To properly understand how babies absorb a language we need to study the process from a number of different perspectives, linguist Claartje Levelt argues. She accepts her appointment as Professor of Language Acquisition on 27 March with an inaugural lecture entitled ‘Language in its infancy’.

Since 2017 guest researcher Gerrit de Wit has been working together with Congolese linguists and the Boa community to develop the oral Boa language into a written one. He tells us about 2 unique projects, which are steadily unearthing and describing the structure of a new language.

What does it take to truly be ‘one of us’ and what role does language play in this process? In short, what is the difference between ‘a language we understand’ and ‘our language’? This is the question Professor Terkourafi will address in her inaugural lecture on Friday 20 April.

How does language work and how do we learn a language? The more we know about language, the better we can understand how people interpret the world in words. Roberta D'Alessandro carries out research on the architecture of language. There is now a dossier about her work online.

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade has received a special award: the Order of St. Mellitus, in recognition of her services to the history of the Bishops of London.

Language research generates a wealth of information about people: from our history and cultural differences to the way we learn. Leiden University shares its knowledge and passion for this topic via de MOOC on ‘Miracles of Human Languages’ and the web dossier on Language Diversity.

On 7 October, a court in Athens, Greece, convicted leaders of the far-right Golden Dawn party as directing a criminal organization. Marina Terkourafi, professor of Sociolinguistics, discusses the landmark ruling for the Leiden International Studies Blog.

How did manioc, a poisonous root, become the staple of Amazonia and change the lives of prehistoric Amazonian peoples? Veni grant recipient, Konrad Rybka aims to unravel this mystery using a variety of research methods across different disciplines.

According to Nivja de Jong, second language acquisition is 'the most fascinating subject in linguistics'. As a recently appointed professor of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy, she studies the question of how best to teach people a new language.

Victoria Nyst's love for sign language was sparked when she accidentally ended up at a deaf school while studying African linguistics. The university lecturer has since been awarded a Vici grant to research the history of these languages.

Neuroscientist Simeen Tabassi Mofrad has been awarded a Rubicon grant to conduct research on cortical and allelic determinants of age-related cognitive decline at University of Oxford. She holds the first rank among all Rubicon applicants in NWO Domain Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH).

As of 1 July, Gijsbert Rutten is Professor by special appointment of Historical Sociolinguistics of Dutch at Leiden University. Rutten, who also works as Director of Education at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), will, among other things, research the historical relationship between…

Three researchers of Humanities have been awarded with a VIDI research grant. With a VIDI they can spend five years researching the topic they submitte. The grant amounts to a maxium of eight hundred thousand euros.

The Trojan War plays an important role in Greek mythology. But there is much more to Troy than mythology. The exhibition ‘Troy. City. Homer. Turkey’ can be viewed from 7 December to 5 May 2013. Leiden linguist Alwin Kloekhorst wrote an article for the exhibition catalogue on the language of Troy.

Eleven talented Leiden researchers with several years of research experience have been awarded a Vidi subsidy to set up or expand their own line of research.

Nivja de Jong, languages professor at Leiden University, warns about the impact of proposed education budget cuts by the new Dutch government.

What makes for a good team? In a series of articles on teams, Forbes referred to the work of Marina Terkourafi, professor of Sociolinguistics at Leiden University.

A fascinating description of a global language, A Grammar of Mandarin by Jeroen Wiedenhof combines broad perspectives with illuminating depth. Crammed with examples from everyday conversations, it aims to let the language speak for itself. The book opens with an overview of the language situation and…

“Music is about everything else,” theater director Peter Sellars said upon accepting his Polar Music Prize back in 2014. Although it is about particular musical problems, Stanimiras dissertation is about ‘everything else’, too. What and how that is, could be summed up in different ways depending on…

The presentation will provide an introduction to the BuddhistRoad Project and its results so far. At the core of the research programme of the BuddhistRoad Project is the idea to create a new framework to enable understanding (i) of the dynamics of cultural encounter and (ii) Buddhist…

This talk is devoted to a relatively neglected field of PIE linguistics and prehistory, the possibility of PIE loanwords in Proto-Kartvelian, collecting and critically evaluating of all proposals (that, surprisingly enough, outnumber the PIE ~ Proto-Uralic/Finno-Ugric proposals). As the investigations…

Can Zebra finches learn to distinguish two very similar Dutch words? Research by behavioral biologist Verena Ohms proved that they can identify 'wit' and 'wet'. Ohms published her findings in

When professors become emeriti, it usually does not mean they stop working. The Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) will therefore soon have a first: a symposium is going to be organised where all the speakers are emeriti professors. 'Science will always be part of you are.'

Leiden University Lecturer Lettie Dorst wins a prestigious Comenius Senior Fellow grant for a project about machine translation and its use in higher education.

Nivja de Jong, researcher at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) and the Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching (ICLON), has won the 2018 Best Article Award from the International Language Testing Association (ILTA) for her paper on language fluency. The award committee writes…

This lecture is cancelled due to the train strike!

Using speech analysis to resolve crimes. That's what Meike de Boer (26) is aiming to do with her PhD research. 'By analysing how a person pronounces

Mexico, between 500 B.C. and A.D. 900

Are you in a position of talent coach, coordinator, mentor, dean, or teacher and looking for university programmes that provide an extra challenge for the students of your school? The Leiden University Honours Academy provides such a programme, where vwo-students from the final three years of high school…

Media & interaction is where artificial intelligence and machine learning meet philosophy, cognitive science, and the creative arts. Examples of research questions in this domain are: 'Can an algorithm be creative by human standards?', 'Can creative processes, such as composing music or writing poetry,…

At Leiden University, researchers from all disciplines work together to find answers and design innovations in the field of artificial intelligence.

Your time at Leiden is about more than just studying. Some of your best experiences will stem from being a part of our lively and diverse student community, as well as from life in the beautiful city of Leiden.

The specialisation Culture and Politics of the Master’s in International Relations at Leiden University encourages critical perspectives on complexities of culture as an inextricable part of global politics.

What place does Dutch literature hold in the world? Why are Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Mondriaan world-famous artists? Is it possible to have a knack for language – and is that a special talent the Dutch have? The BA Dutch Studies gives you the unique chance to find the answers to questions like these…

The Classics and Ancient Civilizations (Research) programme in Assyriology offers many extracurricular opportunities to enrich your study experience.

The specialisation in Translation at Leiden University offers a unique combination of translation theory, research and practice. This prepares you for either a further academic career as a researcher or a professional career in the language industry.

The Classics and Ancient Civilizations programme in Assyriology offers many extracurricular opportunities to enrich your study experience.

Morality, mathematics, geometry, geography, music, navigation, and language are traditionally viewed as uniquely human cultural achievements and abilities. The study of their development and variation is classified as part of the humanities and social sciences. These fields have been mainly studied…

Our library contains around 23,000 books, journals and historical documents under the care of a specialized librarian.

Review Committees, with cross-boundary experts, are invited to assess our research and education programmes.

The new Middle Eastern Library (MEL) will bring together the UBL's own Middle Eastern collections and the collections of the library of The Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), which has been part of the Leiden University Libraries since 1st January 2018.

Metaphysics as Praxis: Rereading Dogen's Metaphysics Through Deleuzian Pragmatism and Pratimutpada

Knowledge and culture subproject 3:

From Sunday 12 January till Tuesday 21 January 2025, 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…

Impressions by Wouter Baas and Caroline Schep