Leiden University Library and related museum holdings in Leiden contain a body of materials showing the unique role of Dutch-Japanese trade relations as a node in the history of global flows of knowledge, materials and culture during the early modern period.

Unlike most city histories, this book focuses exclusively on the city’s connections with colonialism and slavery.

The first comprehensive and authoritative history of work and labour in Africa; a key text for all working on African Studies and Labour History worldwide.

On 10 November Guanmian Xu successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Keynote Lecture

Today, globalization makes us all aware of how closely we are connected to, and often dependent upon, the actions of people who are distant from us. Human migration and economic liberalization have confronted local communities with changes happening on a global level. How can we devise ways to share…

Onlangs verscheen het boek ‘Afgrond zonder vangnet’ van Yra van Dijk, hoogleraar Moderne Nederlandse Literatuur. In haar boek analyseert ze verschillende thema's in het werk van Arnon Grunberg.

From William Shakespeare to Marilynne Robinson, A Literary History of Reconciliation is the first study to examine representations of interpersonal reconciliation in work of literature across a long-term period, from the early seventeenth century to the present day, focusing on how these representations…

Eschatology played a central role in both politics and society throughout the early modern period. It inspired people to strive for social and political change, including sometimes by violent means, and prompted in return strong reactions against their religious activism.

Nature and History, Towards a Hermeneutic Philospohy of Historiography of Science

Alumni event, Lezing

The thesis reconstructs Carl Schmitt's 1956 monography on 'Hamlet'. By scanning and unearthing books, essays, think-pieces, articles, personal diaries and private correspondence, this investigation fully addresses the unwritten philosophy of history -partially developed- in Schmitt's late thought. The…

This book examines the history of The Netherlands in a way that connects global processes to local developments.

How did digital intermediality symbolise and facilitate the transfer of content from popular culture into policy statements and vice versa in the period between 1945 and the new millenium?

Keynote lecture

Being a Slave brings together scholars and writers who try to come to terms with the histories and legacies of European slavery in the Indian Ocean.

Liu Puning defended his thesis on 25 April 2018.

This project will explore how Chinese digital networks are grounded in real-world institutions, and how interest groups and individuals use digital infrastructures to shape public discourse on national history.

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.

Which genes are involved in woodiness and associated traits such as drought tolerance, flowering time, stem elongation, life span, and plant herbivory, and how do these gene regulatory pathways overlap?

Wenxin Wang defended her thesis on 26 October 2016

Lecture, Annual Lecture Austrian Studies Leiden

How do old and new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) relate to new social and political movements in Central Africa? What does this tell us about Africa and the Information Age?

A defining fixture of our contemporary world, video games offer a rich spectrum of engagements with the past.

In a podcast episode of 'New Books in History' Claire Weeda talks about her book 'Ethnicity in Medieval Europe 950-1250: Medicine, Power and Religion'.

A History of Dutch Corruption and Morality showcases 300 years of change, continuity, and diversity in the history of Dutch political corruption and public morality. It analyses a series of corruption scandals and shows how the following debates were connected to the big changes of that time: from the…

Nadeera Seneviratne defended her thesis on 21 January 2016.

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of…

The Washington Post reviews Nationalism by university lecturer Eric Storm. In this book, Storm explores how nation-states became the dominant political organizational form.

What is the iconography of propaganda specifically as it relates to the historical development of political ideologies in modern Egypt and how was/is this propaganda disseminated among creative fields such as cinema, art, monuments, architecture, and literature?

Inaugural lecture

How did galaxies form? How did galaxies evolve?

The Institute for History announces vacancies for three PhD positions on Rethinking Disability: the Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in Historical Perspective and one PhD position to conduct research on the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

How did learned natural historical inquiries into the underwater world develop in eighteenth-century Europe?

For three millennia, carved sculptures were ubiquitous among ancient peoples in the Americas. Sculpted in stone, metal or wood, they developed into the well-known totem poles, colossal Olmec heads, royal Maya stelae and golden Inca statues.

D.P. Kok defended his thesis on 10 October 2017

Professor of Dutch History prof.dr. H. (Henk) te Velde will become interim Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University for a two-year term with effect from 1 March 2025. He will succeed prof.dr. M.R. (Mark) Rutgers. Mark Rutgers’ second term of office expires on 1 March 2025; he will be professor…

Roos van Oosten's research on medieval cesspits stood on the basis of an article on this subject in Quest Historie, a Dutch magazine about history.