IIAS fellowship in Leiden or in Amsterdam?

The IIAS main office in Leiden is an independent entity hosted by Leiden University. Leiden University (founded in 1575) has a long-standing tradition in Asia Studies, with departments of languages and cultures of China, Korea, Japan, South and Central Asia, and Southeast Asia and Oceania. In addition to Leiden University's main library, all departments have extensive collections.

Leiden also hosts the Research School CNWS (School of Asian, African and Amerindian Studies), the Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM), the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), the Faculty of Creative and Performing Arts, the Faculty of Theology (with an emphasis on the theology of Islam), the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences with its departments of Cultural Anthropology, Development Sociology and Political Science, the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Development, and the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). Asia-related museums in Leiden include the National Museum of Ethnology and the Sieboldhuis Museum.

Leiden University is language oriented and focused on classical as well as contemporary studies.

In The Hague (15 minutes by train from Leiden) one can find the Leiden University Campus The Hague (specialized in Law and Governance Studies), the National Library of the Netherlands (KB), the Netherlands National Archives, the International Institute for Social Studies (ISS) and the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Clingendael.

The IIAS branch office in Amsterdam is an independent entity hosted by the University of Amsterdam (UvA), founded in 1632. The university counts departments of Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Communication Science, Media Studies and has an Academic Medical Center (AMC). Amsterdam has two universities; UvA and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA), founded in 1880, which includes departments of Political Science, Social Cultural Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology, and the VU University Medical Center. Both UvA and VU have extensive department libraries in addition to their main libraries.

Asia-related institutes in Amsterdam include the Amsterdam School for Social Research (ASSR), Asian Studies in Amsterdam (ASiA), the International Institute for Social History (IISG), the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) and the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT). As the (cultural) capital of the Netherlands, Amsterdam hosts many museums, such as the Rijksmuseum and the Tropenmuseum of anthroplogy, and musical venues which feature Asia-related exhibitions and performances.

The departments in Amsterdam have a more interdisciplinary and comparative social science approach.

Leiden and Amsterdam are only 30 minutes apart by train.