The basic concern that informs every part of the research is in wonder of what happens when sound happens as an aesthetic force. The emphasis of each query lies on the active occasion, the radical empiricism, the moment of encounter, how the sonic event comes to pass as aesthetic force.

Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) is dedicated to ground-breaking and interdisciplinary research dealing with the relations between culture and society.

LUCIS funded several research programmes to boost interfaculty and interdisciplinary cooperation and to widen the involvement of LUCIS members.

This project, executed by Marieke Hendriksen MA MRes, aims at an analysis of how the early modern anatomical collections of Leiden University were rooted in ideals of perfection in different fields of knowledge and expertise.

What is the role of memory in contemporary music?

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

Evert Jan van Leeuwen’s entry in Auteur Press’s Devil's Advocate series provides a complete study of the aesthetic appeal of Roger Corman's influential first Poe picture House of Usher.

Beauty is a central concept in the Italian cultural imagination throughout its history and in virtually all its manifestations. It particularly permeates the domains that have governed the construction of Italian identity: literature and language.

This dissertation deals with Hegel’s theory of the sublime (das Erhabene). I focus specifically on die heilige Poesie (sacred poetry), a form of art that he identifies with the Judaic Psalms and which I claim to be the core of Hegel’s approach to sublimity. I claim that Hegel’s apparent lack of interest…

Based on interviews with feminist Instagram users, this article studies emergent feminist visibilities on Instagram through the concept of filtering.

Anja Groten investigates matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D)*.

Harry’s research work looks at the techniques and influence of chordal and polyphonic accompaniment on viola da gamba in the sixteenth century.

This book examines how renewed forms of artistic activism were developed in the wake of the neoliberal repression since the 1980s.

Tactile Paths is an artistic research project that aims to expand and articulate the feedback between notation and improvisation in experimental music.

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections between a variety of artistic and cultural expressions and their role in society from 1800 onwards.

Assesses the importance of Merleau-Ponty to current and ongoing concerns in contemporary philosophy.

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections and interactions between a variety of artistic expressions and society. It focuses not only on objects (artistic, literary, cinematic, and medial), but also on practices (aesthetic, political, and cultural).

The Film and Photographic Studies programme will equip you with a broad and interdisciplinary knowledge of lens-based mediums.

The master's programme in Philosophy of Humanities at Leiden University allows you to specialise in conceptual and methodological issues in the Humanities.

Lecture, Seminar

The Leiden Lectures in Media | Art | Politics (MAP) is a series of talks organized by Pepita Hesselberth and Yasco Horsman. Speakers from various academic backgrounds and in different stages of their careers reflect on diverging ways in which technological and social changes challenge and transform…

Alumni event, Lecture

PhD defence

You can find an overview of events organized by the Platform for Post-Colonial Readings below.

This dissertation examines the airs sérieux contained within the Recueils d’airs serieux et a boire de differents autheurs published by the Ballard printing house in Paris between 1695 and 1699 inclusive.

The Turn of the Soul: Representations of Religious Conversion in Early Modern Art and Literature

This new volume, published 19 November 2020, - within the series 'Intersections' -, explores the concept of magnificence as a social construction in seventeenth-century Europe. Although this period is often described as the ‘Age of Magnificence’, thus far no attempts have been made to investigate how…

This PhD project analyses the politics and aesthetics of depictions of torture in American and European ‘war on terror’ films.

This doctoral trajectory explores sound, its image and its role in relating humans and our technologies to the environment.

New article on popular culture influences on cybersecurity experts, available Open Access at Contemporary Security Policy, part of a special issue edited by dr. Myriam Dunn Cavelty.

Compact Cinematics challenges the dominant understanding of cinema to focus on the various compact, short, miniature, pocket-sized forms of cinematics that have existed from even before its standardization in theatrical form, and in recent years have multiplied and proliferated, taking up an increasingly…

This research proposal focuses on the investigation of the poetic potentials of negativity through the exploitation of failure in sound based artistic practices - a context that has not been extensively addressed.

Bernini and Pallavicino, the artist and the Jesuit cardinal, are closely related figures at the papal courts of Urban VIII and Alexander VII, at which Bernini was the principal artist. The analysis of Pallavicino's writings offers a new perspective on Bernini's art and artistry and allow us to understand…

The Discovery of El Greco: The Nationalization of Culture Versus the Rise of Modern Art (1860-1915)

Subjects Barbarian, Monstrous, and Wild responds to a contemporary political climate in which historically invested figures of otherness—barbarians, savages, monsters—have become common discursive currency.

Central to this research is the Urban Future-project, which consists of a large archive of artworks made from 2002 until now.

This dissertation explores matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D).

This dissertation investigates the fabric and the infrastructure of contemporary artistic production.

In the logic and aesthetics of a republican baroque the existing world is the result of a moment in which for a split second two or more realities are equally real and after which only a singular one becomes actualized.

Knowledge and culture subproject 3:

LCCP is envisaged as an open space for stimulating discussion, critical debate and inventive co-operation in the Dutch philosophical community. It does not pursue a specific agenda but welcomes different readings of our shared philosophical situation, because it believes that deeper understanding is…

The Modern and Contemporary Cluster is the largest within LUCAS and home to more than 100 staff members and PhD candidates. Hosting a diverse group of young and advanced scholars, it offers an especially fruitful and dynamic environment for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Nietzsche has often been considered a thinker independent of the philosophy of his time and radically opposed to the concerns and concepts of modern and contemporary philosophy. But there is an increasing awareness of his sophisticated engagements with his contemporaries and of his philosophy's rich…

Students at LUC gain an understanding of journalism ‘from the inside out’ through innovative teaching methods in the courses Multimedia Journalism, Investigative Journalism and Gender, Media and Conflict. By simulating the actual daily tasks of journalists, they are exposed to journalism from the makers’…

The master's specialisation in Visual Ethnography emphasises a strongly hands-on, empirical approach, which requires students to play an active role in mastering the audiovisual toolbox.

When you think of physics, do you think only of complicated formulas? You’re not the only one. Therefore, every year, the Leiden Insitute of Physics organises the LION Image Award to show another side of physics: beautiful images about intriguing science. The winner of the 2022 photo competition captured…

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…

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Religions involve belief in the unbelievable: in evil spirits causing disease, in souls surviving death, and in gods punishing wrongdoers and blessing the just. Cognitive studies suggest that humans are predisposed to speculate about fate and divine agency, but support from so-called ‘plausibility structures’…

Researchers within the cluster are committed to the close and expert analysis of the materiality and content of the arts, literature and media they study. Different types of media bring various aspects of this core interest to the fore.