The form and content of the course are determined by your answers on the intake form and, if necessary, an intake interview.

To reach a larger audience beyond the academy, a number of activities in the cultural realm have been programmed over the years.

Do you want to discover a language and culture that is completely different from the Netherlands? In the Bachelor's programme Middle Eastern Studies you will study the connections between the different cultures in the Middle-East in the past and present. You will be able to choose from the languages…

This fall, LUCIS will have the pleasure of welcoming Professor Wadad Kadi, of the University of Chicago, to Leiden. She is the first Abdulaziz Saud Al-Babtain Cultural Foundation Visiting Professor in Arabic Culture at Leiden University.

Have you heard about the book bus project (عربية الحواديت) in Sharqiya? This wonderful initiative encourages children, who don't have easy access to books, to read by spreading books by car. They are also setting up a library!

​​​​​​​The Research Lab for the Study of Heritage Languages of the Netherlands (HERLING) is a platform for research about heritage languages spoken in the Netherlands, with a focus on Turkish, Bahasa Indonesia, Spanish, Papiamento, Berber, Arabic and German. HERLING aims to bridge the gap between scientific…

Important notice: we have decided to cancel the Dutch courses for the time being, in line with Leiden University regulation. There will not be an online replacement of the Dutch courses. We will reassess the situation in January 2021. The institute offers Dutch language courses for foreigners on…

Shiʿi Islam

This book provides a grammatical sketch, glossed texts and a glossary of Tarifiyt Berber, which is the main heritage language of the Moroccan community in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

Thursday, the 9th of April at 6:00 pm

Nadine Chahine, designer of Arabic typefaces and external PhD candidate at Leiden University, has been named in Fast Company's 2012 ranking as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. ‘I see type as the means to engage in the larger context of culture and society,’ commented Chahine.

In this sub-project a selected number of narrative texts will be examined written in the Eurasian realm in the period 1300-1800, focusing on representations of kingship and royal authority.

Associates of Leiden University Center for Intercultural Philosophy

The Netherlands Institute in Morocco, part of Leiden University, is open for students from all academic and applied sciences universities in the Netherlands. Four students talk about the added value of studying in Rabat. 'I was surprised that Rabat is so modern.’

Traces of a Colourful Past

At our regular panel discussions we bring together scholars and other experts to discuss a current topic that captures the interest of the general public as well as academics.

The project re-examines the role of the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox missionaries in the cultural and social developments of the Middle East and their interactions with the indigenous communities, from the nineteenth century until today. It seeks to discover and retrace such ‘entangled histories’…

Berber languages have long been banned from public life in North Africa, but the situation has changed drastically. Linguistic research is generating new insights on the distant past and on present-day Dutch Moroccans. This is the finding of Maarten Kossmann, the only professor of Berber Studies in…

Luca Bruls is currently doing an internship at NVIC. Besides that she works on an ethnographic account of the museum of Islamic art in Cairo. Read more…

War and terrorism overshadow interest in the pre-Islamic heritage of the Arabic peninsula. The new Leiden Centre for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to make the general public more aware of the ancient history of this region.

6 weeks, 2 sessions per week

Was Nabatean also a spoken language? And if so, for how long? These are just two questions that historical linguist Benjamin Suchard will address in his new research project. Suchard is one of three LUCL researchers to receive a coveted Veni grant of 250.000 euros from the Dutch Research Council (NW…

Every semester, LUCIS invites a scholar to Leiden to provide a lecture series on a topic of their choice. With these lectures, we aim to present state-of-the-art research in Islamic studies to the Leiden academic community and beyond, and to offer students and junior researchers the opportunity to get…

To be eligible for Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

The Oral History project, as part of the Tell Balata Archaeological Park project, published an arabic-english booklet of local stories about the site of Tell Balata. An archaeological site near Nablus (West Bank).

Leiden University Centre for the Study of Religion (LUCSoR) studies religion as human activity, in all its diversity.

Now and then we organise book launches to present the latest publications, both academic and popular, in our broad field.

Ali Al Tuma, PhD candidate at the Leiden University Institute for History, has won the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity for his play ‘Yusuf Melik Espanya’ (Yusuf King of Spain), that tells the story of a young Moroccan whose brothers conspire to send him off, against his will, to the Spanish Civil…

Leiden University has a rich history in the domain of Papyrology. Papyrology+, founded in 2014, is a collaboration of Leiden scholars studying (Abnormal) Hieratic, Demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Arabic papyri from a socio-historical, economic and linguistic perspective.

Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) is one of seven institutes housed within the Faculty of Humanities.

The Leiden Papyrological Institute offers several courses in papyrology, from beginners' to advanced level, BA as well as MA. The courses are taught by Dr. Koen Donker van Heel (Demotic and Abnormal Hieratic papyrology) and Dr. Cisca Hoogendijk (Greek papyrology).

The Issues beneath the Surface

Eight universities in the Netherlands and Flanders participate in the NVIC.

Minister Jet Bussemaker (Ministry of Education, Culture and Science) will open the new headquarters of NIMAR (Netherlands Institute in Morocco) in Rabat on 1 March, in the presence of Mayor of Rotterdam Ahmed Aboutaleb and Rector of Leiden University Carel Stolker. The institute has been part of Leiden…

On February 1st 2016 the first Rabat semester at the Netherlands Institute in Morocco (NIMAR) has started. During the semester, organised for students of Arabic (Middle-Eastern Studies), participants will study Modern Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Moroccan culture and society, Berber languages and…

LUCL is glad to announce that two of its members have been awarded an NWO Vrije Competitie Grant.

LeiCenSAA is dedicated to the study of Ancient Arabia and the sharing of knowledge and expertise on this topic. Thefore it aims to collaborate closely with other research in the field.

This Philosophy: Global and Comparative Perspectives bachelor's programme is unique in that it offers comparative perspectives from around the world that will enable you to be part of the next generation of thinkers, someone studying and shaping philosophy for a globalised 21st century.

The hinterland of important centres like Petra (Southern Jordan) can provide essential information that contribute to the understanding of their rise, expansion and decline.

The Leiden Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to promote research on the ancient languages and cultures of Arabia, and to disseminate this knowledge to the broader public.

The refurbished P.J. Veth Building - the first completed sub-project in the Humanities Campus project - was officially opened in the summer of 2017. The Faculty of Humanities moved in straight away. . The building was meticulously transformed into a modern teaching building with attractive areas for…

At LUCIS we offer a varied programme of scholarly meetings (conferences, workshops) which reflect our multidisciplinary and comparative view on Islam and Muslim societies in past and present.

Dear friends of the NVIC,

The safety of students is a priority and hence an ever recurring issue at the NVIC. NVIC not only attaches great importance to the safety of its students, but also that its students feel safe.