Leiden University has long had a special interest in and relationship with China.

The ‘Contagious!’ exhibition was set to open at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in April but had to be postponed because of the corona crisis. The museum hasn’t been twiddling its thumbs in the meantime. The exhibition will now open on 16 July, and the corona crisis has a major role.

Hifadhi ya Dijiti ya Ustadh Mau

Is it possible to formulate a new conceptual foundation for attributing an evaluative role to historiography of science, without relinquishing the historiographic sensitivity of recent work in the discipline?

The hinterland of important centres like Petra (Southern Jordan) can provide essential information that contribute to the understanding of their rise, expansion and decline.

Professor of Contemporary History Wim van den Doel has won the 2024 Boerhaave Biography Prize. Van den Doel receives the prize for his book 'Snouck: Het volkomen geleerdenleven van Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje'.

Conference, Research Colloquium

Er is een nijpend tekort aan medicijnen. Volgens onderzoek van NRC is bijna één op de zeven Nederlandse patiënten aangewezen op geneesmiddelen uit het buitenland. Promovendus Koosje van Lessen Kloeke sprak over dit tekort met Mr.: ‘De Nederlandse geneesmiddelenwetgeving rammelt.’

Richard Chancellor, the English Willem Barentsz, discovered the North Cape during the first English expedition to attempt to find a northeast passage. But the ship, the Edward Bonaventure, was ‘robbed by Flemings on its return in 1554.’ Historian Louis Sicking and legal expert Remco van Rhee found the…

How did changes in the composition and exploitation of princely domains in various principalities of the Low Countries influence the development of ‘modern’ public finance systems, including the notion of public debt?

If a forged Vermeer or Rembrandt is discovered, it is world news. Yet tracing fakes has long been a low priority in art history. University lecturer Anna Tummers will receive an ERC grant of almost two million euros to change that.

The Pilgrims to America exhibition at Museum De Lakenhal inspires reflection. How far do you go in the quest for freedom? It focuses on the Pilgrims’ relationship with the University and which knowledge they took with them from Leiden.

Cátia Antunes received the prestigious ERC Grant for her Research Project

What does the retail crisis mean for the future of Europe's urban centres? Assistant professor Alistair Kefford answers this very question in the French television programme 27.

In an age before GoogleDocs and LinkedIn, 19th-century scholars relied on letter-writing for collaboration, peer-feedback and the building and sustaining of academic networks. Letters were a quick, efficient way to share insights, data and discoveries. Scholarly correspondence thus allows a vital behind-the-scenes…

History student Lydia Boer has won the Uitgeverij Verloren/Johan de Witt incentive prize. She receives the prize for her bachelor’s thesis The marriage between Johan de Witt and Wendela Bicker: a political affair?

Sophia Hendrikx started her PhD project at LUCAS in March 2015...

New research has confirmed that the Dutch military used systematic, extreme violence against Indonesians. In his book Soldaat in Indonesië (Soldier in Indonesia), to be released at the end of October, historian Gert Oostindie draws the same conclusions using different sources. He presents new findings…

In Sri Lanka, a prominent Singhalese Buddhist monk publicly proclaims that it is not a sin to kill Tamils. In Japan, the family register kept in a Buddhist temple and specifying the outcaste status of a lineage is provided to private detectives investigating the marriageability of a young woman. Throughout…

This beautifully illustrated volume investigates the social life of objects moving between the Middle East and the West, revealing the range of agencies and subjectivities involved in their trade and reuse.

In this dissertation, a comprehensive portrait of the American-born Quaker Lindley Murray (1745–1826) is painted and the influence of Murray’s Quakerism on his language use is investigated by analyzing a corpus of 262 of his unpublished private letters.

82 years ago Queen Wilhelmina fled to England. Henk te Velde tells about her on the Australian radio show 'Nightlife'.

Lecture, Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series

Symposium

How did “free agents” (entrepreneurs operating outside of the myriad of interests of the centralized, state-sponsored monopolies) in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire react to the creation of colonial monopolies (royal monopolies and chartered companies) by the central states in the Early Modern…

Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

This research project addresses an unexplored dimension of historical conflict resolution: the dynamics of strategic choices made by traders engaged in foreign trade in the city of Danzig (Gdansk) c. 1450-1580, a Hanseatic city under the Polish Crown.

Alumna Lauren Antonides has won the Roggeveen Prize for her thesis on the regional identity of Zeelandic Flanders. She will receive a sum of 1,000 euros.

Lecture, Book Launch

President John Quincy Adams studied in Leiden. His father, John, who was also president, also stayed here and received a lot of support from professor and publisher Johan Luzac. And how are presidents Bush and Obama linked to Leiden?

Debate, Panel Discussion

Universiteit Leiden stond niet altijd bekend als een bolwerk van vrijheid, betoogt Egbert Koops in zijn diesoratie. Leidsch Dagblad sprak met de hoogleraar rechtsgeschiedenis over academische vrijheid: ‘Het bolwerk van vrijheid moest veroverd worden.’

In her book Rap 73, Dorrit van Dalen shares intimate anecdotes and what for many are previously unknown stories about the Academy Building and its users. Stories such as who held heated debates in the beautiful vaulted Gewelfkamer, and why the singer of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot was given pride…

Dutch-Caribbean research will get a boost. Gert Oostindie, working at the Institute of History and KITLV, has received a grant from NWO, consisting of 750,000 euros, for his research project 'Confronting Caribbean challenges: hybrid identities and governance in small-scale island jurisdictions'.