In the South African context, certain iconic images have been a dominant source for public understandings of historical events. The emphasis given these images tends to overshadow the historical value of other more personal photographic sources – like studio or amateur photography. This project looks…

The aim of the project is to contribute to the process of archive formation ongoing in Post-Apartheid South Africa through the inclusion of photographs that have been either unacknowledged or excised from the national canon.

Commonplace - Photographs from the Drummond-Fyvie Collection and the Ngilima Collection. By Tamsyn Adams and Sophie Feyder.

How can we understand the material instability of photographic (mixed media) artworks (1960s - present) from an integrated approach of Art History, Conservation Science and Chemistry in order to preserve these works for the future?

The master’s programme in Film and Photographic Studies at Leiden University covers the history and theory of film and photography within the broad context of visual and other media.

Lecture

Are you thinking about studying Film and Photographic Studies? Learn more and watch the videos.

In Luganda, the widest spoken minority language in East African country Uganda, the word for photographs is Ebifananyi. However, ebifananyi does not, contrary to the etymology of the word photographs, relate to light writings. Ebifananyi instead means things that look like something else. Ebifananyi…

This dissertation explores the history of the language of a manuscript known as Tönnies Fonne's Russian-German Phrasebook (Pskov 1607).

The research profile ‘Asian Modernities and Traditions’ (AMT) aims to raise the strength and visibility of research, teaching and dissemination on Asian studies at Leiden University.

Indigenous Pasts and the Roman Present

This master’s programme combines advanced levels of philosophical analysis with the study of non-Western sources, in particular, Chinese, Indian, and Arabic sources.

One of the current research projects funded by the profile area Political Legitimacy is

The research profile ‘Asian Modernities and Traditions’ (AMT) aims to raise the strength and visibility of research, teaching and dissemination on Asian studies at Leiden University. AMT focuses on those areas where there are clear strengths or exciting new developments ahead, bundled into five them…

Global Challenges is the research programme of the Leiden Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology.

Ruixuan Chen defended his theses on 16 October 2018.

Jochem van den Boogert defended his thesis on 18 November 2015

How are contemporary art practices from Southeast Asia negotiating notions of art and tradition?

Material Crossovers

Conference

Lecture, This Time for Africa!

The project ‘Between the Holy Land and the World’ proposes a connected history of the Christian communities in the Near East (1900-1948) by means of a study of unpublished Franciscan and Dominican photographic collections.

Promotores: G.A. Persoon, H.H. de Iongh

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

An interdisciplinary cultural analysis of how the Hindustani double migration informs contemporary processes of identification and problematises the juxtaposition of tradition and modernity.

The Cinematic Santri explores the rise and course over the last ten years of cinematic practices among a younger generation of NU associates (Nahdlatul Ulama), the largest traditionalist Muslim group in Indonesia and elsewhere.

This book contextualises case studies across a wide variety of languages and cultures, crystallising key interrelationships between linguistic standardisation and prescriptivism, and between ideas and practices. It focuses on different traditions of standardisation and prescription throughout the world…

Fieldwork photographs of Meike de Goede, Catherina Wilson and Mirjam de Bruijn (with African Studies student Vera Bakker) have been selected for the LeidenGlobal Photo Exhibition Heritage on the Move, which will travel around the different Faculties of the University in the coming months.

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…

'Audible locality' is the first thorough study on the cultural ramifications of recording technology on ethnic sensibility in Southeast Asia. Exploring chronologically the representation of Indonesia's regional culture through recording media, it recounts the Dutch East Indies colonial society's initial…

How is tradition constructed and belief made plausible in fiction-based religion?

On Thursday 30 March, the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO) and Leiden University Libraries (UBL) will organize a mini-symposium on the Frank Scholten collection: 'Palestinian History in Frame - Frank Scholten Photographs'.

This study describes religion in Java.

Channi Li defended her thesis on 15 October 2019.

In collaboration with the The Hague Historical Museum and photographer Dagmar van Weeghel, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) is the first to present a retrospective exhibition of the photographic oeuvre of Alexine Tinne (1835 – 1869). New research into her life and work is the reason for a reappraisal…

Freemasons, young circus artistes, people at a clothes swap and many more. Seven young anthropologists spent a year exploring Leiden as city photographers. They published their photos in Leidsch Dagblad each week. An exhibition at Oude UB shows the fruits of their labour.

People need to get to know each other to see the positive side of migration, according to photographer and documentary maker Koen Suidgeest. Since the end of September, Suidgeest has been the new city photographer for the region of Leiden. His goal is to photograph as many cultural identities as possible…

Hekmat Dirbas defended his thesis on 14 February 2017

This PhD subproject concentrates on 16th-century ichthyology and takes Gessner’s Historia piscium (1558) (further HP) as its point of departure and focus.

Can you still remember the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, or the Dutch royal state visit to Indonesia in 1971? These are only a few of the dramatic events covered by Hans Beynon, whose archive of 7.000 photos was recently donated to the Leiden University Libraries (UBL) by his family.

What does the European Union mean for people living in Leiden? As part of the Leiden European Festival, and in collaboration with the municipality of Leiden, the city photographers captured Leidenaren from 28 European member states at their favorite place in the city. The exhibition will travel along…

The University’s Executive Board (College van Bestuur) has decided to continue the Leiden University profile area Asian Modernities and Traditions for another four years, from 2015 to 2018. By 2018, AMT2 commits itself to achieve demonstrable results in enhancing the visibility of Asian research both…

Would you like to work hands-on with vintage photography? And do you think it is important to contribute to the visibility of the visual history of Palestine? The Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO) and Leiden University Libraries (UBL) are working on improving the digital accessibility of…

A group of astronomers was actually examining the dust disc around the young double star CS Cha, when they saw a small dot on the edge of their images. It turned out to be a small planet of only a few million years young, which moves along with the double star. Whether it is a super-Jupiter in the making…

On 1 June 2022, Bruno Braak defended his thesis entitled 'Overcoming ruptures: Zande identity, governance, and tradition during cycles of war and displacement in South Sudan and Uganda (2014-2019).' The doctoral research was supervised by Prof.dr. J.M. Otto, Dr.ir. C.I.M. Jacobs, and Dr. C. Leonardi…

The interdisciplinairy exhibition

Black-and-white photographs filled with solemn young men and distinguished professors line the walls of the Grand Auditorium. Young women are missing from the photos; women rarely obtained PhDs 50 years ago. And this article is about that group, the PhD candidates between 1966 and 1972, who were invited…

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research has awarded a grant of 750,000 euros to the 'Visualising the Unknown in 17th-century Science and Society' project. Researchers will reconstruct how seventeenth-century scientists recorded and shared their groundbreaking microscopic discoveries. We…

Arts and culture

Leiden University's Asian Modernities and Traditions research area will be presented on 9 September, in the form a conference. The keynote speaker is Professor Prasenjit Duara, Director of the Asia Research Institute of the Singapore National University. The title of his address is Sustainability and…