Within the Global Ethnography specialisation, you can develop your own research project or make use of the research opportunities offered by our staff members listed below.

Michiel Pronk defended his thesis on 30 March 2016

The Dutch and English East India Companies were formidable organizations that were gifted with expansive powers that allowed them to conduct diplomacy, wage war and seize territorial possessions. But they did not move into an empty arena in which they were free to deploy these powers without resista…

PhD Defence

This study presents a re-evaluation of Malay adventure stories.

Mr. Ade Jaya Suryani defended his thesis on 28 January 2021

Although official law generally conceives of personal injury victims as individual rights holders, the actual experience of physical injury and its consequences is relational. Indeed, many researchers in the global North as well as the global South have contended that the very concept of the Self should…

Conference

‘Three books published within a year – that happens only once in a lifetime!’ This was the reaction of Katarzyna Cwiertka, Professor of Modern Japan Studies at Leiden University, on the publication of Cuisine, Colonialism and Cold War, one of her three new books. The book sketches the colonisation of…

Inaugural Lecture

New policies, institutional configurations, and state-market relations are emerging outside of East Asia, as new developmental states move beyond the historical experience of East Asian development. Yet, the ‘developmental state’ is still relevant. This book, edited by Jewellord Nem Singh (Institute…

LUCIS funded several research programmes to boost interfaculty and interdisciplinary cooperation and to widen the involvement of LUCIS members.

The Asian Library holds the largest collection on Indonesia worldwide, and some of the foremost collections on South and Southeast Asia, China, Japan and Korea.

Viviana Massa defended her thesis on 16 December 2018.

Religion, Class, and the Postwar Development of the Dutch Welfare State. Dennie Oude Nijhuis.

Overview of the Leiden Asia staff per area or country.

How can historical archive sources by non-elite groups help us understand modern-day politics in South Asia? This is one of the main themes of Prof. Nira Wickramasinghe’s inaugural lecture on 14 March.

This research deals with the royal houses of the Vijayanagara Empire and four of its successor states: Ikkeri, Tanjavur (under both the Nayaka and Bhonsle rulers), Madurai, and Ramnad. This study is thus concerned with dynastic politics and imperial legacies in south India between the 14th and 18th…

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

The Master’s in Asian Studies at Leiden University is your opportunity to earn a specialised qualification from one of the leading centres for Asian studies in Europe.

Language offers new insights into our history, cultural differences, migration, and the way in which our brain processes information. This knowledge can in turn help us understand what it means to be human, as well as opening the way to many practical applications. In order to realise these goals, linguists…

The programme for the Leiden Asia Year in 2017 is now available. Rector Carel Stolker launched the new website www.leidenasiayear.nl at the opening of the Academic Year of Leiden University on 5 September.

In tracing the deeper historical roots of what Xi Jinping contemporarily frames as a “Chinese dream” of “wealth and power,” the article discerns key actors, events, and organizing principles in a long process toward restoring China’s deemed rightful place in the regional system.

Lecture, Language Policy and Practices Series

Overview of all Asia events at Leiden University

On Monday 11 December, human rights activist Ms. Wai Wai Nu delivered the seventh Raymond and Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture on Human Rights at Leiden Law School. This events marked the annual celebration of International Human Rights Day, which was proclaimed in 1950 by the United Nations to…

This project, South American population history revisited: multidisciplinary perspectives on the Upper Amazon (SAPPHIRE), investigates population dynamics in western South America on the basis of traces in the geographical, genetic, archaeological, ethnological, and linguistic record.

Een onderzoek naar de formulering, structuur, rechtshistorische aard en sociale en religieuze achtergronden van Laat-Egyptische (demotische) tempeleden, aangevuld met 70 ongepubliceerde teksten.

Postcolonial Displacements explores the multiple ways in which migration in South Asia contributes to the imagining, questioning, subverting and reframing of territories, nations and communities. The project focuses on the contested fringes of the politically divided South Asian subcontinent, across…

LIAS is comprised of three research schools with expertise in different areas:

Escalating tensions in South China Sea have epitomized US–China relations for nearly a decade. Warning signs of a possible collision between a rising China and steadfast US, bring to light the need to think about ways that can halt and reverse the intensification of their confrontational moves.

Writing under Wartime Conditions is a study into North and South Korean literature written during the Korean War.

Asian studies at Leiden University is unparalleled in the Netherlands and combines the very best of Asia-related research in North-West Europe.

Markus Altena Davidsen’s PhD dissertation is the first major study of Tolkien Religion. In it, he analyses the religion that is based on the stories by acclaimed British fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien. He also discusses how fiction itself can become religious. Davidsen will defend his dissertation on…

Religion, Philosophy, and the Pre-modern World

This research profile area brings together descriptive, historical and theoretical linguistics, as well as psycho- and neurolinguistics.

This PhD research aims to trace the impact of the Arab conquest, both immediate and long-term, on the material and social organization of Central Asia from 651 to 821 through an “urban change” perspective in four cities: Merv, Paikent, Balkh and Samarkand.

In this article Vanessa Newby discusses how the ANZUS states of United States, Australia, and New Zealand that sit on the fringes of the Asia-Pacific, are increasingly using their armed forces to deliver Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Response (HADR) as a way of engaging with the region.

On Monday 11 December, human rights activist Ms. Wai Wai Nu will deliver the seventh Raymond and Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture on Human Rights at Leiden Law School. This events marks the annual celebration of International Human Rights Day, which was proclaimed in 1950 by the United Nations…

On the 442nd anniversary of the foundation of Leiden University, and at the start of the Leiden Asia Year, lawyer Jan Michiel Otto, an expert in the field of law in developing countries, delivered the first Dies lecture. He compared demagogues in Asia who call upon Muslims to turn against their governments…

“Winner CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award 2016” A Cultural History