Investigation of 1.) The whereabouts of the epistemological dissonances in art criticisms on Post-war contemporary art from Japan between two different language realms, in this case in English and Japanese; and 2.) What the dissonances disclose, disturb, and contribute in the process of the establishment…

Troughout the ages, art has always had a large impact, from the first cave drawings until modern art forms. In the Bachelor's programme Art History at Leiden University you will not just get to know art from the Netherlands and Europe, but also from North-America, Asia and Africa. Study art from the…

The master’s programme in Arts and Culture at Leiden University is uniquely positioned at the intersection of Art History and Museum Studies. Informed by leading interdisciplinary research, this degree provides you with a strong academic foundation for a variety of careers in museums, galleries and…

Are you thinking about studying Arts and Culture: Art History and Museum Studies? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

The Secret Life of Art Works. Exploring the Boundaries between Art and Life is the first collection of essays to present case studies from the visual arts, architecture, sculpture and numismatics, and to engage critically with theoretical perspectives from art history, psychology, aesthetics and ant…

Cwiertka wants to investigate how waste is produced and disposed of in modern East Asian society. With her research group she will be carrying out a comparative analysis on two levels: the international level (between China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) and the inter-regional level (between East Asia…

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 MA in History, Arts and Culture of Asia is designed for students interested in taking a humanities-related approach to the study of countries or regions in pre-modern, modern or contemporary Asia.

Exploring cultural production in Europe, Latin America and Africa, the institute’s research programme focuses on the continuous interconnectedness of the Arts and Society in both the textual culture of literature, learning and public debate and the visual culture of art, architecture, film, photography…

CompaRe aims to be a hub in a global network on comparative regional integration. For regional integration is key to meeting the challenges of our globalizing world.

This dissertation focuses on a new field of artistic research in which a visual artist takes on the role of researcher. The main research question is whether performance art integrated in an ecumenical service, combined with artistic directions from the artist, can enhance the religious experience of…

Knowledge and culture subproject 3:

How did digital intermediality symbolise and facilitate the transfer of content from popular culture into policy statements and vice versa in the period between 1945 and the new millenium?

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

Common challenge: unique circumstances

The central aim is to systematically study differences in gendered crime patterns in the records of different types of courts in various English and Dutch cities in the early modern period.

Historical migration studies have long focused primarily on the European and Atlantic worlds. In this programmatic and long term project, we aim to broaden the perspective to include the full migration experience of the non-Western world.

How has migration affected Irish and Italy society since 1945?

Art of Captivity / Arte del Cautiverio tells a compelling story about Central America's drug war through a series of rich photographs. The book, which is entirely bilingual in English and Spanish, focuses on Guatemala, which has become the primary point of transit for cocaine produced in the Andes and…

How are contemporary art practices from Southeast Asia negotiating notions of art and tradition?

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…

This collaborative project aims to explore the history of the concept “barbarism” in Europe from the 18th century to the present, with a particular emphasis on the role of literature and art in the concept’s shifting functions.

The MA Arts and Culture at Leiden University offers two specialisations: Art History and Museum Studies.

The Faculty of Science is calling for proposals by an artist or artist-led team for a commissioned, site-specific, permanent public art installation. The work will be installed in the entry hall of the new Gorlaeus Building (phase 2A). The successful proposal will include details of the design, fabrication,…

The aim of this project is to study the influence of Longinus’s treatise ‘On the sublime’ on practice and theory of architecture and theatre in seventeenth-century Paris and Amsterdam.

This project contests the assumption of criminologists that gender differences in recorded crime are static over time and that women are in general less likely to commit a crime than men.

The master's programme Comparative Criminal Justice at Leiden University focuses on criminology, criminal law and their mutual relationship. The programme offers an international comparative perspective, analysing criminal justice systems, legislation and policies in common law and civil law countri…

Become an indispensable contributor to the wellbeing of our societies in culture, policies and economies!

The transformation of the myriad of medieval kingdoms, principalities, local lordships, city-‘states’ and peasant ‘republics’ into ‘modern’ states, claiming some measure of sovereignty, remains one of the core themes of European history, because it gets down to the very root of the (idea on the) Europe…

Are you thinking about studying Comparative Criminal Justice? Learn more and watch the videos

Considering the ways in which the ‘global turn’ is changing the theory and practice of historical disciplines, Explorations in History and Globalization engages with the concept and methodology of globalization, challenging traditional divisions of space and time to offer a range of perspectives on…

This seminal volume covers the entire global history of urbanization since the rise of cities in Mesopotamia in the 6th millennium BC. Leiden historians Wim Blockmans, Leonard Blussé, Luuk de Ligt and Leo Lucassen contributed survey and thematic chapters.

The research programme Descriptive and Comparative Linguistics brings together LUCL researchers who focus mainly on descriptive and comparative linguistics.

The Leiden Academic Course Center offers a large variety of visual art courses. Our courses are offered for beginners as wel as more advanced students. In the lessons everybody will be guided according to their experience. All the art supplies are included in the price of the physical courses. For…

This dissertation is a study of North Korean art as a site where politics, history, and culture meet.

This research intends to study the why, what, how and the possible outcome of internationalisation in higher education institutions of fine art and design.

On 1 November, Stijn Bussels assumed his role as professor of Art History, especially before 1800 at Leiden University. The chair is located at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS).

Spirit priests and ancestor cults in new guinea's far west

Due to the fact that the Frisian lands lacked major political centers in the Middle Ages and also because most of its monasteries suffered complete destruction in the second half of the 16th century, relatively few written documents concerning medieval Frisian history have survived. To analyze them…

In what ways can visual art play a vital role in countering the discriminating stigma experienced by transgender communities?

This publication aims at the analysis of the performance of a corpus of Fongbe stories that I collected in three villages in the south of Benin in 1976 and 1977. The corpus consists of 37 stories (57.000 words). The stories aim at children’s education.

The ‘Locke drawings’ collection and the representation of Brazilian native peoples in global perspective

Inaugural lecture, delivered upon acceptance of the Chair in Theory of Research in the Arts, at the Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University, on 10 February 2017, by Professor H.A. (Henk) Borgdorff.

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,…