‘In recent publications about the slave trade the same rhetorical weapons are used as two centuries ago in the battle for the abolition of the British slave trade. It is a topic fraught with emotions, but that should not prevent historians from being as careful and impartial as possible in their research,’…

On the 16th of February 2022 Mr. Yunus Sulistyono successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Fokelien Kootstra defended her thesis on 23 April 2019

This project intends to provide an integrated linguistic assessment of the hypothesised migration route of the Tocharians.

Find out how to apply for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Leiden University by following our step-by step guide.

In 2014 Russia entered Ukraine and occupied Crimea, and about two and a half years ago it began a large-scale invasion. For Ukraine, it’s a war. But Russia calls it a ‘special military operation’. Word choices of this kind affect how people look at issues. A Dutch Research Council (NWO) project led…

Afro-American slaves in the 19th century did not always flee to the north of the United States, according to historical research. Most of the slaves who fled remained in the southern states and posed as free coloured people. This is the conclusion that Professor Damian Pargas from Leiden University…

On November 1st, Min Liu succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Min on this great result.

For a brief period Leiden University was the hub of the world of linguistics. The 48th annual conference of the Societas Linguistica Europaea was held here at the start of September. Almost 600 linguists came from all corners of the world to the city of discoveries to attend this prestigious event.

The history of sign languages of deaf people is severely understudied. The historical linguistics of sign languages offers a fundamentally new perspective on the history of human languages. This project addresses the dearth of knowledge about historical sign language linguistics through a large-scale…

To be eligible for Russian and Eurasian Studies, you must meet the following admission requirements.

How do sign languages change and spread over time, and how is this influenced by their transmission history?

The global population speaks approximately 7,000 different languages and approximately half of the world’s population is bilingual. The unique orthographic characteristics of different languages can help us to gain insight into the seemingly simple process of transforming written to spoken words (i.e.,…

When many people think of slavery, they think of the translatlantic trade that took place between Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean.

This book celebrates Maarten Mous, professor of African Linguistics at Leiden University.

Form and Function in Greek Grammar. Linguistic Contributions to the Study of Greek Literature is a new book, written by Albert Rijksbaron. Rijksbaron is internationally known as one of the leading scholars of the Ancient Greek language, whose work has exerted a strong and lasting influence on the scholarly…

MIDDELBURG/GENEVA – The president of the United Nations Human Rights Council has invited the Zeeland Archives from the Netherlands, to Geneva on March 20th in order to present its project about the historical slave voyage aboard The Unity (1761-1763).

This thesis discusses the development in Proto–Indo–European, Latin and Romance of a word–formation pattern which the most adequate terminology in use dubs ‘verbal government compounds with a governing first member’; I use the shorthand ‘pickpocket compounds’.

Which features characterize speakers’ voices, and how are these features determined by what a speaker is saying?

Alumni event

Master studies History, Classics, Russian Studies and Dutch Studies have received the label ‘top programme’ in the Keuzegids Masters of March 2018. The study guide bases its results on the opinion of students (through the National Student Survey) and experts (NVAO).

The dental remains of 25 enslaved Africans from the site of Newton's Plantation, on Barbados, were subjected to isotope analysis. Previous research had pointed out that the locally born individuals were subjected to high concentrations of lead poisoning. A new study, done by Dr Jason Laffoon among others…

Conference

This project combines an extensive new open database on linguistic distributions, spatial modelling and areal linguistics in order to disentangle the roles of social and environmental factors on the emergence of linguistic diversity patterns of South America.

Russian Cellist and ACPA researcher Maya Fridman is organizing many benefit events together with Russian and Ukrainian musicians to raise funds for Giro 555 for Ukraine.

On the 28th of June, Laura Smorenburg successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Laura on this achievement!

A central and much debated topic in the study of language acquisition concerns the nature of the learning mechanisms that are required. Are the computational and learning mechanisms that guide learning about language structure special and specific to language or humans?

The pre-master's is a bridging programme for students who have applied for the MA Russian and Eurasian Studies, but who, according to the Board of Admissions, still have deficiencies in their educational background. Once you have completed the pre-master’s programme, you will be admitted to the Master’s…

This study analyses the prehistory of a northeastern Siberian population, the Sakha, from both a molecular-genetic and a linguistic perspective.

Willemijn Aerdts, lecturer at ISGA, discussed the Russian interference in the domestic affairs of Western countries on Dutch radio BNR.

This project proposes to connect two discourses highly present in contemporary literary criticism in China, as well as on the world literary scene and academic circles: the discussion on emigration literature and the concept of ‘essayness’ derived mainly from (post)modern Western theories of the ess…

Russia is planning to protect its own internet against attacks from the Western enemy. President Putin recently signed a law for autonomous internet as a kick off. Critics are worried that the law will mainly be used to oppress the opposition within Russia itself. Dennis Broeders, Associate Professor…

This project aims at documenting the Haitian Creole varieties spoken by Haitian migrants in Cuba and the Dominican Republic’s Samaná Peninsula.

This book presents a comprehensive description of the grammar of Logba, one of the fourteen Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages spoken by approximately 7,500 speakers on the South-Eastern frontier of the Ghana-Togo border. It is the outcome of fifteen months research in Logba speaking communities.

This dissertation for the first time provides a detailed description of Benchnon, a language spoken by approximately 200.000 people in Southwest Ethiopia.

Nowadays, most Europeans speak a language belonging to the Indo-European language family. However, very different languages were spoken on our continent before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. The EUROLITHIC project tries to find answers to the question which languages these were and where they came…