This dissertation explores how domestic political power struggles in Greece and Turkey during the Cold War engaged with the ongoing conflict in Cyprus and aims to demonstrate how socialist parties in Greece and Turkey struggled with the concept of the “nation” in battling for power and political positioning…

The central aims of this project are to establish the shapes of the various urban hierarchies existing in the provinces of the Roman Empire and (especially) to use the quantitative properties of these hierarchies to shed new light on levels of economic integration.

The Leiden Ancient History specialization concentrates on the study of the economies, societies and cultures of the large empires of the Graeco-Roman world, starting with the empires of Alexander the Great and his successors. The appearance of these empires led to the development of an interaction network…

Mei-Wen Chen defended her thesis on 29 June 2016

Emily Wolff, PhD candidate at Leiden University, wrote a paper about the inclusion of imperial citizens in the Dutch post-war welfare state.

This project focuses on urban commercial space in Roman Italy and deals with the impact of economic growth on urban communities in the late Republic and the Imperial period (200 BCE – 300 CE).

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,…

This project investigates memorisation strategies that were employed in the fields of painting and calligraphy in imperial China, with a focus on the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

PhD Defence

This book argues that the combined literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence supports the theory that early-imperial Italy had about six million inhabitants.

Aetiologies seem to gratify the human desire to understand the origin of a phenomenon. However, as this book demonstrates, aetiologies do not exclusively explore origins.

In the master’s programme in Archaeology, you can follow courses on the archaeology of the Mediterranean, deepening your understanding of this fascinating region. From the many faces of ‘Hellenism’ to the early rise of the Roman Republic, to the voyages of European Crusaders in medieval times. The archaeology…

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

An environmental and palaeo-economic reconstruction.

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.

This project aims to excavate and date the setting of the east gate of the Roman fortress of Udhruḥ. This will be compared with other Diocletianic military installations from the region. We also hope to retrieve another gate inscription which can shed light on the function and political embedding of…

ASLU 28 Michalis Karambinis (2015)

Beyond Empires explores the complexity of empire building from the point of view of self-organized networks, rather than from the point of view of the central state.

In this publication the results of the analyses of the Roman harbour of Voorburg-Arentsburg (NL) are presented. This fully inclusive and integrated study of more than 1000 pages is published in two volumes. The publication is written in Dutch, but has got an extensive synthesis/summary in English.

This research project analyses the use of different, often competing, stereotypical images of Rome in Humanist Latin Poetry, by considering it as strategic appropriation of the classical heritage.

Ineke Smit defended her thesis on 17 September 2019

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…

Subproject of

Enduring influence of Roman law

This PhD-research is conducted to test the hypothesis that Gutenberg and consorts developed a standardised and even unitised system for the production of textura type, and that this system was extrapolated for the production of roman type in Renaissance Italy.

To what end and how does Plautus constantly underline the Helleni(sti)c provenance of his art? How does this aspect relate the author’s originality?

This book presents an archaeological overview of the presence and development of Egyptian material culture in the context of Augustan Rome.

Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference Amsterdam 2008

Publication on the excavations at Roman fort Matilo in Leiden

In some parts of the Roman Empire public meals were the norm: the wealthy treated the whole city to a meal. This phenomenon that suddenly arose and disappeared just as quickly had to do with political and social developments, according to historian Shanshan Wen. PhD defence 6 September.

This study elucidates a critical facet of modern global Buddhism that has escaped the attention of the scholarly community by exploring the life, teachings and influence of Master Wuguang 悟光上師 (1918-2000).

Case Studies in Etruscan Ritual Behaviour

In ancient Greece and Rome, nighttime encompassed a distinctive array of cultural values that went far beyond the inversion of daytime. Night was a mythological figure, a locus of specialized knowledge, a socially significant semantic space in various literary genres, and a setting for unique experi…

How many cities were there actually in the Roman Empire? And why did some regions only have a few cities, while others consisted of a tight urban network? Luuk de Ligt, Professor of Ancient History, wants to know the answer to all these questions. With the ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million awarded to…

How did interests outside the scope of the Dutch chartered trading companies influence the career-paths of Dutch colonial governors?

Numismatic research of Roman coin hoards in the Netherlands. The use of numismatic sources is incorporated in Claes’s research project “Dialogues of Power”. This project aims to analyse the legitimising dialogue between Roman emperors and their Germanic legions during the so-called “crisis of the third…

On January 28 and 29, 2021 the online conference ‘Imperial Artefacts: History, Law and the Looting of Cultural Property’ took place. This first of its kind event at Leiden University was an interdisciplinary online conference and brought together (post-)colonial historians, legal historians, curators,…

How many cities were there actually in the Roman Empire? And why did some regions only have a few cities, while others consisted of a tight urban network? Luuk de Ligt, Professor of Ancient History, wants to know the answer to all these questions. With the ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million awarded to…

The ancient Roman province of Lusitania, more or less contemporary Portugal, has been the focus of a joint research project by Leiden University, Évora University and the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. The research project has now been provided with a new boost by a large Regato grant managed…

This volume presents fourteen papers by Roman archaeologists and historians discussing approaches to the economic history of Pompeii, and the role of the Pompeian evidence in debates about the Roman economy.

Rural cult places were of central importance in the non-urbanised areas of ancient Samnium, in central southern Italy. Their development, roles and functions in ancient society, however, remain important research questions. New excavations at one of these sanctuaries, the rural temple of S. Giovanni…

On January 28 and 29, 2021 the conference ‘Imperial Artefacts: History, Law and the Looting of Cultural Property’ took place online. This first of its kind event at Leiden University was an interdisciplinary online conference and brought together (post-)colonial historians, legal historians, curators,…

This volume offers an innovative analysis of Roman political culture in Italy from the first to the sixth century AD on the basis of seven case studies.

The present study explores the role of water in the ancient Roman city of Ostia.In antiquity, Ostia was situated at the intersection of the Tiber River and the Mediterranean Sea, and acted as one of the harbour cities of Rome for several centuries.This study investigates how water was acquired, used,…

Several years ago, two amateur archaeologists from Brabant discovered over a hundred Roman coins near to Berlicum in the north of the province. After years of research, it now appears that the location, close to a ford in the river, was a site for offerings. Another interesting fact is that the coins…

Through the Chastelain-Nobach LUF fund, Classical and Mediterranean archaeologist Tymon de Haas has received a grant for his research on the ecological impact of Roman expansion. He will use this grant to further expand on the case-study that was made possible by the Byvanck LUF fund earlier this ye…