During his two-day visit to the Netherlands, the Chinese Prime Minister paid an unexpected visit to Leiden on 16 October. Li Keqiang spoke with Rector Carel Stolker, Chinese PhD candidates and students of China Studies.

From 26 August until 5 September 2019, a group of 20 Chinese government officials, industry representatives and academics attended an intensive course on space law and policy at the International Institute of Air and Space Law, organized in cooperation with Avans+ in Breda.

Wenxin Wang defended her thesis on 26 October 2016

Chenyu Cheng defended her thesis on 6 April 2017.

Last February, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) acquired a rare Chinese manuscript dating back to the Ming Dynasty. Three Chinese Studies students got the opportunity to decipher the edict (dated 1582) during their internships. In this UBLpodcast they share their findings.

Leiden University strengthens the collaboration with the Chinese Xi’an Jiaotong University. The Chinese delegation visited the Faculty of Science to talk about collaborations in the field of life science and data science.

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been able to acquire an exceptional two-volume Miao album. The acquisition was made possible by the Rombouts Fund for Chinese collections. The extraordinarily well-preserved work contains 70 full-page paintings on silk, depicting non-Chinese peoples in the area…

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…

Leiden University is working increasingly closely with Chinese universities. On 22 November the Rector signed a statement of intent to ratify the relationship with Xi’an Jiaotong University. Shanghai International Studies University is to include Leiden University as a strategic partner institution…

New Chinese CSC PhD’s are welcomed at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry. On the 28th of September 2012 a three week introduction program started especially for this new incoming group of scientists.

This research project focuses on the thoughts of ethnicity and political orthodoxy in Medieval China by investigating Wang Tong’s works.

‘Crisis and change in European Union foreign policy.’ That is the title of Nikki Ikani’s book that was published last month. We asked the writer five questions about her book. Presentation: 5 & 20 April.

What is effective viewing behavior for foreign language learners and how can teachers effectively train language learners to apply effective viewing strategies that will maximize their learning when viewing subtitled materials?

How did local lifeways and crafting practices persist and develop in the diverse environments of the increasingly interconnected Gulf of Fonseca (AD 400-1521)?

Teachers of English as a foreign language in China and the Netherlands have different notions of themselves as teachers in relation to cultures associated with the English language. This is stated in the doctoral thesis of Dadi Chen, who graduates from the Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching…

Chinese athletes must perform this Olympics. Anything less than a gold is being seen as athletes being unpatriotic by furious nationalists online. Florian Schneider, director of the Leiden Asia Centre, explains the situation on BBC News.

When former Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström announced in 2014 that Sweden would become the first state to implement a feminist approach to its foreign policy, her idea was met with giggles. [1] But the concept quickly spread around the world. In May 2022, the Netherlands became the 10th state…

Debtelin (’boekje’ in het Mantsjoe) is een initiatief van de Leidse sinoloog en mantsjoeïst Fresco Sam-Sin en is gevuld met artikelen van Leidse studenten en onderzoekers sinologie.

China’s internet giants like Alibaba and Tencent go global. However, Alibaba shares its data with the Chinese state. The state links the Chinese social credit system to consumer’s profiles. What if Alibaba takes over the market?

Does the nature and extent of political communication networks, measured through the frequency and multiplexity of information exchange ties, play a critical role in the reconstitution and maintenance of the Chinese Empire?

Personalised healthcare could be the answer to insufficient treatment of chronically ill people. Therefore, PhD Junzeng Fu tries to predict the response of a patient to a drug. Strikingly, she combines western medicine with Chinese medicine diagnosis. Promotion Tuesday 21 February.

American foreign policy in the period after the Second World War is often characterised as liberal. This is, however, not the full picture, argues university lecturer Andrew Gawthorpe. He has been awarded a Vidi grant to research and rewrite this popular narrative.

Jan Melissen, Senior Fellow International Relations and Diplomacy at ISGA, researched the topic of consular diplomacy in a digital age. Specifically: the communicative challenge.

A high-ranking delegation from China visited Leiden on 6 November. The party of some 25 officials from the CPPCC – a Chinese advisory body comparable with the Dutch Senate - visited the Leiden Observatory, the Hortus Botanicus and the Asian Library.

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) recently participated in the Pagode-Europeana-China project as an associated partner. As a result, almost two hundred items related to China from the UBL Special Collections are now available via the Europeana website. The UBL was the only library to participate in…

International scholarly publisher Brill has released the most complete and up-to-date reference work on the Chinese language available today. Prof.dr. Rint Sybesma oversaw the project as Editor-in-Chief.

A fascinating description of a global language, A Grammar of Mandarin by Jeroen Wiedenhof combines broad perspectives with illuminating depth.

China wordt steeds assertiever in zijn relaties met andere landen, maar achter dit beeld gaat een opmerkelijk diverse maatschappij en politieke realiteit schuil die tal van aanknopingspunten biedt voor samenwerking en verdere integratie van China in de wereld. In China een gids voor de 21e eeuw past…

Working as a diplomat for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: for many students it would be their dream. Alumnus Tom Groot Haar is busy making it a reality. 'My career seems like a preconceived plan, but it wasn't.'

How were ideas about politics and society distributed in ancient China? Hilde De Weerdt, Professor of Chinese History, investigates this using new digital methods. We speak with her about networks, big data and digital humanities.

China-watchers are still grappling with the wide-ranging implications of the Hong Kong national security law. Has Beijing really abrogated the legally-binding Sino-British Joint Declaration after just 23 of the agreed-upon 50 years?

Leiden University and China import partner.

This study will investigate the role of Henri Jean Francois Borel (1869-1933) as an ‘interpreter of China'.

Three enormous maps of China, created during the reign of three different emperors of the Qing dynasty, have now been made available in open access and are downloadable via Leiden University Libraries’ (UBL) Digital Collections. The rich maps are an early example of academic collaboration between the…

Learning about the newest communication technology in China and solving a business case at telecom giant Huawei. Four Leiden science students get to know China's Silicon Valley.

Inaugural lecture

From Sunday 11 till Tuesday 20 June 2023, NVIC organizes a new edition of the TAFL course. This intensive, interactive course is developed for (future) teachers of Arabic. It addresses both the practical aspects of teaching Arabic as a foreign language as well as the underlying linguistic and cognitive…

From Sunday 8 till Tuesday 17 January 2023, NVIC organizes a new edition of the TAFL course. This intensive, interactive course is developed for (future) teachers of Arabic. It addresses both the practical aspects of teaching Arabic as a foreign language as well as the underlying linguistic and cognitive…

Three Leiden students have been selected for the Yenching Academy, a prestigious master’s programme offered by Peking University. The students will receive a full scholarship (tuition fees, housing and allowance), and will be following various interdisciplinary courses together with students from all…

Leiden University Libraries has made a large number of unofficial poetry journals from China accessible online in its Digital Collections. This opens up thousands of pages from an internationally unique collection of unofficial Chinese poetry for teaching, research, and the general public, including…

In the coming years, Hilde De Weerdt gets to spend over three million euros. She received grants from both the European Research Council (ERC) and the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for research on Chinese infrastructure. ‘It is great that it is also possible to develop large projects in the social sciences…

Jeffrey Kotyk defended his thesis on 7 September 2017

Teachers of English as a foreign language in China and the Netherlands have different notions of themselves as teachers in relation to cultures associated with the English language.

‘Visibility and secrecy are both valuable tactics and should not be antagonized in LGBT movements, ’ says Jingshu Zhu. Zhu will defend her dissertation on Wednesday 21 February. Time for a short interview with the PhD candidate.