Leiden Institute for Area Studies

LIAS has as its aim the advancement of Area Studies at Leiden University and in the wider academic community, with emphatic attention to the relevance of education and research for society at large. Area Studies emerges at the intersection of multiple disciplines and regional foci, employing deep linguistic and cultural knowledge in partnership with disciplinary theory and method in the humanities and social sciences. It relies on sensitivity to and critical reflection on the situatedness of scholarship. It foregrounds the regions studied as not just sources of data, but also sources of theory and method that challenge disciplinary claims to universality. Testing the boundaries of the disciplines and giving pride of place to a wide range of regions and historical periods, Area Studies should be, by definition, an interdisciplinary enterprise. LIAS is comprised of the Schools of Asian Studies (SAS) and Middle Eastern Studies (SMES). LIAS staff have expertise in anthropology, art & material culture studies, development studies, economics, film studies, history (cultural, intellectual, military, political, social), language pedagogy, law, linguistics, literary studies, media studies, philology, philosophy, political science, religious studies, and sociology. They contribute to BA, MA, and PhD programs including Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, Korean Studies, South- & Southeast Asian Studies (Indonesia, India & Tibet), Ancient Cultures of the Mediterranean (Assyriology, Egyptology, Papyrology), Hebrew & Judaism, Middle-Eastern Studies (Arabic, New-Persian, Turkish), and Classics and Ancient Civilizations.