With the official launch of the Al-Babtain Leiden University Centre for Arabic Culture, Leiden University and the AbdulAziz Saud Al-Babtain Cultural Foundation have opened the door for new opportunities of cultural and academic exchange. Have a look at last week's festivities.

This project investigates the effects of the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953) on the production, distribution, preparation and consumption of food in transwar Japan and Korea.

This subproject of 'From Homo Economicus to Political Animal' will be on ancient analogues for modern-day “ersatz economics”, the economics of the “man in the street”.

Three alumni of our Master’s degree programme in Ancient History talk to us about how they found a job after graduation during the coronavirus pandemic. During the interview, Gabriël hung a huge board covered in post-it reminders behind his laptop, Molly was glad that the members of the selection committee…

Many handwritten and illustrated archives contain a wealth of information, but are largely underexplored because they are complex and difficult for computers to decipher. The aim of this project is to develop a digital environment that resolves this challenge and connects heterogeneous archival content…

As of 1 February 2015, dr. David Napolitano is postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for History. He is particularly interested in the figure of the medieval city magistrate.

This research network aims to promote cross-regional collaboration in the field of cultural history in early modern Asia at the intersections of visual, material, textual and aural culture.

The Iraqi archaeological site of Nimrud was recently recaptured from IS. The site has been severely damaged. The question now is, what to do with it? Should it be restored? Bleda Düring spoke with Trouw about this complex issue.

This project is a close and sensitive contextual study of Jacob of Sarug's (ca. 451-521 AD) metrical homily

Dr. Nadine Akkerman, working at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS), is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Birmingham from May 27 till July 4. She will participate in an important public discussion on Challenges for Early Modern Women's History and she'll be the keynote…

This research programme seeks to understand the dynamics in the relationship between social media, mobile telephony and the social fabric under duress in Africa's mobile margins. It combines studies on mobility/migration, conflict and communication in an attempt to uncover these new dynamics, which…

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

The Etymology Calendar for 2020, which was compiled by five linguistics students from Leiden University, has now hit the shops. After the resounding success of the first Etymology Calendar last year, this year’s version is being published by big-name publishing house Brill.

In ancient Greece and Rome, nighttime encompassed a distinctive array of cultural values that went far beyond the inversion of daytime. Night was a mythological figure, a locus of specialized knowledge, a socially significant semantic space in various literary genres, and a setting for unique experi…

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

This project will lead to a critical edition and annotated translation of the Niśvāsamukha, the opening book of the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā.

In this book, the authors provide an overview of the history of civil service education and training by analysing cases in Europe, the US and Australia.

Research on the process and construction of news stories about human rights issues in Latin American newspapers.

How were Spanish commanders fighting in the Low Countries between 1567 and 1577 portrayed in Spanish and Dutch narrative sources during the Eighty Years War?

Bruno Munari (1907–1998) was a prolific and influential artist, designer, and writer. Alessandro Colizzi’s study is the first extensive, detailed record of Munari’s graphic design production, and as such provides a substantial base for a full understanding of his oeuvre.

Recently Cambridge University Press published dr. Jan Osters monograph “Media Freedom as a Fundamental Right”.

This volume, edited by Erika Kuijpers, Judith Pollmann, Johannes Müller and Jasper van der Steen, discusses practices of memory in early modern Europe.

The book reinterprets the role of the UN during the Congo crisis from 1960 to 1964, presenting a multidimensional view of the organisation.

This study links up the concept of place with memory, with the idea of transience and the transition from life to death.

The correspondence of the Dutch factory in Hirado, Japan, 1609-1633

In this region researchers at LUCL have specific expertise in studying Austronesian and Papuan languages. China is another important region where Leiden linguists conduct research.

Anyone who knows Aris Politopoulos will be aware of his passion for teaching. Almost winning the Leiden University Teaching Award in 2020, he is known for his use of digital tools to improve his classes. Now he has been accepted to the Leiden Teacher’s Academy. ‘Here I can meet people with innovative…

Lecture, Global Questions Seminar

When and how to use the concept of “culture” . To medical anthropologists this is a core question, but also a challenging one.

Historian Dario Fazzi is the new professor by special appointment at the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS), a strategic partner of the Faculty of Humanities. He starts on 1 September and will combine his new position with his current teaching duties at the Institute for History.

In Poland the commemoration of acts of resistance is being misused to distort the history of the Holocaust. That is what Cleveringa Professor Jan Grabowski said in his inaugural lecture on 26 November. In her lecture, the second Cleveringa Professor, Barbara Engelking, pointed to the often indifferent…

Victoria Nyst's love for sign language was sparked when she accidentally ended up at a deaf school while studying African linguistics. The university lecturer has since been awarded a Vici grant to research the history of these languages.

Paolo Sartori is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna. In Leiden he will deliver one guest lecture on Twilight of the Persianate: The Vernacularization of Central Asia (18th - early 20th Centuries) on 12 April and a masterclass on How can we…