BA International Studies Semester Opening
- Date
- Friday 19 September 2025
- Time
- Address
- SBS
Schouwburgstraat 2
2511 VA the Hague - Room
- B1.12
About the event
The BA International Studies warmly invites you to celebrate the start of the new semester with us on Friday, 19 September. To mark this occasion, we are delighted to host an opening lecture by Dr. Steije Hofhuis.
Lecture title: ‘Viral’ Hunts: A Darwinian Analysis of European Witch Hunting
Speaker: Dr. Steije Hofhuis
Time: 15:00-16:30
Location: Schouwburgstraat, room B1.12
Dr. Hofhuis is a historian and postdoctoral researcher at the Migration and Diversity group at the Berlin Social Science Centre. He recently completed his dissertation at Utrecht University on the cultural evolution of European witch persecutions. With support from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), he now turns to migration research in his project A (dis)comforting past? Uses of migration history today, examining how migration history is mobilised in academic and public debates across the USA, the Netherlands, and Germany.
In his lecture, Dr. Hofhuis will draw on Darwinian cultural evolution to explore how Europe’s witch hunts (15th-17th centuries) spread not through deliberate design but as culturally contagious phenomena. He will challenge traditional explanations that emphasise political or social motivates and highlight how certain beliefs were especially well-suited to reproduce themselves in the cultural climate of the time. The lecture will also consider what this can teach us about viral cultural dynamics today.
Registration:
You can register by emailing events_internationalstudies@hum.leidenuniv.nl or via this link.
