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.

Tingting Hui started her PhD project at LUCAS in September 2015. Her promotors will be Ernst van Alphen and Yasco Horsman from the Literary Studies department.

There is a growing demand throughout the world for ways to understand and preserve cultural heritage. Heritage has a crucial role to play because it strengthens societies and promotes understanding among cultures. Leiden expertise in the area of heritage spans the whole world.

Leiden Anglicist Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade is one of the seventeen new members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Tieken is Professor of Historical Sociolingusitics of English.

Contact information for CML education

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.

Lecture

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

What motivates learners in bilingual education to learn English and how can and do teaching practices contribute to that motivation?

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.

Lecture, Interactionality seminars

The city centre of Leiden is covered in them: wall poems. When roaming around, you come across poetry written in the Latin alphabet, but also in scripts that might be more difficult to understand for the average person living in Leiden. In a new series of videos, Tijmen Pronk talks more about this.

The Executive Board of the Institute of Psychology has a new Director of Operational Management. It’s the perfect role for Paula van den Bergh. ‘For me, “connection” is a nice word. If you see the connections between things, you immediately see the logic behind the processes.’ Her career has taken her…

By making smart use of available data, the health and care of people can be substantially improved. Marco Spruit wants to use language and machine learning in the coming years to identify and solve the biggest care issues in the region of The Hague. He has been appointed Professor of Advanced Data Science…

The Dutch phrase ‘ijs en weder dienende’ (literally, ‘ice and weather serving’) is a good example of what is known as a participle clause and is perhaps one of the most unfathomable grammatical constructions in Dutch. For what (or who) is serving whom (or what)? It actually means ‘ice and weather permitting’.…

For two decades, language experts were certain that babies were able to learn language rules from as young as the age of seven months. However, recent research carried out by a consortium of four Dutch baby labs led by researchers from Leiden cast doubts on this certainty. We spoke to researchers Andreea…

Professor Sjef Barbiers will be appointed Managing Director of the Institute for the Dutch Language (INT) with effect from 1 September 2025. He will step down as scientific director of LUCL as of that date.

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 course that concludes with a video pitch, instead of a paper or examination: Italian Language and Culture students each recorded their own knowledge clip, speaking to a wide audience about Italian cultural expressions. We asked Goran Bouaziz, Cameron-May Bosch and Katja Timmer what they thought of…

Fifteen hundred years ago, the north-west of what we now call China was a jumble of peoples. How did those Indians, Khotanese and Tocharians influence each other and each other's languages? Associate professor Michaël Peyrot has been awarded an ERC grant of almost two million euros to unravel this 'web…

This research revolves around the philosophical and linguistic elements that naturally belong to the process of learning music scores, including complex contemporary repertoire distinguished by physically decoupled notations or physical polyphonic notations.

Channi Li defended her thesis on 15 October 2019.

This book explores the links between maritime trading networks around Europe, from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the North and Baltic Seas.

This project seeks to create a research group to explore the uses and meanings of memory in ancient cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East. It capitalises on the broad interest in memory in the humanities and social sciences and provides a forum for researchers to reflect on the processes of…

Our research is grounded in historical and regional contexts, taking a wide perspective towards a broad range of theories and concepts. Our time frame is flexible, but we mostly focus on the contemporary, post-World War II era. We value regional and linguistic expertise. Our researchers investigate…

Graduates in Humanities possess talents that are highly valued in the job market.

Important dates in the Academic Language Centre calendar

Conducting research on reliability of journalism and the trust in media.

The master’s programme of Latin American Studies offered by Leiden University supports the teaching and research of the social, cultural, historical, and linguistic diversity of contemporary Latin America, a region of mind-blowing diversity and global impact.

PhD defence

Language learners in higher education increasingly conduct out-of-class self-directed learning facilitated by mobile technology. This project aims to explore how university students use mobile technology for their self-directed language learning and investigate factors that influence their self-directed…

Knowledge and culture subproject 4:

This project will study the cultural meaning of the mythological figure of Orestes within the ancient Greek imagination, as it emerges from various literary sources from the archaic and classical periods.

Which teacher has the talent to really motivate their students or is able to combine current research in their lectures? These are important qualifications for winning the yearly university wide Teaching Prize. Dr. Karène Sanchez, lecturer French language and culture, is one of the nominees.

SAILS likes to occasionally organise workshops about topics that relate to our programme. On this page you can find more information about previous workshops.

Lecture, Discussion

Professor Roberta D'Alessandro, from the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, has been appointed a member of the Global Young Academy (GYA) from 20 January 2014. The GYA, consisting of 155 members, provides a rallying point for outstanding young scientists from around the world.

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

Leiden University’s two-year MA Japanese Studies offers a unique opportunity to conduct graduate-level research on various aspects of modern and pre-modern Japan, and to spend a full academic year in Japan.

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.

A friendly chat is more complicated than you might think. As soon as the other person finishes talking, you already have an answer ready. But how do we know when it's time to change turns? University lecturer Johanneke Caspers has been awarded an NWO Open Competition grant to investigate the role of…