Localising global garment biographies wants to bring highly diverse people together to collaboratively research how the changing value and lifespan of clothing has an impact on relationships between buyers and users, and producers. Engaging Rotterdam residents (Rotterdam Museum), as well as Indian textile…

We live in a world of things and people in the past must have been as closely entangled with their material surroundings as we are now. In the Laboratory for Artefact Studies Van Gijn takes a close look at the biographies of objects: what kind of raw material an object is made off and what is its provenience,…

A multiple isotope approach to human-animal dynamics in the Lesser Antilles across the historical divide

On the 24th of June Hossein Pourbagheri successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

La radicalisation est devenue un mot désignant notre monde en couleurs négatives. Ce livre cherche à comprendre ce que c'est que la radicalisation au Sahel et aux Pays-Bas?

Sub-Saharan Africa has seen a significant rise in terrorist acts and radicalized youth since the appearance of Boko Haram in 2009 and the fall of Libya in 2012. This book investigates the deeper layers of radicalization in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is situated in a larger global tendency.

In the contemporary myriad of definitions and approaches of landscape, the starting points and limits of the concept of landscape biography are being explored, but also tested in this thesis. What exactly is a landscape biography? What does it constitute of? Is landscape biography just a narration of…

Pui Lun Chan defended his thesis on 12 September 2017

This book offers a clear and accessible exposition of Hayden White’s thought. In an engaging and wide-ranging analysis, Herman Paul discusses White’s core ideas and traces the development of these ideas from the mid-1950s to the present.

The first professional training organised by the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Global Heritage and Development has finished. The participants work for municipalities, provinces, universities or are independent researchers or consultants in the Heritage Sector. During three intensive days in September…

Hiltje Cleveringa seemed moved when on 16 January she was given the first copy of the biography of her father, Rudolph Cleveringa. Peppering his speech with a few cliff-hangers – including an incident concerning Churchill – biographer Kees Schuyt encouraged his audience to actually go read his book.

Professor Wim Willems of the Centre for Modern Urban Studies (MUS), together with Anne van Mourik, is researching the life of Ru Paré, the woman who saved 52 Jewish children during World War II.

Tom Breukel analysed some 250 stone axes from the Caribbean and reconstructed their biographies. This increases our knowledge of production and trade in the period around the arrival of Columbus. PhD defence on 18 April.

Numerous beads and pendants of amber, jet and bone have been found in Dutch Neolithic and Bronze Age context, both in settlements and in graves. Because ornaments are personal items, they are closely linked with people’s identity.

A biographical approach to material cultural interactions between Caribbean communities and Europeans across the historical divide (AD 1000-1800)

Commercial enterprises who want to make use of the expertise and facilities are referred to LAB , the commercial unit responsible for specialized laboratory work.

PhD defence

Lithic Biographies in the Neolithic and Bronze Age, Prof. Annelou van Gijn (2010)

A consortium, led by Erik de Maaker (CADS, Leiden), has under the NWA scheme (Dutch National Science agenda) been awarded 98k€ for Localizing Global Garment Biographies, a two-year project to research the different ways by which users and producers attach value to garments.

PhD defence

This dissertation is concerned with the study of the less than twenty remaining precolonial Mesoamerican codices. By considering these rare and fragile pictographic and hieroglyphic books from the cultural biography perspective, many different aspects of these books can be studied.

In 2021, Assistant Professor Tax Law Rens Pieterse published a biography about former professor in tax law H.J. Hofstra. Dutch magazine ‘Het Register’ did an extensive spread on Pieterse, his writing and other activities.

Was the progressive colonial civil servant the precursor of the postcolonial development-aid worker?

A Biography of Sayyid ʿUthman (1822–1914)

Lecture, VVIK

“Temminck’s Order” is the scientific biography of Coenraad Jacob Temminck (1778–1850), a Dutch naturalist and the first director of ’s Rijks Museum van Natuurlijke Historie in Leiden.

Cultural biographies of persons, objects and 'natural' places in the Bronze Age of the Southern Netherlands, c. 2300-600 BC.

Material Culture Studies revolves around the analysis of the cultural biographies of all sorts of material objects from flint axes, to pottery, to houses and monumental structures.

The Tatiana Afanassjewa-lecture series is a series of public talks in Dutch by Leiden physicists on wednesday evenings, intended for everyone with an interest in physics.

Elizabeth Stuart is one the most misrepresented – and underestimated – figures of the seventeenth century. Daughter of James VI & I, she was married to Frederick V, Elector Palatine in 1613 – they were crowned King and Queen of Bohemia in 1619, only to be deposed and exiled to the Dutch Republic in…

Much attention has been paid to the exchange of objects, ideas, and people in the Caribbean. Networks of interaction connected local communities across pan-regional scales, shaping indigenous socio-political integrations and their responses in colonial situations. This work examines the poorly understood…

Astronomer and Marxist Anton Pannekoek was a remarkable figure. This book aims to study the connections between his life as a socialist theorist and as a pioneering scientist through the prism of Pannekoek's biography.

An experimental and microwear approach to Early Iron Age vessel biographies

Perec’s Lieux project consists of texts describing the author's places of memory, photographs, personal documents and ephemera collected in the street.

State Building Through Life Stories: Incorporating Local Perspectives

Yearbook of Women's History.

This dissertation presents a new perspective on the life, work and character of the Dutch physical chemist Jacobus Henricus van ’t Hoff, first recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and one of the most important and colourful scientists in Dutch history. The image of Van ’t Hoff that emerges from…

The hypothesis of this research is that the municipality used the impressive the Town Hall to enforce its rule and represent its political ideas and make use of sources such as biographies, poems, pamphlets, sermons and governmental documents.

The Tatiana Afanassjewa-lecture series is a series of public talks in Dutch by Leiden physicists on wednesday evenings, intended for everyone with an interest in physics.

PhD defence

Workshop: On the occasion of the bestowing of an honorary doctorate in Oriental Manuscript Studies on Beatrice Gruendler.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri was a celebrated Indian politician and diplomat in the early twentieth century. Despite being hailed as the ‘very voice of international conscience’, he is now a largely forgotten figure.

The production, use, and exchange of bodily ornaments through the lenses of the microscope

Circulating in Brazil's social media today are many vicious attacks against presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known simply as Lula. Widely and enthusiastically shared memes humiliate Lula by depicting him as a poor, uneducated drunkard who deserves to be in jail, thus criminalizing his…

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.