In this project, the hypothesis that language contact crucially impacts the development of spatial grammar and phonology is investigated.

When alumnus Jonathan Katzman started his master's programme in Russian and Eurasian Studies, he didn't foresee how useful those skills would be in the near future. Now, he manages a refugee centre for Ukrainians who have fled their war-torn country.

BE-OPEN is a structural project funded under the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education action. The project is coordinated by the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. The main objective of the project is to develop conditions for the implementation of the core principles of Open Science at universities…

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.

Computational thinking, programming, and algorithms form the basic of many of the things that are shaping our world, the way we work, interact, organize ourselves, and even spend our free time with social networks, streaming media, and games. And this transformation is far from being complete, it is…

Descriptions of different languages help us understand what speakers of different languages share worldwide. At the same time, having descriptions of languages available can also change local education and open our eyes to cultural and linguistic diversity. But what if a language has not yet been (fully)…

Are you thinking about studying Political Science? Watch the introduction video’s and learn more!

We perform multidisciplinary research at molecular, cellular, and organismal levels of animal biology to increase fundamental understanding of health and disease.

The 10th edition of the World Congress of African Linguists (WOCAL), hosted by Leiden University, will be held online from 7 – 12 June. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) researchers give us an insight into how important and special this event actually is.

In this dissertation a large corpus of letter signs and texts gathered during fieldwork in Niger, and to a lesser extent Mali and Burkina Faso is used to show the graphemic diversity of the traditional script of the Tuaregs, tifinagh, and to analyze the orthographic system.

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

This research cluster aims to analyse and interpret the formation and transmission of Graeco-Roman culture by exploring the relationships between cultural products (texts, objects, practices) and their societal and historical contexts.

Prof. Dr. Willem Adelaar has been elected as Honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA)

The majority of scientists, from archaeologists through to zoologists, collect huge volumes of data. Their massive databases contain large amounts of information which is difficult for humans to filter. With a solid grounding in statistics, we can develop algorithms for analysing and identifying patterns…

Are you thinking about studying Computer Science? Learn more and watch the videos. Note: As of September 2025 you can also combine this master programme with the Business Studies specialisation.

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…

The 10th edition of the World Congress of African Linguists (WOCAL), hosted by Leiden University, will be held online from 7 – 12 June. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) researchers give us an insight into how important and special this event actually is.

In Microbial Sciences, we perform multidisciplinary research to understand the structure and function of microbes at all levels of biological organization, from small molecules and cellular structures at atomic resolution to multicellular communities.

Interested in Area Studies? Then Leiden is the place to be! Join our Online Area Studies Week from 2-5 June to find out more. From Africa to Brasil and from Korea to Russia, Leiden covers all areas and fields, both in language, literature, history, politics and socio-economics. Join our live Q&As!

The Department of Archaeological Sciences seeks to achieve the highest standards of excellence in science-driven education and archaeological research across the globe and across all periods.

Lecture

The mission of the Plant Sciences cluster is to contribute to the sustainable production of high-quality crops, flowers and high-value bio-based products, and to contribute to the maintenance and restoration of biodiversity in natural ecosystems. This is realised by generating fundamental knowledge…

PhD candidates carry out a programme of independent research and additional (limited) course work, culminating in production of a PhD thesis in typically 4 years.

Words originally intended to indicate space, such as ‘out’, are also regularly used to indicate cause and effect. Why does this happen? And how does it work in other languages? PhD candidate Camil Staps decided to find out.

The Leiden Summer School in Language and Linguistics is visited every year by many scholars worldwide. Four of the 120 participants of the 7th Summer School in 2012, share their view of Leiden.

University lecturer Alex Reuneker has won the Frans van Eemeren Prize for his paper 'Assessing classification reliability of conditionals in discourse'.

This thesis discusses the constructions relevant to Object Shift from the intonational perspective, by presenting experimental data from all the Scandinavian languages.

Professor Jenny Doetjes has received an NWO grant to research the cross-linguistic properties of quantity expressions and our brain's influence on language.

In QS’s World University Rankings of 2016, Leiden University’s History and Linguistics programme rank #19 and #28, respectively. This makes the History programme the best of its kind in the Netherlands, and Linguistics the second best.

At the Institute of Political Science we value our alumni. We can learn from you, and would like to contribute to your further development. And, of course, we want to lend a hand in connecting ‘our’ political scientists all over the world.

With the emergence of new methods and technologies such as improved DNA analysis and big data, archaeological research has changed radically in recent decades. The researchers from the Department of Archaeological Sciences at the Faculty of Archaeology use new scientific knowledge to answer fundamental…

For associate professor Jenneke van der Wal, things have been good recently. After being awarded a Vici and Una Europa grant, she has now also received an Ammodo Science Award. ‘It is a nice confirmation that I am doing valuable work.’

PhD candidates carry out a programme of independent research, leading to a PhD thesis in typically 4 years.

PhD candidates carry out a programme of independent research and additional (limited) course work, culminating in production of a PhD thesis in typically 4 years.

This study investigates the perception and production of emotional prosody by native and non-native listeners and speakers, i.e. Chinese and Dutch listeners and speakers, including Dutch L2 learners of Chinese.

Gorlaeus Gebouw, Einsteinweg 55, 2333 CC, Leiden

In films kunnen de meest wonderlijke acties plaatsvinden. Maar zijn die acties in de 'echte' wereld ook mogelijk? En in hoeverre houden filmmakers ons voor de gek? Tijdens het Leiden International Film Festival komen film en wetenschap samen.

In January 2020, Dr Min Jung Cho and Dr Annie Trevenen-Jones of LUC The Hague applied for the LUF - SVM (Stichting Verpakking en Milieu/ Foundation for Packaging and the Environment) grant. In June 2020 they were awarded a grant amounting to the sum of €75,000.

This PhD project investigates what the universal and variable morphosyntactic properties of linguistic expressions of otherness are and how they can be modelled theoretically.

Social Science Matters is an online variant on London’s famous Speakers’ Corner – a platform for the researchers in the various disciplines in the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences to react to the news. This soapbox gives our social scientists an opportunity to voice their opinions on current…

Politics is about the authorised allocation of values: who gets what, when and how much? This question is relevant at many different levels, in many different places and in very different ways.

‘If it rains later, then I’ll take the car.’ In order to reason, we use sentences containing ‘if’ every single day. But how does that work exactly in the Dutch language? Alex Reuneker wrote his 628 page dissertation on the subject. Ceremony on 26 January.

How did Scottish speakers sound hundreds of years ago? University lecturer Mo Gordon thinks the answer to that question can be found in church archives. 'It can be a boost to your identity to know the history of your language.'