Today’s performances of medieval polyphony have a lot in common with those of other ‘classical’ or ‘early’ music. Ensembles perform pieces written by known or lesser known composers, which the listener can revisit by listening to recordings or reading a score.

We are cosmologists, in other words we use physics to study the Universe, how it started and evolved into the structure that we observe around us.

Investigating domestic crafts and subsistence activities through experiments and material analysis

The proposed research project examines the social role of two monk-bishops in seventh-century Egypt, Abraham of Hermonthis and Pesynthios of Koptos, by reconstructing their social networks on the basis of their archival documents.

Humanities, Centre for the Arts in Society

Daniel Stumm defended his thesis on 16 April 2020.

What does the excavated material tell us about the continuation and/or change of urban life during the transitional phrases from Antiquity to the Middle Ages on Crete and in the eastern Mediterranean more generally?

Tell Sabi Abyad is a major Late Neolithic settlement mound in Northern Syria, belonging to the seventh and early sixth millennium bc. This book presents the results of large-scale fieldwork conducted at the site between 1994 and 1999, under the auspices of the Netherlands National Museum of Antiquities…

What follows is a survey of existing programs and current projects for each of the participating universities.

Introduction

Interview for National Public Radio sparks media frenzy.

The conquest by Rome brought profound changes to large parts of Europe. Unprecedented infrastructural works were created, towns sprang up, a ribbon of fortresses was laid out along the frontiers.

Primary Objective: The primary aim of the proposed RCT is to evaluate whether LF-TLP in blended form as an indicated prevention for anxiety complaints is more (cost-) effective than TAU according to the NHG guideline Anxiety. We hypothesize that in comparison to TAU, LF-TLP will result in a significantly…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Anyone who thinks that #MeToo is a new phenomenon, can think again. Subjects such as sexual intimidation, female self-defence and subjection to male desires can be found as early as in Medieval Islamic literature. Senior lecturer Asghar Seyed-Gohrab explains further on the Leiden Medievalists Blog,…

This book is an examination of why and how the elective principle, already established in Transylvanian and Polish political culture in the late medieval period, was transformed in the early elections of the 1570s.

An investigation into how racial stereotypes were created and used in the European Middle Ages.

Did early farmers deliberately use animal manure on their fields?

For thousands of years, societies have fallen under the reign of a single leader, ruling as chief, king, or emperor. In this fascinating global history of medieval and early modern dynastic power, Jeroen Duindam charts the rise and fall of dynasties, the rituals of rulership, and the contested presence…

What kinds of vocal music were not typically transmitted in written musical notation? Can specific ‘lost’ song forms - siciliane, giustiniane, le Grechesche, gli stili “regionali“ nel canto del quattrocento - be more precisely identified than they have been until now, both in musicological research…

In late medieval and early modern times, books, as well as the people who produced and read (or listened to) them, moved between regions, social circles, and languages with relative ease. Yet, in the multilingual Low Countries, francophone literature was both internationally mobile and firmly rooted…

In tracing intra-site, local and regional craft networks in Late Bronze Age Tiryns (Greece) the project aimed to understand technological changes, (dis)continuities and social practices from the Late Palatial until the Post Palatial periods in Mycenaean Greece.

The programme focuses on the medieval dynamics of intellectual life in the Rhineland and the Low countries, nowadays divided over five countries (Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands) but one cultural region in the later Middle Ages.

The conquest by Rome brought profound changes to large parts of Europe. Unprecedented infrastructural works such as roads and harbours were created, towns sprang up, a ribbon of fortresses was laid out along the frontiers and there is a vast increase in material culture to inform us about the lives…

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…

This abrupt climate change of 8200 years ago (the so-called 8.2k calBP climate event) has received wide attention among natural scientists, also because of today's rapid climate changes and their impact on our own society. The archaeological implications, however, have not been investigated so far.…

Minims are letters that are made up of short, vertical pen strokes, such as 'm', 'i', 'n' and 'u'. In Gothic script, there is often little distinction between letters composed of minims. Assistant professor of medieval literature Krista Murchison has written an article in History Today on the hidden…

What can a doodle tell us about the person who drew it? Erik Kwakkel is a Dutch book historian at Leiden University who searches for the secret meanings of doodles and scribbles in medieval manuscripts. He talks to BBC World Service about his passion for books.

Long-distance Trade in Early Medieval Landscapes (ca. 6th-12th centuries)

This research project is an integral part of its mother-programme NEXUS1492 ERC Synergy Project directed by Prof. Corinne Hofman. Overarchingly, it aims at understanding and bridging from the archaeological perspective the late pre-colonial and early colonial history of the Southeastern Caribbean macroregion…

This dissertation is concerned with the study of the less than twenty remaining precolonial Mesoamerican codices. By considering these rare and fragile pictographic and hieroglyphic books from the cultural biography perspective, many different aspects of these books can be studied.

This afternoon workshop on 26 November (15.00-17.00) hosted by Radboud University aims to explore the role of charitable institutions in the social history of the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean. Programme: 15:00-15:30 Joost Snaterse (Radboud University) Welcome and introduction; 15:30-16:15…

This special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik (Brill, 2021) brings together articles that explore new digital ways of analyzing and annotating Old English vocabulary.

Radboud University Nijmegen is advertising a position for a Postdoctoral Researcher in Medieval Manuscript Studies (0.8 FTE) to be part of the research team of the ERC-funded project "Patristic Sermons in the Middle Ages. The Dissemination, Manipulation, and Interpretation of Late-Antique Sermons in…

The archaeology of food is in all sorts of ways ‘hot’. To illustrate this, recently the book Medieval MasterChef was published, focusing on cuisine and foodways in the Mediterranean and north-western Europe during Medieval and Post-Medieval times.

Renate Dekker defended her thesis on 7 November 2017.

The process of unification and the character of the union are the central topics of Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States. Robert Stein mirrors continuity and modernisation in Burgundian times with the bankruptcy of the former dynasties and the decline of feudal government. The powerful towns played an…

Ariadne Schmidt, Isabelle Devos and Julie de Groot provide you with refreshing insights concerning the study on urban singles in the period between 1200 and 1900.

In this book, Peter Akkermans provides a systematic overview of the Halaf culture of the 6 th millennium BC in the Syrian portion of the valley of the Balikh River, a tributary of the Euphrates.

Erik Kwakkel, researcher at the Faculty of Humanities, has found an extraordinary manuscript in the University Library’s extensive collection of medieval books. The book in question dates back to the first half of the eleventh century and is made entirely out of waste left over from the production of…

How did the medieval manuscript develop as a physical object during the Twelfth Century Renaissance and what do these changes tell us about the intellectual culture of the period?

The KB has launched a meme generator containing medieval imagery.

The Digital Medievalist has recently created a curated Zenodo community, called the Digital Medieval Webinar Repository (DMWR) to house recorded presentations on medieval topics.

The registration for the Medieval Studies Day on 17 December 2021 is now open.

Cat Paw Tweet Goes Viral

On October 9th, Peter Alexander Kerkhof succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Peter Alexander on this great result.

Muge Özoglu defended her dissertation on 5 December 2018

Ms. Monica Klasing Chen defended her thesis on 16 December 2020