Maarten Mous, Professor of African Linguistics at Leiden University, looks back on the 50th edition of the Colloquium of African Languages and Linguistics (CALL) and explains why this birthday was a celebration like no other.

Languages spoken around the world differ vastly from  the more familiar Indo-European languages. The courses in this theme aim to introduce you to the immense linguistic diversity still found in the world today. 

The Swahili coast has a long-standing history of transoceanic Islamic connections dating back to the 25th century. Yet, print, has changed the world – not only ours. This project unravels unique forms and archives of intellectual history emerging from within South-South connections. In East Africa Indian…

This study describes religion in Java.

Now available on YouTube!

Like any language, the natural sign languages of deaf communities differ from each other in their grammars and lexicons. A growing number of studies indicates that sign languages make use of the gestures of hearing speakers to build linguistic structure. This implies that variation and similarities…

This project will study the cultural meaning of the mythological figure of Orestes within the ancient Greek imagination, as it emerges from various literary sources from the archaic and classical periods.

Conference

This 862-page monograph is a grammar of Thangmi, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the districts of Dolakha and Sindhupalcok in central-eastern Nepal.

From the smallest level of interaction among families and close friends, over the meso-level of schools, shops, churches, religious communities and companies, to the highest level of nation-states and international organisations: Language Policy and Planning (LPP) is everywhere!

The present investigation aims at exploring whether the instruction provided at secondary schools in the capital meets the requirements of Communicative Language Teaching and whether the aims of improving learners’ communicative proficiency are met.

This book is the first systematic analysis of the changes in the use of goods and services by households of Black South Africans since the early nineteenth century.

This research programme seeks to understand the dynamics in the relationship between social media, mobile telephony and the social fabric under duress in Africa's mobile margins. It combines studies on mobility/migration, conflict and communication in an attempt to uncover these new dynamics, which…

In this book, Lydie Cabane examines the history of disaster management in South Africa.

This project aims at providing a broad perspective of the state of Science Technology and Innovation (STI) in Africa with a focus on global funding flows, in order to inform research funders in the continent, in particular those participating in the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI). The project…

The project aims at highlighting and strengthening Dutch research into the diversity of the world’s languages from a historic and a cognitive perspective.

It is our goal to deliver a convenient, enjoyable, learning experience that goes beyond the basics. All of the apps are an initiative of the HANDS! Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies at Leiden University, as part of the Language Socialization in Deaf Families project funded by the Leiden University…

The aim of the project is to contribute to the process of archive formation ongoing in Post-Apartheid South Africa through the inclusion of photographs that have been either unacknowledged or excised from the national canon.

The goal is to develop educational materials for Dâw, Hupd’äh, and Nadëb Indigenous peoples (Naduhup family; Middle and Upper Rio Negro; Brazilian Amazon). In order to achieve this, first of all, the fieldwork data collected during a collaborative project among anthropologists and linguists (2017-2020)…

This project uses archaeological, literary and epigraphic evidence to investigate urban development in Roman-period North Africa, compiling this in a GIS-linked database in order to analyse the development of urban settlement spatially over time.

Maarten Mous, Professor of African Linguistics at Leiden University, looks back on the 50th edition of the Colloquium of African Languages and Linguistics (CALL) and explains why this birthday was a celebration like no other.

After having been cancelled in 2020, this year the Summer School in Languages and Linguistics is going online. From 12 – 23 July, language and linguistics enthusiasts from all over the world can once again learn about a variety of rare languages and linguistics topics. Director Sasha Lubotsky tells…

This research project focuses on the extended documentation and investigation of these non-Austronesian (‘Papuan’) languages.

This project explores how Muslim authorities and writers use Russian to transmit Islamic contents, and whether this leads to a specific

The Leiden Summerschool in Languages and Linguistics, including courses in Papyrology, is now open. BA/MA/PhD students are welcome to attend.

This research profile area brings together descriptive, historical and theoretical linguistics, as well as psycho- and neurolinguistics.

The BOCA project explores new forms of communicating academic knowledge as a way to strengthen the connection between the university and society.

Southern Africa has a rich tradition of social history, one inspired by the tumultuous changes that have regularly convulsed the region from the 1780s onwards. Scholars have always sought to understand what these changes meant for everyday life and emphasised a perspective of marginal groups, how these…

In recent years, and especially since the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011, a growing body of research, media reporting, and scholarly literature has focused on the role of ‘Arab youth’ as the drivers of social and political movements across the Middle East and North Africa.

We live in a data-drenched society awash with numbers. An inhabitant of the democratic polis of Athens (5th and 4th centuries B.C.E.) increasingly found himself surrounded by numerical data. This project aims to analyze the communicative functions and the political meaning(s) ascribed to these public…

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

This systematic review of 68 English-language articles explores the roles of customary authorities in environmental governance in sub-Saharan Africa

This book offers readers an alternative history of the origins of the discipline of International Relations.

Knowledge and culture subproject 2:

On 10 november 2021, Carmel van Niekerk-Jacobs defended the thesis 'Realising the right to reproduce with assistance in South Africa'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.J. Sloth-Nielsen and Prof. T. Liefaard.

This project aims to systematically investigate the influence of information structure on nominal licensing in a subset of Bantu languages.

The Laiseang archiving project ensures the preservation of unique records of languages in the region which have been gathered by more than two dozen linguists at, and in collaboration with Dutch universities over the last 40 years.

This project aims at describing the Khoisan languages !Ora (Korana/Griqua) and !Ui of South Africa.

At LUCL, researchers aim to contribute to a comprehensive and informed perspective on the human past.

At LUCL, researchers aim to contribute to a comprehensive and informed perspective on the human past.

The Academic Language Centre organises language courses for companies, government agencies, private clients, and students and staff members of Leiden University.