This monograph by dr. Kim Beerden compares Greek divination to divinatory practices in Neo-Assyrian Mesopotamia and Republican Rome.

This project examines the notion of sacred fertility and sacred landscapes, associated rituals and material culture, both archaeological and ethnographic manifestations in the Horn of Africa.

The Animated Image addresses the entire range of contexts in which images were described by Roman authors as being animated, as well as the accounts that Roman writers produced to explain the animation of inanimate matter.

Photographs of sacred rituals and ceremonies in Asia by Bangkok-based photographer and author Hans Kemp can be seen in the front hall of the Leiden Town Hall from 27 June to 19 August 2019. Here a sneak preview.

From William Shakespeare to Marilynne Robinson, A Literary History of Reconciliation is the first study to examine representations of interpersonal reconciliation in work of literature across a long-term period, from the early seventeenth century to the present day, focusing on how these representations…

Inspired by a critical reconsideration of current monolithic approaches to the study of Greek religion, this book argues that ancient Greeks displayed a disquieting capacity to validate two (or more) dissonant, if not contradictory, representations of the divine world in a complementary rather than…

A study concerning the collective memory in the region of the Bene lo Ya/ Ene lo I'ya, Sierra Norte, Oaxaca.

Research in the field of Etruscology at the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University (UL; the Netherlands) aims at exploring the history of the religious and ideological mentality of the Etruscans by studying archaeological, epigraphical and ancient written sources.

This project proceeds from the observation that since the second half of the twentieth century, forgiveness and reconciliation have become pervasive themes in western culture, both on a political level and in personal relations.

Aspects of Religious Leadership in Europe, 1100-2000

The Supplementa series of BABESCH is designed as a platform for thematic publications, in juxtaposition to the annual and varied mix of contributions offered by the journal itself. The thematic publications will include proceedings of colloquia, collections of particular studies by one or more authors,…

Proceedings of the International Colloquium Leiden, May 29 and 30, 2008

Lecture

Arts and Culture

Lecture

This dissertation examines how Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Fécamp designed, produced, and read books over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

In Indigenous Ancestors and Healing Landscapes Jana Pešoutová presents new interpretations of current healing practices in Cuba and the Dominican Republic juxtaposed against the European colonization of the Caribbean after 1492.

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.

Mathilde Mechling defended her thesis on 28 january 2020.

This project studies the theory and practice of moral education in the (Neo)Platonic tradition.

On 23 October 2019, Yoram Stein defended his thesis 'Spinoza's Theory of Religion: The Importance of Religion in Spinoza's Thought and Its Implications for State and Society'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. P.B. Cliteur and Prof. A.A.M. Kinneging.

Library of Arabic Literature: Critical Edition and Translation of Ibn Qutaybah’s Faḍl al-ʿArab.

What does the interspecies interpretation of the equality principle mean for the liberal democracy, and is it possible to provide for an appropriate legal and political position for animals without defying the classic-liberal principles of the liberal democratic state?

Lecture

Conference

Mazatec chants and ancient Mesoamerican pictography

Time, Religion and Sacred Discourses of the Ayuuk People

Case Studies in Etruscan Ritual Behaviour

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’…

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.

In Augustus 2012 Kim Beerden will join the staff of the Institute for History as lecturer in Ancient History.

Beatriz Pañeda Murcia, from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, will be present at our Faculty as a guest PhD researcher over the coming months.

In the world of Ancient Greece the interpretation of supernatural signs was a versatile tool to facilitate decision-making. This is the central hypothesis of the PhD dissertation of historian Kim Beerden. Defence on 14 February.

The Dutch Association for the Study of Religion (NGG) has decided to award the Cornelis Tiele MA Thesis Award 2018 to LUCSoR alumnus Bas van Rijn for his thesis “The Mind Behind the Cards: Searching for the Source of Tarot Divination’s Popularity through a Cognitive Analysis” (supervised by dr. Markus…

TEXTS FROM ANCIENT EGYPT. Highlights from the Collection of the Leiden Papyrological Institute. Online exhibition on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the foundation ‘Het Leids Papyrologisch Instituut’ in 2015.

“BABYLON” investigates the extent of the similarities between Babylonian and post-exilic forms of cultic and social organization and explores the question how Babylonian models could have influenced the restoration effort in Jerusalem.

Join-in courses are MA-courses in medieval topics given in set MA-programs of the six participant universities of the Research School. On request, such courses are accessible to MA-students from other (Dutch) universities. Course loads and number of credit points to be obtained are usually between 5…

Recontextualising the Papyri from Roman Soknopaiou Nesos / Dimê (Fayyum, Egypt)

Conference, 11th Penn-Leiden Colloquium on Ancient Values

In what ways and to what ends did Parisian buildings overwhelm the early modern public? This study is concerned with the experience of the sublime in architecture in seventeenth-century Paris.

On November 25, Dr Araceli Rojas presented her book El tiempo y la sabiduría: un calendario sagrado entre los ayöök de Oaxaca. The event took place in the Central Public Library of the State of Oaxaca, in the heart of Oaxaca City, at 7 pm.

The studies of two researchers previously working within the VICI-project ‘Art, Agency and Living Presence’ are now published by Leiden University Press in conjunction with Akademie Verlag.

The Queens of the Nile exhibition at the National Museum of Antiquities finally affords the wives of the pharoahs the attention they deserve. Thanks to guest curator Olaf Kaper, students and PhD candidates gained valuable experience in museum curating.

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’…

This research deals with the royal houses of the Vijayanagara Empire and four of its successor states: Ikkeri, Tanjavur (under both the Nayaka and Bhonsle rulers), Madurai, and Ramnad. This study is thus concerned with dynastic politics and imperial legacies in south India between the 14th and 18th…

Carina van den Hoven defended her thesis on 16 February 2017.

The Indigenous Calendars of Mexico and Guatemala

Conference

On March 6, Annelise Reid was granted the Speckmann Prize 2017 for best MA thesis of the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology. Annelise Reid wrote her thesis on the Dutch Pentecostal community. Erik de Maaker was her thesis supervisor.