The research master in History at Leiden University offers five specialisations in which you will focus on historical processes, historical research, historiography and methodology.

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…

Contact the Leiden University Institute for History.

Susana Münch Miranda is a postdoc at the Institute for History.

Material Crossovers

Researchers have the whole world as their work area. Dutch researchers collaborate with Chinese, Australians give lectures in Lithuania, Koreans move to America and back. Who can contribute to academic knowledge, who benefits from it and who pays for it? A fair and effective system for this has not…

LIAS Global History Workshop brings together faculty and graduate students in LIAS and other Institutes who are interested in writing critical histories grounded in empirical research and theory, irrespective of historiographical approach, geographical focus, or time period.

The NWO just announced the results of the Vrije Competitie proposals. Paul Smith, professor at the French department is, as a member of LUCAS, one of three scholars within the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University who has been awarded this grant.

The Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) aims on doing applied research with partners. You can be involved in our research, and in the knowledge transfer of our research results.

The motto of the Institute for History is: ‘Global questions, local sources.’ Its researchers use local sources to find answers to major historical questions. Without historical analysis, it is impossible to understand and explain the issues in society today. Leiden itself has a rich history, with big…

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…

The journey of sugar from east to west

“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.

The treasure houses of Leiden's University Library and Naturalis house wonderful historical collections with dried plants and botanical drawings. Tinde van Andel, extraordinary professor of History of botany and gardens, studies these collections.

How did free agents in the Dutch Republic react to the creation of colonial monopolies (VOC and WIC) by the States-General? This project answers this question by looking at the role individuals played in the construction of an informal global empire parallel to the institutional empire devised by the…

Mazatec chants and ancient Mesoamerican pictography

Different groups of hominins probably learned from one another much earlier than was previously thought, and that knowledge was also distributed much further. A study by archaeologists at Leiden University on the use of fire shows that 400,000 years ago knowledge and skills must already have been exchanged…

This subproject of 'From Homo Economicus to Political Animal' analyzes Greek economic thinking in late 5th- and 4th-century philosophical circles.

Osteoarchaeologists help forensic scientists solve crimes. They also study bone material from the Second World War in order to identify victims.

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…

The second authors' conference of the General Labour History of Africa (GLHA) project will be held from 10 to 12 December 2015 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

This NWO-funded research programme focuses on the assumptions and methodology of the writing of history of science. History of science is in many respects a flourishing discipline: it currently yields an impressive volume of studies. Systematic reflection about the ways in which history of science may…

The "Cognitive Turn" and the Middle Ages - There is an increasing interest in the cognitive sciences and how knowledge from this area influences literary studies, history, art history, and studies in material culture. This meeting seeks to discuss the possibilities, but also the limitations of incorporating…

A group of confidants including a former student of Meijers managed to avert his deportation to a death camp. In her lecture on 27 November, Cleveringa Professor Marjan Schwegman revealed the history of the persecution of the Jewish Professor Eduard Meijers.

What are key regulators of plant ageing that can reverse ageing in plants (rejuvenation), and how can we use this knowledge to improve crop plants?

This volume edited by Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen aims to quantify and qualify cross-cultural global migrations and was published in the series 'Studies in Global Migration History'.

The Executive Board has appointed Herman Paul (Institute for History) as Professor of History of the Humanities. He will take up the role from 1 January 2019.

Combining approaches from intellectual history, philology and the study of Arabic manuscripts, this study places the Bornu scholar Muḥammad al-Wālī within his intellectual environment on the one hand, and it portrays him as someone who responded to the concerns of ordinary Muslims around him on the…

This Collaborative Research Group acts primarily as a platform for discussion of historical issues related to the African continent, its place in the world and in African Studies.

This project investigates how the first generation of Dutch printed books (the incunabula, 1473-1501) affected late medieval spirituality, religious practice and visual culture in the Low Countries.

How we think about and act on the usefulness of scientific research has epistemological and political implications: what knowledge consists of, how it comes about and to what ends. In this dissertation, I situate the usefulness of scientific research in concrete places for knowledge exchange. The exchange…

This book explores the links between maritime trading networks around Europe, from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the North and Baltic Seas.

This project examines the meaning of this historical place, and the way it has been used by the political institutions that have had their seat there.

When we think of the history of Dutch slavery, the areas that spring to mind are primarily the Antilles and Suriname. However, until the end of the eighteenth century there were also Dutch plantation colonies in neighbouring Guyana. Bram Hoonhout’s book ‘Borderless Empire’ describes this forgotten h…

Diplomatic History has never been a static discipline. The traditional, orthodox approach of piecing together the decision-making processes of policy-makers remains central, with its goal of reconstructing the reality of statecraft the defining characteristic. This approach - what A.J.P. Taylor referred…