How can theatricality act as a mediating process between public space and public as ‘audience’? Does the presence of an observer change the nature of the observed and if so, how?

The focus of the research lies in the approach of reducing, denying, or taking away essential elements of music making in order to let the musician become theatrical.

Towards a transdisciplinary and relational performance practice

Subproject of

Court cases that get out of hand are enacted again and again, according to PhD candidate Tessa de Zeeuw. De Zeeuw: ‘Even if the court comes to the correct judgement, from a legal point of view, the issues that appear in a case such as that of Lucia de Berk continue to

In the logic and aesthetics of a republican baroque the existing world is the result of a moment in which for a split second two or more realities are equally real and after which only a singular one becomes actualized.

Subproject of

The aim of this project is to study the influence of Longinus’s treatise ‘On the sublime’ on practice and theory of architecture and theatre in seventeenth-century Paris and Amsterdam.

How can we explain the popularity of the Spanish comedia nueva in the seventeenth-century theatre scene of the Low Countries?

Sonorous phenomena are always on the verge of becoming something else. As it unfolds, sound constitutes spaces, mediates presence, articulates time. Furthermore, it may prompt emotions, generate awareness, organise patterns of behaviour or trigger a sense of belonging. As sound becomes audible, it is…

There’s more to life than studying hard; sometimes you just need to relax. It’s good to know then that The Hague’s offering in the area of sport and culture is surprisingly extensive.

How can artist PhD candidates research their own work? They need to be good at switching from maker to critical observer and their research has to have a solid theoretical basis. This is the premise of Professor Janneke Wesseling. The aesthetic value of their work also has to be up for discussion. Inaugural…

The recent rise in global migration movements and the simultaneous attempts to prevent migrations to the Global North in general and Europe in particular have produced numerous images and narratives that try to record and convey these events and their actors.

This programme adopts a new approach based on the paradoxical nature of these responses in early modern Italy: it draws on rhetorical discussions of lifelikeness and living presence, and it uses the anthropological theory of art as agency developed by Alfred Gell.

Jed Wentz is a University Lecturer at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts of the Leiden University. He earned a PhD from the docARTES programme and his doctoral thesis Gesture, Affect and Rhythmic Freedom in the Performance of French Tragic Opera from Lully to Rameau explored how historical…

The works of Johannes Jelgerhuis Rienkszoon and Aaron Hill as sources of stagecraft for the historically informed singer.

Thomas Mes defended his thesis on 9 January 2018.

This new volume, published 19 November 2020, - within the series 'Intersections' -, explores the concept of magnificence as a social construction in seventeenth-century Europe. Although this period is often described as the ‘Age of Magnificence’, thus far no attempts have been made to investigate how…

Compact Cinematics challenges the dominant understanding of cinema to focus on the various compact, short, miniature, pocket-sized forms of cinematics that have existed from even before its standardization in theatrical form, and in recent years have multiplied and proliferated, taking up an increasingly…

The center studies the many ways in which issues of law and justice are dealt with in art and literature with a focus on liminal issues and cases. These are issues and cases where law comes to the limits of what it is capable of dealing with and art and literature explore the implications of what is…

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

For several years, contemporary composed music has been critiqued among others by funds, sponsors, and festival organizers for having lost contact with their audiences. This music has increasingly become a pursuit of a privileged, well-situated, and higher educated public, and is most often confined…

In 2005 and 2015 the Leiden University Academy of Creative and Performings Arts awarded two Honorary Doctorates.

