomacy practiced by the Javanese courts of central Java (Surakarta, Yogyakarta, Pakualaman and Mangkunegaran) in response to the increasing Dutch colonial power in the 19th and early 20th century. The Javanese sultanates were incorporated into the…

Understanding Late Neolithic Ceramic Containers from Upper Mesopotamia

The Swahili coast has a long-standing history of transoceanic Islamic connections dating back to the 25th century. Yet, print, has changed the world – not only ours. This project unravels unique forms and archives of intellectual history emerging from within South-South connections. In East Africa Indian…

Dutch archaeologists are making three-dimensional virtual reconstructions of archaeological objects lost in the Syrian civil war.

On Thursday 15 February 2018, the Hazelhoff Centre for Financial Law welcomed Roel Janssen, financial and economic journalist and writer, for the fifteenth Hazelhoff Guest Lecture.

Despite the field’s general agreement that pyrotechnology had a significant impact on the cultural evolution of humankind, our understanding of the origins and development of fire use and its role in humankind’s cultural evolution is very limited, blurred by strong disagreements over its chronology…

There is not a day without language: we use it to read, to write, to communicate. But do you ever wonder how you learned to speak your own language as a child? And how, as an adult, do you learn new languages? Linguistics has the answer to those questions. In the BA Linguistics at Leiden University…

Study all aspects of human life in the past and take on a broad, historic perspective in the specialisation World Archaeology. Or investigate the role of cultural heritage in society in the specialisation Heritage and Society.

Electives offer students the opportunity to further specialise and deepen in specific aspects of leadership.

There is a growing demand throughout the world for ways to understand and preserve cultural heritage. Heritage has a crucial role to play because it strengthens societies and promotes understanding among cultures. Leiden expertise in the area of heritage spans the whole world.

PhD defence

A major new study of ancient DNA has traced the movement of people into southern Britain during the Bronze Age. In the largest such analysis published to date, scientists examined the DNA of nearly 800 ancient individuals. Publication in Nature on December 22, 2021.

PhD candidate Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart has received the Stichting Elise Mathilde Fonds grant from the Leids Universiteits Fonds (LUF) to work on a research project focusing on the landscapes of the Second World War. ‘We will combine citizen science with deep learning to uncover traces of the c…

Alex Brandsen and Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart, PhD candidates in the Digital Archaeology research group and the Data Science Research Programme, have been awarded a 444 grant by Young Academy Leiden. They are going to use it to hold a session in Oxford on improving collaboration between researchers…

After the 2022 conference on Courts as an Arena for Societal Change in Leiden, COI researchers collaborated with conference attendees to publish a special issue of the European Law Journal covering diverse aspects of the evolving role of courts in addressing environmental and climate issues.

As a prelude to the Night of Discoveries, an Afternoon of Discoveries will be held in Leiden on 21 September for children from the age of eight. Researchers will tell exciting tales and the children will get to do experiments.

Wat is er allemaal te doen rondom de universiteit in Den Haag?

Heritage Quest is a large-scale citizen science project in the field of archaeology that allows anyone to contribute to scientific research. It is the first large-scale archaeological citizen science project in The Netherlands and one of the few of its kind in the world. As part of the Cultural Heritage…

On 9 March 2023, the Council for the Judiciary organized a conference on innovations within the judiciary, which took place in the building of the Dutch Supreme Court. The central conference theme was judicial innovation and what we can learn from various forms of socially effective justice (‘maatschappelijk…

Corrie Bakels is known as one of the founders of bio-archaeology in the Netherlands. One of her former students, Dr Marco Langbroek, active in astronomy, made a request to the International Astronomic Union to name a recently discovered asteroid after her. Hearing the news, Bakels was astounded. 'My…

Maria Boletsi has received a fellowship from the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) within the framework of the Theme Group Project The Politics of (De)familiarization: The Common and the Strange in Contemporary Europe.

Last Saturday, Wijnhaven Campus and the Anna van Buerenplein were the setting for the first 'on campus' Experience Days in The Hague since the restrictive measures in higher education were introduced in March 2020. Spread over the day, some 200 students visited the campus to delve deeper into the 3…

Leiden University College The Hague (LUC) is celebrating its fifth anniversary. This English-language programme with on-campus teaching for excellent students has proved to be a great success. On Saturday 10 October, the LUC will be celebrating in Diligentia Theatre in The Hague with numerous speakers,…

Prof. C. Bakels is an archaeobotanist who devoted most of her career researching farming, its (pre)history and influence on the landscape. Born in 1942, she got her first appointment as a lecturer at Leiden University in 1968. On Monday 16 April, we celebrated her 50th work anniversary.

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…

The Heritage Quest project begins on Monday 6 April. Heritage Quest is the first large-scale citizen science archaeology project in the Netherlands: anyone can help find archaeological remains at Utrechtse Heuvelrug, a heavily forested region in the Netherlands. Citizens can thus get involved in scientific…

A Leiden and Mainz (Germany) based team studies the activities of early humans in a 125,000 years old Last Interglacial ecosystem, formerly exposed in a large open cast brown coal pit near Halle (Germany). The Last Interglacial is an important warm-temperate period, showing the full flora and fauna…

With the use of big data, Leiden University is aiming to develop a system that sends automatic alerts when certain Industrial parts are starting to wear out. Researchers of the the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) are developing a predictive maintenance platform together with, among…

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has accused Finland of violating the rights of Finnish children by leaving them in life-threatening conditions in Syrian camps. Ann Skelton, member of the committee, calls the situation 'inhuman'.

On 11 November, Leiden University and the '3 October Vereeniging' confirmed their special relationship and collaboration in a covenant. This document lays down the way in which the two partners will be involved in the future celebration and commemoration of the Relief of Leiden.

The Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law is the leading general series for monographs in international law which will celebrate its 70th anniversary next year.

Mediterranean archaeologist Dr Anita Casarotto has been awarded a grant of € 5,800 from the Byvanck Fonds for her research on unlocking important data for regional archaeological investigations in the Mediterranean. In collaboration with Leiden University and the KNIR (Royal Netherlands Institute in…

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