Leiden University Kern Institute

The Kern Institute is the national centre of expertise for South Asia and the Himalayan region, more specifically India and Pakistan, Tibet and Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The institute houses the Department of Indian & Tibetan Studies of Leiden University, as well as an excellent library. The research and teaching at the Kern Institute focus on the study of the languages and history, philosophy and religions, arts and material culture of South Asian and the Himalayan region. The Kern Institute library offers excellent resources for a broad range of approaches to the study of India and surrounding countries. In 1925, the institute was founded by the sanskritist and archaeologist Prof. J.Ph. Vogel. He named the institute after Hendrik Kern who, from 1865, held the first chair of Sanskrit in the Netherlands, and who laid the foundations for the academic study of countless facets of Indian civilization in this country (see the History of the Kern Institute.