Archaeology
Research
The Leiden Faculty of Archaeology is a world renowned academic centre for the study of the past. Our archaeologists and heritage experts are involved in innovative projects all over the world.
Top ten worldwide
The Faculty ranks in the top ten worldwide in academic reputation and research impact (April 2024 QS World University Ranking by subject). The Faculty research community is international and decidedly cosmopolitan, with members of staff, post-doc researchers and PhD students coming from all over the world, active in all continents.
Extensive research projects
Over the years, many of our researchers have received prestigious grants and subsidies, enabling them to embark on extensive research projects. Here you will find a non-exhaustive list of current and recently finished research projects:
Funded research projects
- ERC Starting Grant: Martin Berger
- ERC Consolidator Grant: Wei Chu
- Vidi: Jason Laffoon
- Vici: Alex Geurds
- Vidi: Sarah Schrader
- Vidi: Quentin Bourgeois
- Vici: Marie Soressi
For more information, see the complete overview.
Overarching fields
As academic staff we conduct research in the overarching fields of World Archaeology, Archaeological Sciences, and Archaeological Heritage. We cover extensive areas of the world and range in time from our earliest human ancestors to the present day. We investigate the complexity of the human past and resilient societies from interdisciplinary perspectives which offer the best chance to answer research questions that also carry value for current and future generations.
We work at the interface between the humanities, social sciences and exact sciences, and we connect the past with the present. We are thus ideally placed to collaborate: with each other across these departmental ‘boundaries’, with other disciplines, and with society at large. Our research brings scholars together in exciting collaborations from within and well beyond the faculty itself within a highly inspiring research surrounding.
Our research areas
By its very nature an interdisciplinary field of research, the Leiden Archaeology Faculty has been very active in creating networks all over the world, collaborating across and within the borders of disciplines. Administratively, our research is organised under three departments.
Participation in Research Networks
As the importance of our research goes well beyond the scientific community, we participate in projects and knowledge transfer that reaches the wider public world-wide and many of us work with the communities near us. Several research dossiers show this in text and image:
- Sustainable Futures
- Social Resilience and Security
- SAILS
- Museums, Collections, and Society
- Liveable Planet
Training the next generation of researchers
Who are we, as archaeologists, without the constant and fresh input of the next generation of researchers? In the Faculty we have the ambition to activate and stimulate young top talent through facilitating their participation in cutting edge research, and by helping them to find their own place in a wide career world, while being equipped with much needed 21st century professional and transferable skills. Our research facilities and labs, fieldschools and excavation projects, experimental archaeology projects and the National research schools (ARCHON, OIKOS) offer opportunities for everyone’s taste.
- Master's programmes
- Research master's programmes
- PhD community (PhD Graduate School of Archaeology)
- Post-doc community (RIAR)
Academic integrity
Leiden University, and the Faculty of Archaeology with it, attaches great importance to all aspects of integrity: in academic knowledge, in management and in operations. The Code of Conduct on Integrity gives a coherent picture of the integrity policy of the university.