Material Culture Studies revolves around the analysis of the cultural biographies of all sorts of material objects from flint axes, to pottery, to houses and monumental structures.

This project focuses on two Mayan languages in contact: Awakateko and K’iche’. With the aim to create a database to be accessible to researchers, students, and indigenous activists interested in Mayan languages, this project will train Mayan speakers on transcription, translation, and analysis of…

Currently the focus of the project is the development of a tool that utilizes dimensionality reduction techniques in order to analyze and interpret the lexical and phonological variation between different sign languages. Additionally, the application of deep learning techniques for the extraction of…

This project examines changes in late eighteenth and nineteenth-century representations of the legendary twelfth-century general Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1159-1189) and how they reflect not only developments in themes of representation, but also changes in the focus of early modern and modern Japan’s…

This dissertation presents a description of Sandawe, a Khoisan language spoken by approximately 60 000 speakers in Dodoma Region, Tanzania.

New Approaches to Understanding the Eastern Mediterranean during Byzantine and Ottoman Times

Beauty is a central concept in the Italian cultural imagination throughout its history and in virtually all its manifestations. It particularly permeates the domains that have governed the construction of Italian identity: literature and language.

Religion, Philosophy, and the Pre-modern World

On October 9th, Peter Alexander Kerkhof succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Peter Alexander on this great result.

This dissertation provides a description of the language Tadaksahak as it is spoken by the Idaksahak, a people group of about 30,000 living in the most eastern part of Mali and several isolated places in western Niger.

Very generally speaking, this study aims at questioning and re-defining the mind-body epistemic problem within contemporary dance and art culture.

On the 10th of November, Sara Petrollino succesfully defended her PhD-thesis and graduated. LUCL congratulates Sara on this great result.

The general objective of this thesis is to determine a typology of verbal derivation in Ethiopian Afro-asiatic languages.

Marleen Hogendoorn (36) studied Dutch Language and Culture at Leiden University and is now editor-in-chief of the feminist monthly OPZIJ.

This book offers a linguistic anthropological analysis of multilingualism among the Matsigenka, Quechua, and Spanish languages on the coffee frontier of Southern Peru, set against the backdrop of economic transformation and deforestation in the world’s last great forest.

This project looks at material culture to better understand the character and organization of Roman colonial society in the Republican period, with a focus on the colony of Aesernia (founded 263 BC) in Samnium (modern-day Molise, Italy). What impact did the foundation of the colony have on precolonial…

On the 30th of June, Richard L. Boutwell successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Richard on this achievement!

The AAM-LR project aims at building a demonstrator of a web service that will help filed researchers to annotate audio- and video-recordings.

Studying languages enables you to unearth a lot of valuable information about humans: it reveals our history and explains cultural differences and it even illustrates the process of learning new information. The University is sharing its knowledge of and passion for languages in various new ways, including…

University lecturer Olga van Marion invited pupils from Ashram College in Alphen aan den Rijn to take part in a series of Dutch workshops organised at the University. Some the students and workshop leaders reflect on the busy morning.

Cultural Anthropology Development Sociology explores how people assign significance to different aspects of their lives and with one another.

This project aims to open up the pre-Islamic linguistic history of Arabia through the systematic study of the Thamudic inscriptions within a digital humanities framework.

This thesis investigates the connection between tonal realization and tone change (tone sandhi) in Wenzhou Chinese, and whether and how such a connection is conditioned by prosodic structure and focus marking.

The faculty of Humanities scores well in the anual QS World Universities Ranking By Subject list. This year we have placed sixth in the category Classics and Ancient History.

Contact us if you have questions about the LDE minor (Re)Imagining Port Cities.

Do you want to understand the complexities of today’s gender issues, social media use, food habits, social justice movements, labour relations or religious expressions? Join our international bachelor's programme in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology and get insight into people's social…

Archiving Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeological Fieldwork Data from the Eastern Mediterranean (600-2000)

Connecting Agriculture, Crafts, Construction, Transport, and Resilience Strategies

Aesthetic formations and cultural repertoires give meaning to our reality in ways that are never neutral. Focusing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and its global interlocutors, this project brings together a team of scholars from Leiden University who bring in inter-disciplinary, inter-area…

Do you want to do your minor in Morocco? Then choose the minor Culture and Society in Morocco! You'll about Moroccan culture, society and languages, and a solid training in ethnographic research methods.

Get the most out of your studies at Leiden University by taking part in our extracurricular activities.

Get the most out of your studies at Leiden University by taking part in our extracurricular activities.

Get the most out of your studies at Leiden University by taking part in our extracurricular activities.

Aesthetic formations and cultural repertoires give meaning to our reality in ways that are never neutral. Focusing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and its global interlocutors, this project brings together a team of scholars from Leiden University who bring in inter-disciplinary, inter-area…

Lecture, LUCL Colloquium - Series '24/'25

This dissertation provides a systematic description of English and Afrikaans verbal pseudo-coordination and a formal analysis couched in the Minimalist program.

Vulnerability and the associated levels of social resilience is what fascinates the researchers at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology. What links a Japanese fisherman after the tsunami at Fukushima with a Ghanaian goldminer in an increasingly industrialised work environment?…

The World Cultural Council (WCC) and Leiden University are pleased to announce that the 34th Award Ceremony will take place on Wednesday 8 November 2017 in Leiden. This year Professor Omar M. Yaghi, the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry, University of California-Berkeley, USA,…