The company Azafaros was established in 2018 to translate innovative science from Leiden University and Amsterdam University Medical Center into novel disease-modifying treatment modalities for rare genetic metabolic disorders such as lysosomal storage diseases.

Leiden University seeks to bring knowledge, academic top talents, and resources from Leiden and China together in mutually beneficial joint research projects that are content-driven, based on existing excellent research.

Leiden University is famous for its library’s large collection of Oriental manuscripts. Part of this collection is a group of 104 Arabic documents written on papyrus and paper (Or. 8264 and 12885). These documents date from the 7th through 10th century CE and cover a wide range of subjects (private…

Throughout the coming year, all attention in Leiden will be on Asia. This special year, featuring numerous Asian events, conferences, exhibitions and concerts, celebrates the new Asian Library at Leiden University. Come and read, watch, listen, taste or dance Bollywood style.

Leiden University has a long tradition in the collaboration with Indonesia. For Leiden’s scholars in a wide range of disciplines, Indonesia’s biological, ecological, linguistic and religious diversity, its legal system, its emerging political role, its history and its people are an important object…

Leiden University’s internationally-respected master’s in Japanese Studies offers specialised knowledge on the most important aspects of modern and pre-modern Japan.

Supervisor: Gerard van Westen

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In developing cooperation with Indonesia, Leiden University focuses on projects that benefit culture, nature, society and economy, in Indonesia as well as in the Netherlands.

The University’s Executive Board (College van Bestuur) has decided to continue the Leiden University profile area Asian Modernities and Traditions for another four years, from 2015 to 2018. By 2018, AMT2 commits itself to achieve demonstrable results in enhancing the visibility of Asian research both…

The new blog Afro-Asian Visions showcases new and ongoing research on Afro-Asian interactions through networks of artists, intellectuals, technical experts, and activists. It is designed as an online magazine.

Glycoconjugate vaccines are composed of microbial poly- or oligosaccharides covalently linked to a carrier protein.

2017 was the Leiden Asia Year. Leiden has had connections with Asia and built up extensive knowledge of the continent over many centuries. This Leiden-Asia link has been in the spotlight for the past year.

How can historical archive sources by non-elite groups help us understand modern-day politics in South Asia? This is one of the main themes of Prof. Nira Wickramasinghe’s inaugural lecture on 14 March.

A high-ranking delegation from China visited Leiden on 6 November. The party of some 25 officials from the CPPCC – a Chinese advisory body comparable with the Dutch Senate - visited the Leiden Observatory, the Hortus Botanicus and the Asian Library.

The Central Asia project, funded by Asian Modernities and Traditions, has engaged in strengthening the Leiden University library collection in the areas of material culture, history, languages and geopolitics in Central Asia. UNESCO International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS) and the Embassy…

BplusC Libraries and Old Observatory Leiden working together to provide telescopes

An exhibition at Oude UB takes visitors to the historical Silk Road. Old maps, clothes and jewellery reflect the rich heritage of the cities of Central Asia and their inhabitants.

On Saturday 11 May 2019, the BA South and Southeast Asian Studies programme held an Alumni Event for former students. All current students and staff were also invited. Several alumni were invited to talk about their study and career during two panel sessions. An inspiring afternoon!

Leiden University's Asian Modernities and Traditions research area will be presented on 9 September, in the form a conference. The keynote speaker is Professor Prasenjit Duara, Director of the Asia Research Institute of the Singapore National University. The title of his address is Sustainability and…

From gay rights in Asia to water management in the Philippines and from the Silk Road to current tensions with North Korea. Come to the Tour of Asia on 14 September to find out all you wanted to know about Asia and more.

The Leiden Asia Year is almost here. Asia will be the key theme for the University and the city throughout 2017. If staff and students have any ideas about how to make the programme even better, we'd like to hear from you!

Dear library friends,

Racism and discrimination come in many different shapes and forms – in the Netherlands too. Verbal attacks, stereotypes and violence: some people are confronted with these on a daily basis. A group that is often not included in research and the debate on racism is people of Asian descent. The Diversity…

Humanities, Institute for Area Studies, Chinese Studies

In the book 'Slave in a Palanquin: Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka' Nira Wickramasinghe, professor of Modern South Asian Studies, uncovers the traces of slavery in the history and memory of the Indian Ocean world. She was interviewed about the book in the New Books in South East Asian…

Starting 1 November, the Walaeus Library, located in the Leiden University Medical Centre, is part of Leiden University Libraries (UBL).

A Biography of Sayyid ʿUthman (1822–1914)

Marvel at our rare collections.

An online course to teach our international students their first words in Dutch, American presidents in Leiden and how Neanderthals made the very first glue: view a selection of our most read English news in the past year.

Leiden University is going to partner with the Asian Development Bank, a bank committed to regional development. President of the Executive Board Annetje Ottow signed a memorandum of understanding on this unique partnership in Manila on 27 April.

The Orpheus Instituut acquires the prestigious library of Ton Koopman. The focus of the collection is 17th- and 18th-century music, its cultural context and performance practice. The collection will be housed in the historic Koetshuis (coach-house), which is located next to the Orpheus Institute. The…

This paper explores the historicity of state and Buddhist accounts of the monk Xuanzang 玄奘 (602-664), arguing that in the reconstruction of Xuanzang’s life and career we ought to utilize the former to help adjudicate the latter.

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

igraph, an important open source network analysis library, will receive two grants of $400,000 (approximately €340,000) over the course of the next two years.

UBL, Leiden University Libraries, is doing all it can to continue to offer its services. Even now the motto is, ‘work from home’. Who is doing want and how are things going?

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been able to acquire four remarkable medical manuscripts partly thanks to support from the Friends of Leiden University Libraries, the Pieter van Foreest Stichting and the Van de Sande Fonds. All four are largely written in Dutch and can be dated between 1595 and…

Leiden Asia Centres

The La Galigo manuscript at Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been digitized. The manuscript, which was inscribed in 2011 on UNESCO's ‘Memory of the World’ Register, is now freely available online and can be used for teaching and research. La Galigo is the world's longest epic, written in the Buginese…

In Sri Lanka, a prominent Singhalese Buddhist monk publicly proclaims that it is not a sin to kill Tamils. In Japan, the family register kept in a Buddhist temple and specifying the outcaste status of a lineage is provided to private detectives investigating the marriageability of a young woman. Throughout…

This study presents a re-evaluation of Malay adventure stories.