If, as the works of John Cage suggest, there is “no such thing as silence,” then what are the markers that show us we are experiencing silence? - what are the performative cues during musical silence? - what are the auditory and visual bookends of silence in performance, i.e. what anticipates and…

Proceedings of the International Colloquium Leiden, May 29 and 30, 2008

The Supplementa series of BABESCH is designed as a platform for thematic publications, in juxtaposition to the annual and varied mix of contributions offered by the journal itself. The thematic publications will include proceedings of colloquia, collections of particular studies by one or more authors,…

How did people in the latter part of the Late Bronze Age organize themselves in order to be able to erect massive structures such as tholos tombs, citadels and how did they interact with these materials and circumstances while constructing? What impact did such a changing landscape have on their day-to-day…

This project will clarify how these concepts operated in theoretical writings on performance ,this broadened conceptual framework will not only give us a clear view on how sublime effects in performance were theorized, it will also provide us a concrete apparatus to understand the cultural and political…

Research in and through art is an inseparable part of the artistic or design practice of the researcher. Consequently, research-in-art (as opposed to research-about-art, such as art history) does not have a set goal or expected result, nor are there predetermined general procedures. The outcome of the…

Considering the absence of the human performer within a performance installation, the research centres around what is left of the human through traces such as sound or recorded voices, images, videos or movement and gestures. What do we perceive as ‚present‘, once the human is removed from the centre…

Leiden is a lively university city that’s brimming with history and boasts a student culture that’s tangible just about everywhere. Read on to discover what Leiden has to offer and get a foretaste of what you can expect.

Leiden has so much to offer in the areas of sport and culture. Irrespective of whether you fancy burning off some calories after a day’s studying or perhaps spending your evenings rehearsing with an amateur drama group, you’re covered.

Fancy burning off some calories after a day’s studying? Or perhaps you’d prefer to spend your evenings on the stage? Either way, the good news is that Leiden also has a lot to offer in the areas of sport and culture.

There’s more to a master’s than studying hard; sometimes you just want to relax. It’s good to know that The Hague’s offering in the area of sport and culture is second to none.

KNAW has elected eighteen new members, including two professors at Leiden University and one who studied and obtained his PhD in Leiden. The New Academy members will be installed at a later date this year.

Dr Nadine Akkerman, lecturer in Early Modern Literature and postdoctoral researcher in Leiden, has written a new book to accompany the exhibition on Elizabeth Stuart and Amalia von Solms at the Historical Museum of The Hague. ‘They were like goddesses, constantly trying to upstage one another,’ says…

Johannes Boer's research intends to question the way explicit knowledge is applied in order to restore and perform music from the past with the intention to get as close as possible to its original meaning.

Odile Bodde tells about her stay in London at King's College...

The Perfect Spectator. The experience of the art work and reception aesthetics. By Janneke Wesseling

Mariana Gkliati participated on Saturday 2 June at ‘Europe on Trial'.

Leiden is a lively university city that’s brimming with history and boasts a student culture that’s tangible just about everywhere. Read on to discover what Leiden has to offer and get a foretaste of what you can expect.

In September 2021, ACPA PhD Candidate Gabriel Paiuk will premiere a new work titled Sound Theory (The Clouds) as part of the 2021 Gaudeamus Muziekweek Festival. The performance will take place on September 10th, 20:30 at the De Helling (Utrecht, NL).

Would it be possible for local and traditional European forms of parrhesiastic theater—by which Eleni Kamma means events, actions, and performances staged by characters who courageously speak their minds through scenes of excess and laughter, that take place in public view and incite the spectator’s…

docARTES is a doctoral programme for performers and composers. It offers a unique environment for critical reflection on musical practice.

ACPA alumni Falk Hübner and Joost Vanmaele aim to put up a few signposts in the expansive field of artistic research with an article recently published on FORUM+ .

Thanks to an extremely successful crowdfunding campaign, the Leiden Law School now has a mock courtroom for Moot Court, the course that teaches students advocacy skills. ‘The more realistic it is, the better. Then students grow into their role.’

Come to the Night of Arts and Science in Leiden 's historic city centre on 17 September. You can enjoy music, interactive experiments, theatrical plays, lectures, modern dance, comedy and much, much more. Many of the activities are in English.

Arts and leisure

Ali Al Tuma, PhD candidate at the Leiden University Institute for History, has won the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity for his play ‘Yusuf Melik Espanya’ (Yusuf King of Spain), that tells the story of a young Moroccan whose brothers conspire to send him off, against his will, to the Spanish Civil…