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

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.

Xander Tielens, Professor of Physics and Chemistry of the Interstellar Space, has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant to study polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in space. The combination of astronomical observations, computer models and lab research makes the research highly interdisciplinary.

The production of sustainable energy can take up to 1000 times more space than fossil fuels, environmental researcher Paul Behrens concludes in a publication in Energy Policy. Various media reported on this remarkable outcome.

The projects of nine researchers at Leiden University have received funding through the new NWO Science Diplomacy Fund. The Fund is for scientific activities that will improve relations between the Netherlands and other countries.

The Advanced LLM programme has been taught since 2000.

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)…

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.

‘We intend to use the arrival of SRON in South Holland to give a serious impetus to research and activities related to space travel and astronomy in the broadest sense of the word.' These were the words of Rector Carel Stolker of Leiden University at the ceremony where the first pile of the new SRON…

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…

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

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.

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!

On the 16th of December, Yachan Liang successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Yachan on this achievement!

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.

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.

A new challenge for Felix Ameka. The senior lecturer at the Centre for Linguistics has been appointed professor by special appointment of Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Diversity in the World. ‘I am looking forward to promoting ethnolinguistic diversity and vitality.’

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

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

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.

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

ESA’s space telescope Gaia, which maps the Milky Way, completes its active phase of scanning the sky on 15 January. Over the past decade, Gaia has made more than three trillion observations of about two billion stars and other cosmic objects. ‘Gaia is already the discovery machine of the decade,’ Leiden…

The programme of the Advanced Master Air and Space Law is a combination of public air law, private air law & space law, in international & European perspective

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.

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.

This thesis discusses several questions regarding the double ramification cycle as a Chow class on the moduli space of stable n-pointed genus g curves using tools from so-called logarithmic geometry.

Find out how to apply for Air and Space Law programme at Leiden University by following our step-by step guide.

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

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.'

‘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.

After over 50 years, the US is heading back to the Moon. Space expert Tanja Masson-Zwaan says in ‘EenVandaag’ that the test mission is an important step in the advancement of space exploration.

How does a honey bee see the Earth? Or a shark? What would the world around us look look like through an infrared camera? And how can you spot Earth from the International Space Station and other satellites? Come and experience it yourself at the Night of Arts and Sciences!

On 31 August 2022, a delegation from the Korean Ministry of Government Legislation visited the International Institute of Air and Space Law (IIASL) at Leiden University as part of their official visit to the Netherlands. The delegation’s visit was aimed at exchanging knowledge and experience on interaction…

10 reasons why you should study Air and Space Law (LL.M. Advanced) at Leiden University.

Science education project Space Awareness engaged 230,000 people in 68 countries with the excitement and challenges of space sciences and technologies. After three years, the project coordinated by Leiden Observatory came to an end in March and has now been evaluated.

The two instruments of ESA's space telescope Euclid have taken their first test images. The first images indicate that the space telescope will achieve the scientific goals for which it was designed - and possibly much more. Euclid will create a 3D map of a third of the sky, allowing scientists to study…

Until 15 May, Open Space will give room for artistic creation and experimentation in a partnership between artists and astronomers. The project is a collaboration among Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT), Korzo and the Leiden Observatory. Starting on 3 May, young dancers of NDT 2, three choreographers, three…

An international team of laboratory astrophysicists and astrochemical modellers has shown that glycine, the simplest amino acid and an important building block of life, can form under the harsh conditions that govern chemistry in space. The results have been published this week in Nature Astronomy and…

View the program structure of the Advanced Master Air and Space Law on this webpage. The program gives you a thorough understanding of aviation and space law.