Find out more about Asia, the Middle East and Religious studies (LUCSoR)

Shiʿi Islam

Every year, we invite an eminent scholar to give a large-scale lecture in one of the finer halls at Leiden University. Our annual lectures bring together students, junior researchers and senior scholars from Leiden University and beyond and are aimed at presenting cutting-edge research in Islamic st…

How did the Arabs manage to maintain an empire based on Islamic principles for three hundred years? Arab expert Petra Sijpesteijn and her team will be examining this question over the coming five years, focusing on the correspondence of ordinary people. The research is being funded by an ERC Consolidator…

LUCIS produces various video series and MOOCs to showcase the variety of expertise available at Leiden University.

At Leiden University you can study Islam and Muslim societies within two Dutch-language BA and various MA programmes and specializations.

Lecture

Faculty roundtable

Every semester, LUCIS invites a scholar to Leiden to provide a lecture series on a topic of their choice. With these lectures, we aim to present state-of-the-art research in Islamic studies to the Leiden academic community and beyond, and to offer students and junior researchers the opportunity to get…

Lecture

The Passion in Profession series features researchers who are specialised in Islamic, Middle Eastern and Central Asian studies. With the series, LUCIS aims to show what inspires them in their work by highlighting an object or concept that they feel passionate about.

How did institutions and structures operate throughout the Muslim world from the earliest history of Islam into the early modern period?

Leiden University Centre for the Study of Religion (LUCSoR) studies religion as human activity, in all its diversity.

Debate, Roundtable

Together with internationally esteemed colleagues, Léon Buskens has been awarded a HERA Joint Research Programme Grant for a research project entitled "Understanding Sharia: Past Perfect/Imperfect Present".

Perspectives on Terrorism 2015

This project aims to open up the pre-Islamic linguistic history of Arabia through the systematic study of the Thamudic inscriptions within a digital humanities framework.

While many European universities, Leiden included, have a proud tradition of research into Islamic studies, a topical and thematic focus on Shiʿi Islam in all its dispensation remains a desideratum.

Now and then we organise book launches to present the latest publications, both academic and popular, in our broad field.

Our public programme includes lecture series, conferences, visiting fellowships, panel discussions and many other interesting events. Have a look at what we've organised in the past years.

The Centre is the proud home of several research programmes.

On young Muslims seeking to understand their place and make their way in a transformed world.

LIAS aims to advance the globally conscious vision of area studies, both within and outside the academic community. Focusing on Asia and the Middle East, the institute is a meeting place of multiple fields of inquiry, theories and methods, historical periods, and areas.

Lecture

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,…

Lecture

Lecture

An overview of Professional Associations and Journals

Diede Farhosh-van Loon defended her thesis on 18 October 2016

Vol. V, Sections 1-2

Perspectives on Terrorism 2016

On Friday 2 October journalist Sander van Hoorn starts his lecture series ‘The Middle East doesn't exist’, which was organised by the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society (LUCIS). ‘If all goes well, people will understand the Middle East that bit less after my lectures.’

The project seeks to come to an understanding of the archaeology of the desert and the ways in which its inhabitants engaged with their constraint, marginal environments through time. It compares and interprets site distribution and community organisation over a long time scale and across several different…

To complement scholarly knowledge with journalistic insights, LUCIS regularly invites journalists to share their perspective on current events.

Links to related organisations, institutes, journals and archives.

NIMAR is the Netherlands expertise centre for Moroccan Studies. Starting 2016, NIMAR is a part of the Faculty of Humanities of Leiden University. NIMAR organises lectures, facilitates research and actively adds to the knowledge of Moroccan languages, cultures and society in The Netherlands.

LUCSoR has chairs in Comparative Religion, Islam in the West, Christianity, and Judaism. Main areas of expertise include ancient Mesopotamian religions, the Enlightenment, Islam in the West, and new spiritual movements.

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (the NVIC) was founded in 1971. Eight universities in the Netherlands and Flanders participate in the institute with an aim to stimulating internationalisation of their teaching and research activities in the Middle East.

Migration imposes special pressures on the meaning, experience and organization of lifecycle rituals. These pressures are felt most strongly by Muslim migrants to Western Europe. In this innovative study, Nathal M. Dessing examines the effects of migration on the life cycle rituals of Moroccan, Turkish…

What's New is a lecture series organised by LUCIS and the department of Middle Eastern Studies. The lectures focus on current research on Islam and the Middle East.

Our library contains around 23,000 books, journals and historical documents under the care of a specialized librarian.

Conference

With regard to governance, policies and law, many Muslims and Muslim countries recognise the possibility that Islam has something important to say about the way society is to be ordered, governed, and regulated.

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…