LUCL is glad to announce that two of its members have been awarded an NWO Vrije Competitie Grant.

Berber languages have long been banned from public life in North Africa, but the situation has changed drastically. Linguistic research is generating new insights on the distant past and on present-day Dutch Moroccans. This is the finding of Maarten Kossmann, the only professor of Berber Studies in…

On Friday, the 24th of April 2015, the Junius Symposium voor Jonge Oudgermanisten, a symposium for junior researchers in the field of language, culture and history of the (early) medieval Germanic tribes, was organized by Peter Alexander Kerkhof (LUCL) and Thijs Porck (LUCAS).

English Language and Culture is a multi-faceted programme in which you’ll study the language in all its variaties, from Old English to the many different pronunciations currently in use. You’ll also be shown British, American and Canadian literature in their cultural-historical context.

Using brain imaging to discover the area in the brain that recognizes emotion.

Leiden scholars succeeded in making Arabic accessible to Western academic communities as early as the sixteenth century. But how did they approach this problem?

The Disticha Catonis by Catenaccio of Anagni. A text in vernacular from Latium (late 13th - early 14th century)

When we read a text, we think we know who wrote it, but in the early modern period, manuscript production was often a collaborative or ‘socialised’ enterprise involving secretaries and scribes who physically wrote what the author dictated.

Leiden University has six top bachelor's programmes according to Keuzigids universiteiten 2025, a consumer guide to university programmes. This puts Leiden in fourth place of the broad-based universities.

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.

This book presents the first comprehensive description of Tafi, one of the fourteen Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages, spoken by approximately 4,400 people in the southeastern part of Ghana. The description consists of thirteen chapters and is based on a corpus gathered during two fieldwork periods…

The Academic Language Centre is part of the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) and provides language services to students and staff of Leiden University and the Leiden University Medical Centre.

For people who are seriously ill, an empathetic doctor can make a world of difference. Psychologist Janine Westendorp examined helpful and harmful communication in the consulting room. ‘It’s very important to stress that you are always there supporting the person, even if there’s no cure.’

Do you want to become an expert on language and culture? Or do you want to study literature and culture from a comparative perspective? The master’s programme in Literary Studies offers five specialisations or tracks. The tracks that focus on literature in a particular language (English, French, German…

This engagingly written textbook provides a unique 'hands-on' introduction to sociolinguistics, which equips readers with the tools to start their own sociolinguistic research project.

Do you want to become an expert on language and culture? Or do you want to study literature and culture from a comparative perspective? The master’s programme in Literary Studies offers five specialisations or tracks. The tracks that focus on literature in a particular language (English, French, German…

Along with your application, you will have to submit a variety of documents. This information only applies to students who need to submit an application for admission. If you have a diploma that grants you automatic admission to a bachelor’s programme, you won’t need to submit additional documents.

Tailoring teaching to students’ learning needs in speaking skills in modern foreign languages is desirable, but difficult to achieve in regular classes in secondary schools. Esther de Vrind, PhD, manager and teacher educator at ICLON, developed a method to make this easier. Defence on 25 November.

To be eligible for Translation at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

Professor Felix Ameka and university lecturer Maria del Carmen Parafita Couta have received an NWO Open Competition grant together with Enoch Aboh (University of Amsterdam) to do research on ‘code-switching’: switching languages by multilinguals.

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

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In this dissertation, a comprehensive portrait of the American-born Quaker Lindley Murray (1745–1826) is painted and the influence of Murray’s Quakerism on his language use is investigated by analyzing a corpus of 262 of his unpublished private letters.

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A collaboration between linguists, geographers and anthropologists aims to uncover how languages spread across South America over thousands of years. Associate Professor Rik van Gijn is responsible for the linguistic side of this NWO project.

The language learning resource centre unites all language teaching professionals working at Leiden University: teachers and researchers at the LUCL, ATC, LUCAS, LIAS, and ICLON. You can find a list of them, ordered by language and/or role, in the menu on the left.

Lecture

To be eligible for Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

In the first year, the Linguistics programme will provide you with a sound basis for specialisation, while training your academic competences. In the second year, you will choose one of our four specialisations. While focusing on this track in your second and third year, you may also choose electives…

To be eligible for Literature in Society: Europe and Beyond at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

‘It is a fantastic sum of money,’ enthuses classicist Professor Ineke Sluiter. ‘It gives me not just an award, but a task as well. And in all honesty, I prefer it that way.’ She is already brimming with ideas about what she will do with her Spinoza Prize.

While Old Germanic studies might seem dated and, regrettably, occupies a less than secure position in various academic institutions, exciting new research presented by young researchers shows that the field is still vibrant and may have a bright future. On Thursday, the 7th of April, the ‘Junius Symposium…

On this page you will find more information about the selected projects of the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Fund for 2023.

This project studies the theory and practice of moral education in the (Neo)Platonic tradition.

An exploration across thirteen essays by critics, translators and creative writers on the modern-day afterlives of Old English, delving into how it has been transplanted and recreated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Investigating specific language and speech behaviour of people.

This is special issue of the journal Language & Communication. The papers of this issue delve into the multifaceted realm of (non)belonging.

On the 4th of September, Elisabeth J. Kerr successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Elisabeth on this achievement!

This dissertation offers a reconstruction of the propositional contents of the writings of Karl Popper, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt while bringing these into discussion with their performative meanings, such as polemical forms of reasoning, analogical and metaphorical uses of language, and hidden…

On 22 November, Leiden scientist Jan Vonk received an ERC starting grant for his research on the building blocks of mathematics. This grant is not his first this year: in fact, this July Vonk also received a Vidi from NWO. Four questions to the scientist who got two grants this year.

Do you want to discover a language and culture that is completely different from the Netherlands?