Point of departure of this meditation on the ethical role of sounds and silences within Christian rites and other religious practices is the documentary Into Great Silence. It is an intimate portrayal of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, a monastery high in the French…

Law researcher Evelien Campfens is calling for a better legal treatment of looted art. ‘For lawyers, ownership is a very absolute concept. There is one legal owner and that is that.’ Campfens is a PhD candidate at the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Global Heritage and Development.

How can we understand the impact and importance of sound?

This collaborative project aims to explore the history of the concept “barbarism” in Europe from the 18th century to the present, with a particular emphasis on the role of literature and art in the concept’s shifting functions.

For all the artworks that Riccardo Giacconi creates, he begins by conducting extensive research. He discovered three stories about rebellious characters that were transmitted through unofficial channels: as characters in puppet shows or in folk tales. He translated the three stories into three cycles…

This project investigates the role of art in the public and academic debate on biosolar energy

Street theatre, drama, poetry and a lot of science: Leiden's Rapenburg was the backdrop for the fifth Night of Art and Knowledge on Saturday 16 September. Many University buildings - from the Observatory to the Hortus - opened their doors to artists, scientists and a public curious to know more.

How did the Arabs manage to maintain an empire based on Islamic principles for three hundred years? Arab expert Petra Sijpesteijn and her team will be examining this question over the coming five years, focusing on the correspondence of ordinary people. The research is being funded by an ERC Consolidator…

Conference

This study interrogates contemporary and historical uses of barbarism, arguing that barbarism also has a disruptive, insurgent potential.

Promotor: Prof.dr. A. Achucarro, Co-Promotor: J.W. van Holten

Marlise Rijks is a postdoc working at the project ‘Depicting the Aquatic Fauna in Early Modern Europe’, a sub-project of the larger NWO-project ‘A New History of Fishes: A Long-term Approach to Fishes in Science and Culture, 1550-1880’.

The subject of this thesis is Alverata, a twenty-first-century typeface whose design was inspired by the shapes of Romanesque capitals such as those found in inscriptions of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Anna Loh is a third-year student of the BA in Arts, Media and Society. We spoke with Anna about what it’s like to write a thesis during COVID-19, Instagram selfies at the museum and growing up abroad.

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?

On 1 October, Yvonne Bleyerveld, Senior Curator Drawings and Prints at the RKD, becomes the Professor by Special Appointment 'Art on Paper and Parchment' at the Faculty of Humanities of Leiden University. The chair, established by the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD), is hosted by the Leiden…

The publication Making Matters - A Vocabulary for Collective Arts marks the end of the NWO project 'Bridging art, design and technology through Critical Making', led by Janneke Wesseling and Florian Cramer. The book contains the outcomes of this project.

The Groot-Auditorium of the Academy building was recently stage to the graduation of the first cohort of the BA-track Arts, Media and Society. This impressive room, normally only used for PhD defenses and inaugural lectures by professors, was accommodated a ceremony attended by 17 students and their…

Appointment of three professors represents jewel in the crown of 15-year partnership between Leiden University and the University of the Arts The Hague.

Distance / Fiction is a sound installation that deals with the ways listening is entwined with processes and techniques of sound mediation.

The figure of the barbarian has captivated the Western imagination from Greek antiquity to the present. Since the 1990s, the rhetoric of civilization versus barbarism has taken center stage in Western political rhetoric and the media. But how can the longevity and popularity of this opposition be accounted…

On January 25th, artist Jonas Staal will defend his dissertation which explores the development of propaganda art from the 20th to the 21st century.

The hypothesis of this research is that the municipality used the impressive the Town Hall to enforce its rule and represent its political ideas and make use of sources such as biographies, poems, pamphlets, sermons and governmental documents.

Broken ensemble is a series of sound installations, in principle a self-played ensemble, consisting of some broken instruments which can not be normally played anymore.

In January 2021, eLaw joined the Computers Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) Conference that is about privacy and data protection. The group on Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University put together a panel that combined perspectives on Art, Society, & Technology.

To achieve societal impact, you need to do more than solely writing academic articles. That's the idea behind the Master Honours Class 'Leiden Revisited', in which students demonstrated with art how residents at the outskirts of Leiden experience the city. 'It's the perfect way to start the debate.'

The Animated Image addresses the entire range of contexts in which images were described by Roman authors as being animated, as well as the accounts that Roman writers produced to explain the animation of inanimate matter.

In July, Leiden will be hosting the EuroScience Open Forum conference. Humanities scholars from Leiden will make use of the opportunity to stress the importance of art in science. ‘Artists have the ability to show the consequences of science.’

Many Leiden scientists will be taking part in the Night of Arts and Science on 17 September. Find out what's on for English speakers.

Since the end of May, the Faculty of Humanities 'Humanities Matter' art route has been on display. Due to the many positive responses, we have decided to postpone the end date of the exhibition from July 8 to August 28. So if you haven't walked the route yet, this is your chance!

From painted pottery to tattooed mummies, art has always been essential in human culture. Exploring the human past, archaeologists study art in the widest sense; from the technical aspects, to decrypting meaning. The new exhibition ‘Art-chaeology’, however, turns the tables and gives the pencil and…

On 22 January, Annemarie Madani-Abbing will defend her dissertation 'Art therapy and anxiety' regarding her research into the effectiveness of anthroposophic art therapy in treating anxiety in women. We asked her about her research and what it was like to combine a job outside academia with studying…

The studies of two researchers previously working within the VICI-project ‘Art, Agency and Living Presence’ are now published by Leiden University Press in conjunction with Akademie Verlag.

On a thursdaymorning our students were guided around a new exhibition in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. This exhibition displayed photographs and documents from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Western Arabian Peninsula.

Ranti Tjan has been appointed director of the Royal Academy of Art as of 1 June 2022. He succeeds Henk van der Meulen, who will stay on as director of the Royal Conservatoire and Chairman of the Executive Board.

How do you depict the importance of the Humanities? In honour of the faculty's 444th anniversary, 25 Humanities students, alumni and employees sent in a variety of works of art inspired by the theme 'Humanities matter'. You can come to look at the works from 25 May to 28 August via an art route through…