What issues arise in the changing landscape of privacy, identity and data protection?

Music can affect how we feel, think, and behave. But how do we learn about the specifics of people's responses to music so that we can apply this to health and well-being? By looking at characteristics of the music, as well as the differences between listeners, we hope to better understand as well as…

Memory and Identity is one of the six research themes of the LUCAS Modern and Contemporary cluster.

Research conducted in this group aims at furthering our understanding of how communities and individuals deal with social change, conflict and trauma through remembrance and commemoration as well as forgetting in the arts.

Knowledge and culture subproject 1:

Before 1936, musical practices in Palestine relied heavily on colloquial poetry, especially in rural communities, which constituted most of the population. In this dissertation, Issa Boulos has examined historical records that revealed many differences and similarities between Palestinian communities…

People in Asia increasingly feel the need for a strong identity. This is the consequence of developments such as globalisation and the realisation that Asian countries such as China and India are becoming new world powers. Professor Hilde De Weerdt studies how political ideas and national identity spread…

How and to what extent the historic house (re-)constructs identity through image-making in China.

In my research I am concerned with the possibility of a politics of sexuality without reverting to identitarian conceptions of sexuality. In a reading of the work of the American author James Purdy, I propose to move towards a politicizing of the concept of narrative identity as developed by the French…

On the 16th of September, Bert van Pinxteren successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Bert on this achievement!

This doctoral project, entitled Sinophone as Method: Reimaging Chinese Cinema in the Global Era, aims to explore the intricacies of knowledges and practices with regard to notions of China, Chinese, and Chineseness.

This study, Calypso, The Trinidadian Experience, has sought to establish links between calypso music and the construction and maintenance of identities, and to locate the genre as a mechanism (or as part of a broader mechanism) that has exerted on-going social influence within Trinidadian society…

What holds people together and what makes them willing to fit within larger political structures? Our project examines this question in the practices of dynastic rulership in Eurasia ca. 1300-1800.

Knowledge and culture subproject 1:

This research hopes to contribute to social awareness of the consequences of colonialism for Indigenous Peoples, to the deconstruction of still existing colonial and discriminatory notions and to a better appreciation of Indigenous art and thought.

'Audible locality' is the first thorough study on the cultural ramifications of recording technology on ethnic sensibility in Southeast Asia. Exploring chronologically the representation of Indonesia's regional culture through recording media, it recounts the Dutch East Indies colonial society's initial…

What are the critical elements in sonic materialization of fixed media electroacoustic music and how can these parameters be classified? How would interpretation be defined in performing fixed media music? What are the creative and new ways of presenting fixed media music by incorporating all the presentation…

Music as a multi-faceted and integral part of our society.

What are the precise identities, possibilities and current practice examples of the various time frames in music and what bearings do they have individually and in combinations on the speed of the music?

The complexities of modernization in Brazil and Graciliano Ramos significance for our understanding of Brazil today.

Two events on Music and the Brain will be held in Leiden later this month.

How has interreligious encounter in Ogbómòsó created multiple religious belongings and identities among individuals and groups?

This research project, that started in September 2008, aims to explore how personal and public memories of the Dutch Revolt in the seventeenth century evolved and interacted to create new political and cultural identities for the societies that eventually were to become the kingdoms of the Netherlands…

The course Popular Music: Selling Rebellion offers a unique opportunity to explore the popular music world from the point of view of its relation to both politics and the industry.

Developing new methods for performing improvised music

Majuka Tanabe defended her thesis on 17 June 2015

What was the relationship between women and modern media in different parts of Asia in the 20th century? Under what historical and social conditions did women achieve prominence in popular music in Asia?

How do we experience electronic music? How does electronic music operate on perceptual, cognitive and affective levels? What are the common concepts activated in the listener’s mind when listening to electronic music? Why and how are these concepts activated?

From The Cognitive Continuum of Electronic Music:

Online cursus The Importance and Power of Music in our Society

The Leiden Academic Course Center offers a large variety of short and longer music courses. The music category includes various Singing courses, but also courses such as African percussion and Musical Workshop. A number of courses are offered at different levels. At the end of the course it is possible…

The music studio is a multipurpose room measuring 9.4 x 8.9 m, with marmoleum on the floor and 40 chairs. Music system and piano available.

This thesis investigated how microphones and loudspeakers could become musical instruments.

Launched in 2017, The Importance and Power of Music in Our Society is an open online course, taught by Professor of Auditory Culture Marcel Cobussen and music philosopher Hafez Ismaïli M’hamdi and accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

Shafa’Atussara Silahudin defended her theses on 18 May 2021.

In October 2014 a new publication on artistic research has been launched. The book is called Artistic Experimentation in Music. An Anthology, edited by Darla Crispin and Bob Gilmore, and published by Leuven University Press.

In the field of Western art music, improvisation has become a much discussed topic. In this interdisciplinary study I argue that in this context, improvisation is not to be seen as a quasi-autonomous skill or art form, but as an aspect of music-making in general.

How can classical music be restructured while still retaining the core of what we love about its repertoire and our ability to share it with audiences, while coming up with ways of making it financially viable.

Interpretation and Composition Outside the Work Concept

Composer Paul Craenen (1972) is actually a pianist, but as part of his PhD ceremony, he performed a composition on PVC pipes. Craenen studies the position and role of the body in music. ‘I am interested in what precedes the resulting sound’.

“Music is about everything else,” theater director Peter Sellars said upon accepting his Polar Music Prize back in 2014. Although it is about particular musical problems, Stanimiras dissertation is about ‘everything else’, too. What and how that is, could be summed up in different ways depending on…

The aim of this research is to define the relationship between sources of articulation for different kinds of instrument in the period between the beginning of XVI century (first extant indications) and the end of XVIII century.

Aristocratic dynasties have long been regarded as fundamental to the development of early modern society and government. Yet recent work by political historians has increasingly questioned the dominant role of ruling families in state formation, underlining instead the continued importance and independence…

Andrea Giolai defended his thesis on 3 May 2017.

How does the religious identity of islamic primary schools in the Netherlands relate to the social demands?

From the 1920s on, popular music in Southeast Asia was a mass-audience phenomenon that drew new connections between indigenous musical styles and contemporary genres from elsewhere to create new, hybrid forms. This book presents a cultural history of modern Southeast Asia from the vantage point of popular…

In 2016, Leiden University hosts the monthly meetings of the Music and Cultural Analysis reading group.

This thesis proposes multiple paths towards the development of a performance practice in Computer Music.