Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing, what exactly does he do and what does his day look like? In each newsletter, Jasper gives an insight into his life.

For her research, PhD candidate Liselore Tissen put one famous painting after another through a 3D scanner. The resulting reproductions were indistinguishable from the originals. But what does this mean for our interpretation of art?

Start thinking in advance about the selection for long-term preservation.

Lecture, China Seminar

Small, remote islands were long thought to have been the last frontiers of pristine natural systems. Humans are not thought to have been able to reach or inhabit these environments prior to the dawn of agriculture, and the technological shift that accompanied this transition. A paper recently published…

Inaugural lecture

A cannon, a sabre, guns: these Sri Lankan objects had been in the Rijksmuseum for centuries. In early December, they were returned to Sri Lanka. Associate Professor of Colonial History Alicia Schrikker led the research that formed the basis for the restitution and published a volume on the findings…

Research

Over the past few years, citizen scientists from the Heritage Quest project have scoured the entire Veluwe and Utrechtse Heuvelrug areas for unknown archaeological heritage. One of the results of this research is that the number of known burial mounds in this area has doubled.

The first professional training organised by the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Global Heritage and Development has finished. The participants work for municipalities, provinces, universities or are independent researchers or consultants in the Heritage Sector. During three intensive days in September…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

PhD defence

Keep in mind a fellow researcher: someone who knows your area of expertise, but not necessarily as well as you do. Are your files understandable as they are, or do they need cleaning enhancement? Keep the right balance: make sure the metadata is sufficient for reuse, but do not get carried away and…

Lecture, LIAS After-Lunch Talk Series

Research

Theft, prostitution, fortune-telling or murder. Historian Manon van der Heijden and a group of students are researching court records from The Hague from 1600 to 1800. They are tracing crimes and offenders and shedding new light on The Hague’s Gevangenpoort (or Prison Gate). Among their many discoveries…

In the 60s and 70s, Black Power groups were also active in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This is what PhD candidate Debby Esmeé de Vlugt has discovered.

Traces of the past remain hidden in rivers, lakes and seas. In his inaugural lecture Martijn Manders will explain why underwater archaeology is important to understanding our history.

In this podcast episode of Beyond Japan, Oliver Moxham and Andrew Littlejohn explore how disaster heritage fosters debate around the relationship between humans and their environments.

Archaeology has always been at the forefront of innovation. Now, an inventive collaboration between archaeologists Tuna Kalayci and Alex Brandsen brings together the winning combination of robotic technology with an archaeological AI. While an impressive new step in the archaeological technology, this…

Ten Leiden museums and heritage institutions have curated the online exhibition ‘Carel’s Universe’. They selected objects from their collections that symbolise retiring Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker and the research in Leiden. With direct references, playful associations and the odd nod and wink.

Almost 4400 anatomical drawings from the collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) are now available through Europeana. The collection shows medical art on paper from the early eighteenth century to the present day. Most of the drawings were created in or around the Leiden University Medical…

Lenses from Christiaan Huygens’ telescope, instruments used to demonstrate Newton’s laws, and equipment that led to the discovery of superconductivity—around 3,000 scientific instruments from the Faculty of Science at Leiden University are now officially part of the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave collection.…

Two Leiden University science communication projects have been awarded a WECOM grant through the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA). One project is a study of the history of the deaf community in the Netherlands and the other is of a condition that causes people to lose their way.

From November 13 to 17 2023, a workshop on Ethics in Caribbean Archaeology was organized at the Lorentz Center in Leiden by Eduardo Herrera Malatesta (Aarhus University), Felicia J. Fricke (University of Copenhagen) and Maaike de Waal (Leiden University).

Mehmet Kentel has been named co-winner of the prize, which is given out yearly by the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, for his article “Ruin and Knowledge in Pera: Discovering Istanbul’s Genoese Heritage at the Moment of Its Destruction,” which was published in the fortieth-anniversary volume…

Peter Pels, affiliated with the Institute of Cultural Anthropology of Leiden University, is one of the researchers. Together with Birgit Meyer (UU), he will lead the work package 'Heritage and the Question of Conversion'.

As part of Mariana Françozo’s BRASILAE project, a group of representatives of the Ka’apor people was invited to visit Leiden. The Ka’apor, an indigenous people from Brazil, are some of the present-day relatives of the Tupi-speaking peoples who used to live in the northeastern region of Brazil, claimed…

Rik van Gijn was appointed professor of Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Diversity in the World from 1 December 2024. He is keen to use the position to set up research on language vitality. ‘People almost never give up their mother tongue entirely voluntarily.’

Course, Masterclass

Alumni event, Lezing

From health to migration to climate: 25 interdisciplinary research and education initiatives received a Kiem grant in 2024.

The Leiden municipality wants to make the city centre climate-proof and combat heat stress by greening it. But they want to do this in a way that does justice to the city’s heritage. Researcher Fenna IJtsma delves into historical greenery to offer inspiration.

Taking responsibility concerning colonial heritage and restitution is a pressing issue for countries and museums worldwide. On 23 and 24 May, a Leiden University interdisciplinary symposium will explore new perspectives as a basis for policies. Organising professors Carsten Stahn and Pieter ter Keurs…

Why and how do people collect things? Why does a museum display one object and not another? These questions are at the heart of the interdisciplinary research programme Museums, Collections and Society. The programme is holding a conference for scholars and the general public on 5 and 6 July.

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…

Many humanities graduates find work in digital heritage, but a good pedagogical model to match education is lacking. University lecturers Karin de Wild and Peter Verhaar want to change this with a Comenius grant.

Dr Quentin Bourgeois and a group of students are currently exploring the Veluwe. In 2019 and 2020 volunteers looked at altitude maps of the Veluwe and indicated potential burial mound locations. Now the team from Leiden is 'ground-truthing', checking on the spot whether we are dealing with an actual…

On January 17th 2023, Caterina Ghini, Ambassador of Greece to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, visited the Faculty of Archaeology. Her Excellency reached out to Leiden University with the purpose to collaborate and engage with us.

Lecture