What developments preceded modern Standard Dutch? PhD candidate Iris Van de Voorde conducted research on ‘pluricentricity’, or the idea that language norms arise in different places and spread outwards from there. PhD defence on 19 April.

As a student, university lecturer Berthe Jansen fell under the spell of the Van Manen collection: a collection full of Tibetan writings and objects. A €1.5 million grant now makes it possible to take a really close look at it. 'There is still so much to do and discover.'

Egyptian temple culture was thought to be declining in the Ptolemaic era, after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. Nothing could be further from the truth, says Egyptologist Carina van den Hoven. Temple culture was very much alive and kicking. PhD defence 16 February.

This month marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. NINO, the Language Museum, Things that Talk and the National Museum of Antiquities are seizing the opportunity to organise the first Week of Ancient Writing.

When you think of political philosophy, you think of Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel and Johann Fichte. Both philosophers are considered great representatives of German idealism. University lecturer in Continental Philosophy Marie Louise Krogh has received a Veni subsidy to delve deeper into the German idealists…

Historical linguist Lauren Fonteyn is awarded a substantial Digital Infrastructure grant as well as being selected as member of the prestigious Young Academy Leiden (YAL).

FactRank is a new online tool that automatically detects ‘checkable’ claims made by politicians in parliamentary debates or tweets, and therefore enables fact-checkers to work much faster. Alexander Pleijter, a researcher and lecturer in Journalism and New Media, helped develop FactRank.

Nadine Akkerman has received a subsidy of two million euros from the European Research Council (ERC) for research into 16th and 17th century English manuscripts. Akkerman: ‘Working with handwritten texts and unravelling their mysteries is one of my passions, and it’s especially rewarding when this work…

Milan van der Kuil, Anne Visser, Andrea Evers and Ineke van der Ham have published a paper in Frontiers in Psychology, entitled: A usability study of a serious game in cognitive rehabilitation: a compensatory navigation training in acquired brain injury patients.

Dr Ruixuan Chen, an alumnus of the LIAS and now assistant professor in Buddhist Studies at Heidelberg, has been awarded the Ernst Waldschmidt Prize. The award ceremony is postponed due to the pandemic and will take place in Berlin presumably in early 2021.

Following the success of the pilot calendar that was launched earlier this year, a new D&I calendar for the academic year 2022-2023 has been developed. This calendar is an effort to build awareness and a cultural understanding of important religious holidays and other special observances of the diverse…

On the first day of February, employees of the Faculty of Humanities gathered in the Faculty Club. They were there to usher in the new semester, while enjoying refreshments and drinks.

The student elections for the student representatives of the Faculty Council will take place from 22 to 25 April. Prominent members of four student parties engaged in a debate last Thursday on topics close to students’ hearts.

On June 30, eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies of Leiden University organised the annual Hans Franken Lecture. This year the lecture was delivered by Jan Kleijssen, former Human Rights Director at the Council of Europe.

In mid-March 2020, the European Commission adopted, against the background of the Corona pandemic, temporal common rules for the export into third countries of personal protective equipment, needed in the context of the Corona pandemic, out of the EU.

The Faculty of Humanities has made a festive start to the academic year. On 7 September, staff members were able to meet each other at a drinks party in the Hortus botanicus.

The Faculty of Humanities is proud to launch its new D&I Calendar for the academic year 2023-2024. This calendar is an effort to build awareness and cultural understanding of important religious holidays and other special observances of the diverse groups within our academic community.

The Faculty of Humanities is proud to launch its new D&I Calendar for the academic year 2024-2025. This calendar is an effort to build awareness and cultural understanding of important religious holidays and other special observances of the diverse groups within our academic community.

Before coming to Leiden, Dr. Stökl was Reader in Hebrew Bible / Old Testament at Kings College London.

Umberto Selva, a Leiden graduate of the Research MA program of Linguistics, has received for his thesis the international award for best MA thesis in the field of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics of the year 2015.

It has already been a huge success in The Hague, and now the Lipsius building has one, too: an Acts of Kindness pillar. The official opening took place on Tuesday 20 September.

LECTIO, the KU Leuven Institute for the Study and Transmission of Texts, Ideas and Images in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, invites applications for its Visiting Program 2022-23. Deadline: 10 June 2022. For more information: lectio@kuleuven.be.

Two Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Medieval Studies are available at the Department of Conservation, Archaeology, and History, University of Oslo. The positions are associated with the project “Minuscule Texts: Marginalized Voices in Early Medieval Latin Culture (c. 700–c.1000)”, funded by the…

The Huizinga Institute offers an online masterclass that explores how material, visual, and paratextual elements in manuscripts and printed books developed between 1400 and 1600, and how this influenced the ways in which readers navigated the book and experienced the text it contained. Deadline for…

All published texts from the Collection of the Leiden Papyrological Institute have now been made available online, including images, translations and metadata. See Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS).

Last week Anne Helder successfully defended her PhD-thesis. We were all joyous to celebrate this day and achievement with young Dr. Helder.

