This omnibus brings together some old and some recent works by Jos Gommans on the warhorse and its impact on medieval and early modern state-formation in South Asia.

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

Young researcher workshop

Lecture, Studium Generale

How the systematic destruction of valuables created value in Bronze Age Europe, c. 2300-500 BC

The Australian Research Council funded a truly ‘global archaeology’ project comparing the archaeologies of southwest Tasmania and southwest France during the last Ice Age.

Debate

In the eighties the Umhlatuzana rock shelter in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa, was excavated. Results from this excavation led to an understanding when the Later Stone Age started in this area. This archaeological period is often associated with the structural presence of modern human behavior. Now a…

Early hominins probably lived in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years before using fire to alleviate the winter cold, to cook or to make tools. It was only in the period betwen 300,000 and 400,000 years ago that the first finds were made that indicate that people had the ability to control fire…

Lecture

'The World Upside Down. The Geographical Revolution in Humanist Commentaries on Pliny's Natural History and Mela's De situ orbis (140-1700)', in: Enenkel, K.A.E. & Nellen, H. (Eds.), Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (1400-1700).Humanistica…

Conference

On the 28th of October Hein van der Bruggen successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The Faculty of Humanities has been ranked 17th Arts and humanities faculty in the Times Higher Education world ranking 2015-16. This makes it the top non-Anglo-Saxon institution on the list. The position is 7 places up in comparison with last year's list.

Conference

The League of European Research Universities (LERU) makes recommendations for the future of the Social Science and Humanities research in Europe. Social Science and Humanities (SSH) research is vital to build an innovative and resilient Europe.

Young researcher workshop and round table

City dwellers in the Middle Ages were probably no worse off than people living in villages. Both groups had very different health risks, is Rachel Schats' conclusion from her research on bone material. PhD defence 3 November.

The Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) is one of the few research institutes in the world in which researchers in the field of literature, art, architecture, design and media studies come together to conduct research into the cultural production of the western world, from classical…

Debate

PhD Defence

The European Regional Office of Astronomy for Development (E-ROAD) has held its first conference session at the 2020 virtual Annual Meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS), the largest astronomy conference in Europe. The E-ROAD is an initiative of the International Astronomical Union, the…

Louis Sicking's Maritime Conflict Management in Atlantic Europe was awarded an 'Internationalisation in the Humanities' grant from NWO. What can we learn from how maritime conflicts were managed in the past?

The goal is to develop educational materials for Dâw, Hupd’äh, and Nadëb Indigenous peoples (Naduhup family; Middle and Upper Rio Negro; Brazilian Amazon). In order to achieve this, first of all, the fieldwork data collected during a collaborative project among anthropologists and linguists (2017-2020)…

Turbulent times in Italy: Deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini wants new elections so that he can become prime minister himself. He is campaigning on social media, including photos of himself posing in his swimming trunks.

Lecture

A fragment of a human skull discovered in sediments extracted from the bottom of the North Sea, 15 km off the coast off the Netherlands, has been identified as belonging to the extinct Neandertal group.

Sarah de Rijcke has been awarded Wellcome funding to study and promote responsible research practices

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.

Lecture

Debate

How did the invention and implementation of the lightning rod change the perception of thunderstorms on a scientific, technical, religious and artistic level, in the Netherlands and beyond, during the period 1752-1830?

The department of World Archaeology combines research and education about regions all over the world, from Human Origins to the Middle Ages, and from Europe, to Asia, Africa and the America’s. That broad range in time and space makes the department a dynamic pluriform community with many different approaches,…

Human impact and plant subsistence in Dutch wetlands during the Late Mesolithic and Early and Middle Neolithic (5500-3400 cal BC)

In 2017 Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof defended her dissertation on Early Iron Age elite burials of the Low Countries at the Faculty of Archaeology. Out of 36 applications from ten different countries, her dissertation was awarded the Prix Européen D’Archéologie Joseph Déchelette on June 15th.

Lamberto Zannier, Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), gave a lecture on ‘The OSCE, a bridge between East and West and a platform for dialogue on European security’

Lecture, Leiden Interdisciplinary Migration Seminar (LIMS)

Europe can only maintain its level of consumption by structurally relying on resources extracted abroad. This finding was published in the September issue of the prestigious journal Global Environmental Change, in a paper that was co-written by scientists at Leiden University.

The recent terrorist attacks in Europe are presumably not just acts committed by individuals, but acts facilitated by larger jihadist networks. But how do such networks operate? Understanding their modus operandi can be useful knowledge to counter terrorist threats.

As of 27 October Catia Antunes has been appointed as full member of the Young Academy of Europe.

Episode 1: The Golden Horde in a Global Perspective: Imperial Strategies. This project intends to challenge the conventional way of considering the nomadic state organizations and the role of Nomads in world history.

Lecture, Public debate

Lecture, Language Policy and Practices Series

The Disticha Catonis by Catenaccio of Anagni. A text in vernacular from Latium (late 13th - early 14th century)