Colonial art and artefacts were not necessarily looted. Pieter ter Keurs, Professor of Museums, Collections and Society, calls for more nuance in the debate on art and collectors’ items from a loaded past. Inaugural speech on 2 December.

Engagement between Asia and Europe is increasing. If these continents want to build a lasting relationship, they need to understand each other better in the economic, socio-cultural, historical and legal arena. Researchers from Leiden have already contributed to the body of knowledge on past and present…

Language offers new insights into our history, cultural differences, migration, and the way in which our brain processes information. This knowledge can in turn help us understand what it means to be human, as well as opening the way to many practical applications. In order to realise these goals, linguists…

Indigenous Peoples possess unique perspectives of the world that will be lost if their knowledge and heritage are not documented, studied and protected. If we lose this knowledge, we are losing part of our own heritage.

This project studies travel writing about the Dutch East Indies written between 1800 and the end of the Second World War. By analyzing both Dutch travel texts and Indigenous travel texts in Javanese and Malay, it presents a new, double-voiced perspective on (the historiography of) the Dutch colonial…

Bringing Dominican indigenous collections back to the community

In Europe a number of production and communication strategies have long tried to establish local products as resources for local development. At the foot of the Alps, this scenario appears in all its contradictions, especially in relation to cheese production. The Heritage Arena focuses on the saga…

The main research question of this PhD project focus on how educational policies and practices can contribute to the promotion and understanding of archaeological indigenous heritage among teachers and students in the Caribbean?

The Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society focuses on the relationships between past and present, the role of heritage in society, and how heritage can contribute to the improving quality of life and our (future) environment.

This thesis explores the value of cultural and archaeological heritage through a focus on multinational corporations (MNCs) across industries and their involvement with cultural heritage.

The research focuses on the understanding of symbolic stratigraphy of the land (through time) from the worldview of the People of the Rain (one of the Indigenous Peoples of southern Mexico), by studying contemporary cultural heritage in communities of the Mixtec Highlands.

The heritage of Indigenous Peoples has long been researched and commented upon from the outside. This book adopts an innovative approach by engaging with the heritage of Indigenous Peoples from the ‘inside’.

global challenges and possibilities

The 2011 disasters precipitated widespread concern among heritage scholars about the fate of Tohoku’s cultural properties, tangible and intangible. Damage to not only buildings and landscapes but also ‘formless’ heritage, some worried, could weaken social infrastructure and thus slow or undermine re…

Doctoral research on recent developments in museological practices by “critical” curators, interventionist artists, and personnel initiatives, focusing on ‘queering’ as an entrance point to broader intersectional issues; resulting in a report on the ‘Queer Baseline’ (to be launched in 2020), a popular…

The fourth volume of Ex Novo has the pleasure to host Heleen van Londen, Marjo J. Schlaman, and Andrea Travaglia as guest editors of the special issue titled The Natural and The Cultural. Integrating Approaches in Landscape Heritage Management. This timely collection of peer-reviewed papers and short…

This project aims to identify, quantify and map the exposure of Dutch national monuments to four climate change effects: flooding, waterlogging, drought and heat.

The researchers and students at the Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society at the Faculty of Archaeology study the role of the past in modern societies. They want to find out more about the relationships between the past and the present, and the role that heritage plays.

This study offers a new approach to the history of sites, archaeology, and heritage formation in Asia, at both the local and the trans-regional levels.

Colonial and Global History 1200-present explores the global circulation of people, goods and ideas during early-modern and modern times. Taking a comparative perspective, this program investigates the development of transnational and transcontinental connections and their impact on the making of identities,…

The Heritage and Postcolonial Studies specialiation has a regional focus on colonial and postcolonial Indonesia, in transnational and comparative perspectives. You will critically study the politics and practices of archives in the context of colonial and postcolonial history, thereby engaging with…

The Centre for Digital Heritage undertakes collaborative international research in the field of Digital Heritage. It is an initiative of the University of York.

The aim of this PhD dissertation project is to study the effect of private foreign investment outside the realm of economics in the context of a colonial structure in Indonesia between c. 1910 and c. 1960.

The oil pipeline in Dakota, the widening of the motorway near Stonehenge, the construction of dams in Turkey and Iraq: newspapers and social media are full of alarming articles about threats to heritage as a result of large-scale construction work. Heritage experts at Leiden University have developed…

This project investigates ancient water management of streams, springs and runoffs on the archaeological site of Monte Albán, Mexico, as a means to contribute with different stakeholders in the development of sustainable solutions to water problems today such as floods and scarcity.

The master's programme in Heritage and Museum Studies at Leiden University focuses on the relationships between past and present, the role of heritage in our society, and how our heritage can contribute to improving the quality of life and the environment.

The proposed research program studies the impact of private foreign investment on development in Indonesia during the years c. 1910-1960.

The project ‘Founding an Inclusive Space’ investigates the histories of various LGBT+ archives in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Archaeological heritage management is concerned with the identification, protection, management and preservation of the material remains of human activity in the past (of whatever period and in whichever region of the world) and with the interaction that this involves with all kinds of stakeholders.

How do Nepalese exiles in England celebrate their festivals? What are North Korean monuments doing in Zimbabwe? The ‘Heritage on the Move’ exhibition shows what happens to cultures under the influence of migration. From 3 December to 7 January in Leiden University's Oude UB.

Doctoral research on the history of the critical visitor and their efforts at founding alternative archives including LGBT+-focused, feminist, disability and digitizing projects, resulting in a traveling exhibition on findings (with audio-guides), popular and scholarly article, and a dissertation.

Subproject of the NWO Smart Culture Grant research project 'The Critical Visitor'.

The Heritage Sector at a Crossroads: The way of Intersectionality. This project investigates how heritage institutions can achieve inclusion and accessibility within their organization, collection, and exhibition spaces that meets the breadth of demands placed by today’s “critical visitors.” Fifteen…

Subproject of the NWO Smart Culture Grant research project 'The Critical Visitor'.

As part of Nexus 1492 Subproject 4: A Future for Diverse Caribbean Heritages, which seeks to shed light on how local communities interpret and engage with heritage in the present day, this doctoral study aims to gain insight into how indigenous heritage is represented in the school curriculum for social…

The major objective of the study is to ascertain how Japanese colonialism affected the manner in which food was produced, processed, prepared and consumed in the colony, and how new attitudes towards these practices were constructed.

Ian Simpson is a relatively new face at the Faculty of Archaeology. Starting as an assistant professor in the Heritage and Society department in 2018, he is one of the faculty’s members in critical heritage studies and looks both at the past as well as the future. ‘I study how heritage can be employed…

The master’s programme in Colonial and Global History at Leiden University offers the most in-depth and comprehensive programme on the history of colonialism and globalisation currently available in Europe.

Turkic nomadic rulers established large empires in the Middle East and Asia between the 11th and 14th centuries. This project will explore the link between their political ideology and the production of art and literature, via the cultural heritage of five cities along the Silk Road: Kashgar, Samarkand,…

The Colonial and Global History (research) programme at Leiden University offers the most in-depth and comprehensive programme of European expansion and globalisation currently available in Europe.

The Heritage and rights of indigenous peoples focuses on the living heritage of indigenous peoples and its safeguarding, connecting the past and the present in local communities.

In the specialisation Heritage and Society you explore the role of heritage in society. With our combination of education and research you lay a strong foundation for an (inter)national carreer in heritage management and policy.

Together with four European partner universities heritage specialist Dr Monique van den Dries has been granted an Erasmus+ project (EU-CUL) by the European Commission. This project sets up a unique cooperation between educational scientists and academic heritage specialists. It will study how universities…