LECTIO, the KU Leuven Institute for the Study and Transmission of Texts, Ideas and Images in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, invites applications for its Visiting Program 2023-2024. Deadline for submissions: May 31.

Bridging Distance presents the outcome of the Research Group (2020) of the KABK Lectorate Art Theory & Practice.

All are warmly invited to the 3rd Annual Leiden Austrian Studies Lecture, organized by the Foundation for Austrian Studies and Special Chair for Central European Studies in cooperation with the Institute for History, Friday 29 October 2021, 15.15-17.00 in the Faculty Club, Rapenburg 73 in Leiden.

ChatGPT, translation machines and bots: for Carole Tiberius, they are a piece of cake. On 1 January, she was appointed professor of Computational Linguistics. 'There ae two elements to the field: computer science and linguistics.'

November marks exactly 100 years since the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. To celebrate this special discovery, the Faculty of Humanities, together with various parties, is organising the 'Month of Tutankhamun': a month full of activities around Egypt's most legendary pharaoh.

Dr. Tommy van Steen, Universitair Docent in Cyber Security Governance bij het Institute of Security and Global Affairs, werd geïnterviewd door mediaplanet over internetcriminaliteit en hoe wij deze dagelijks kunnen tegenkomen via onze computers en telefoons.

The underwater world around present-day Indonesia has changed greatly in recent centuries as a result of human activity. University lecturer Johannes Müller has been awarded an NWO XS grant to map the history of the Indonesian ecosystems.

University lecturer in Chinese and Comparative Philosophy Jingjing Li has been awarded a Veni grant for her research on feminist theories within the Buddhist philosophy of consciousness-only. Jingjing Li explains her plans and the importance of her research.

The 2018 King's Speech was a string of statements containing little or no substance. It was obvious that, in an attempt to keep all the coalition parties happy, the speech covered more issues than in 2017. This is confirmed by an analysis of the speech carried out by public administration experts Gerard…

Researchers from Leiden and Delft have found a way to look inside early-modern bookbindings. An x-ray technique has allowed them to search for remains of medieval manuscripts hidden inside the bindings. After the Middle Ages many manuscripts were recycled, their pages pasted inside bookbindings to provide…

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.

From the Open Days and Student for a Day events to the option of following Online Experience modules: the university tries to prepare prospective students for their new study programme as well as possible. In this context, the bachelor’s programmes Dutch Language and Culture and English Language and…

Language can be a time machine: we can learn from ancient texts how our ancestors interacted with the world around them. But can language also teach us something about people whose language has been lost? PhD candidate Anthony Jakob investigated whether the languages of prehistoric populations left…

Corona travel restrictions and increased political pressure: research into China has become considerably more difficult in recent years. University lecturer and China researcher Rogier Creemers does not let this put him off. He receives an NWO grant to screen policy documents using digital technique…

Translating texts, rehearsing scenes or practising music. Over the last few weeks, students of the BA Classics programme have been focused on just one thing: their production of the Greek tragedy Hecuba. Almost a third of them are involved in it. Iris de Smalen, who plays Hecuba, and Christoph Pieper,…

When discussing the history of Islam, the focus is almost always on the history of the Sunni majority. University Lecturer in the history of Islam, Edmund Hayes wants this to change. His new ERC-funded project , focuses on the development of the early Shia community.

The Guggenheim Fellowship is a prestigious award for US nationals. There are more than 3,000 applications every year, and this year only 188 were honoured. Professor Jonathan Silk is one of these 188, the first ever at Leiden University, and he tells us more about the fellowship and what he will do…

To truly understand Dutch literature, we have to look beyond borders. At least, that is the view of Sander Bax. From 1 August, he will be Professor of Contemporary Dutch Literature and Culture in a Transnational Dynamic.

Just as some people today dislike English influences on the Dutch language, in early modern times people also criticised the Frenchification of Dutch. But to what extent did French actually leave its mark in our language? PhD student Brenda Assendelft made a surprising discovery. PhD defence 24 May.

Aleydis Nissen discusses her new book, The European Union, Emerging Global Business and Human Rights.

Last Friday, 2 February, Mariana Gkliati presented a paper at the Seminar, ‘Controlling Migration through Cooperation: Recent trends in the externalisation of migration control’, at Tilburg University, which was discussed by Thomas Spijkerboer and Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen.

On the occasion of Bart Besamusca's retirement as professor of Middle Dutch text culture in international perspective at Utrecht University on 25 January 2023, the digital exhibition 'The surprising Middle Ages' was created by medievalists from the Utrecht University Centre for Medieval Studies Over…

In this new edition of the Rijmbijbel there are 159 valuable miniatures, combined with commentary by MA-students from Utrecht. Students in Dutch Language at the universities of Antwerp and Leiden have translated the text passages. Various experts, such as Martine Meuwese (UU), tell more about Jacob…

Giovanni Gruni publishes a peer reviewed paper in the Korean Journal of international and Comparative Law.