An overview of the Middle-East studies research projects at Leiden University where faculty and students cooperate. Coming fall 2024!

During the Autumn semester (September-December), the Netherlands Institute in Morocco (NIMAR) offers a minor that focuses on the study of Morocco from a social sciences and humanities perspective.

An overview of our exhibition catalogues and research monographs on the Middle Eastern collections.

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to French writer Annie Ernaux (1940). In an explanation, the Swedish Academy praises Ernaux 'for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory'.

In this dissertation a large corpus of letter signs and texts gathered during fieldwork in Niger, and to a lesser extent Mali and Burkina Faso is used to show the graphemic diversity of the traditional script of the Tuaregs, tifinagh, and to analyze the orthographic system.

Jews and Christians in the Middle East

At Leiden University you can study Islam and Muslim societies within two Dutch-language BA and various MA programmes and specializations.

This Global and Comparative Philosophy master’s programme is unique in Europe. It offers comparative perspectives from around the world that will enable you to be part of the next generation of thinkers: someone studying and shaping philosophy for a globalised 21st century.

On this page you find useful links to cooperating universities, Dutch institutes and other interesting links to information related to Arabic & Islamic studies, Egyptian Archaeology, and learning Dutch.

Islam at 250: Studies in Memory of G.H.A. Juynboll is a collection of original articles on the state of Islamic sciences and Arabic culture in the early phases of their crystallization.

This paper aims to understand the most common underlying problems causing strategic surprise in the context of the European Union.

The present monograph, spanning a wide range of world and local literatures represents a high academic standard of both literary criticism and philological analysis. By demonstrating her expertise as an Africanist conversant with the Arabic canon, Raia reveals how the narrative of Joseph has been re-narrated…

LUCIS produces various video series and MOOCs to showcase the variety of expertise available at Leiden University.

The NVIC offers academic courses in Arabic & Islamic studies and in the study of Ancient Egypt, in the framework of study programmes at the Dutch and Flemish universities that support the institute. NVIC also puts its teaching experience at the disposal of companies, embassies, international organisations…

PhD defence

This summer school is for graduate (MA and PhD) students and researchers who have an interest in handwritten materials, editing, and the tradition of editing in the Muslim world. It offers theoretical lectures as well as hands-on practice with samples from the world-famous collections of the Leiden…

This dissertation examines how Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Fécamp designed, produced, and read books over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

A living language?

NIMAR offers educational programs (BA-level) about Morocco, the Arabic world and North-West Africa.

The Academic Language Centre Leiden offers Arabic language courses at various levels, an intensive summer course and tailor-made Japanese language training. The courses are practical in nature: focusing on the use of the language. More information can be found here >

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…

Arabist and papyrologist Petra Sijpesteijn has received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council for her research on the early Islamic Empire. The five-year ERC grant will fund the research project

LIAS is comprised of three research schools with expertise in different areas:

The Centre is the proud home of several research programmes.

Combining approaches from intellectual history, philology and the study of Arabic manuscripts, this study places the Bornu scholar Muḥammad al-Wālī within his intellectual environment on the one hand, and it portrays him as someone who responded to the concerns of ordinary Muslims around him on the…

This book is the first comparative study of estimative intelligence and strategic surprise in a European context, complementing and testing insights from previous studies centred on the United States. It does extensive empirical analysis of open-source material and interviews in relation to three cases…

What is the state of access to justice in real property grievances in today’s Libya, and how should it be improved?

The Leiden Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to promote research on the ancient languages and cultures of Arabia, and to disseminate this knowledge to the broader public.

On 13 September 2023 Eline Scheerlinck successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

In recent years, and especially since the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011, a growing body of research, media reporting, and scholarly literature has focused on the role of ‘Arab youth’ as the drivers of social and political movements across the Middle East and North Africa.

Designed for high-achieving students, Leiden University's master's in Middle Eastern Studies (Research) offers you unmatched resources and expertise.

This lecture will be hosted on Thursday, 14 November 2024 at 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm.

Edmund Flett, alumnus of the International Relations master's programme, has won the 2023 J.C. Baak Prize for his thesis ‘Settlements now, settlement later. Land swaps, settler relocation, and the viability of the two-state solution in Israel-Palestine’.

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

At our regular panel discussions we bring together scholars and other experts to discuss a current topic that captures the interest of the general public as well as academics.

‘Islam and Muslims are not something that happened to Europe; they are part of Europe. In fact, Islam is one the biggest constants in European history,’ argues Professor Maurits Berger in the new eight-part Matters of Humanities: History of Islam in Europe podcast series of the Leiden University Faculty…

The new Middle Eastern Library (MEL) will bring together the UBL's own Middle Eastern collections and the collections of the library of The Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), which has been part of the Leiden University Libraries since 1st January 2018.

Understanding the history of Islam and Muslim societies sheds a clear light on the complex and changing social structures of the Middle East, including the current trouble spots whose effect spreads all the way to Western Europe.

Willemijn Heeren has, together with dr. Lei He (Department of Linguistics, Tübingen & Center for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics, Zürich), received a research grant from the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics to start a pilot project on “Between-speaker variability in dynamic…

The Leiden Institute for Philosophy has a unique profile in the Low Countries and is one of few of its kind worldwide. It takes a global and comparative perspective of philosophy, whereas most philosophy programs restrict themselves to European and Anglo-American philosophical traditions rooted in Greek…

Lecture, Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series