Beauty is a central concept in the Italian cultural imagination throughout its history and in virtually all its manifestations. It particularly permeates the domains that have governed the construction of Italian identity: literature and language.

During the first year of life, babies adapt to the language they hear around them. In the event of hearing difficulties, this can lead to a language deficiency, which is not so easy to resolve, says Professor of English Linguistics Janet Grijzenhout. Inaugural lecture 19 March.

This PhD project investigates the impacts of recognition of sign languages on communication and instruction for deaf learners in primary schools in Uganda.

How did local lifeways and crafting practices persist and develop in the diverse environments of the increasingly interconnected Gulf of Fonseca (AD 400-1521)?

Lecture, LAC Asia Academy

Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology is a social science. Anthropologists investigate the ways in which people give meaning to different aspects of their life and the way they interact with each other.

Professor Jenny Doetjes at Leiden University researches similarities and differences in languages, specifically in the area of numerals and quantifiers. Her research provides insight into language patterns, bu also in the working of the human brain. Inaugural lecture on 26 January.

In this dissertation, electrophysiological (EEG) and behavioural measures are used to investigate how allophonic tonal variants and sub-phonemic features are processed during Mandarin and Dutch speech production, visual processing of written words and reading aloud.

We live in a data-drenched society awash with numbers. An inhabitant of the democratic polis of Athens (5th and 4th centuries B.C.E.) increasingly found himself surrounded by numerical data. This project aims to analyze the communicative functions and the political meaning(s) ascribed to these public…

Leiden has a tradition of collaborative ventures with Indonesia that goes back a long time. The country is one of three priority regions for our University. A report by Anette van Sandwijk.

Prof. Arnold Tukker, Scientific Director of the Institute of Environmental Sciences Leiden (CML), visited the Center for Sustainable Development Goal Studies (SDGs Center) as part of a trip to Asia. The SDGs Center is a Center of Excellence at Padjadjaran University in Bandung, Indonesia, with which…

information activities MSc Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology

The Indonesian Leiden University Alumni Association - IKALI bid farewell to Mutiara Indriani, the first Chair of the association since its establishment in 2018 and welcomes Pascal Hutasoit as the new chairperson.

Carl Li defended his thesis on 30 June 2015

Hoogleraar Law & Society Maartje van der Woude is door de Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta gevraagd om een lezing te geven ter gelegenheid van de 96e dies natalis van de Indonesische universiteit.

All languages use melody in speech, primarily via rises and falls of the pitch of voice. Such pitch variation is pervasive, offering a wide spectrum of nuance to sentences – an additional layer of meaning. For example, saying “yes” with a rising pitch implies a question (rather than an affirmation).…

This dissertation studies the construction of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a cultural icon in American memory, particularly by FDR himself.

This MA explores contemporary literature and culture—art, film, pop music—through critical and theoretical lenses, including feminist theory, phenomenology, and ecocriticism. Key themes include diversity, interculturality, popular culture, and the intersection of culture, politics, and justice.

Ever since Nadine Akkerman, Professor of Early Modern Literature & Culture, came across a woman spy in her research, secret agents have kept cropping up in her work. Now there’s Spycraft, a popular history book exploring the espionage techniques used by early modern spies, which she has co-written with…

Although official law generally conceives of personal injury victims as individual rights holders, the actual experience of physical injury and its consequences is relational. Indeed, many researchers in the global North as well as the global South have contended that the very concept of the Self should…

What socio-cultural transformations did indigenous communities in the Lesser Antilles undergo from the late precolonial to the early colonial period in response to Amerindian­ European-African cultural encounters? How did Amerindian populations realign themselves in response to the colonisation…

The two-year master's programme in Japanese Studies, a specialisation of the MA in Asian Studies, offers teaching by leading academics and a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of the East Asian region.

Archaeological finds off the coast of Java, Indonesia provide insight into the world of Homo erectus, 140,000 years ago. Skull fragments and other fossil remains provide a unique picture of how and where these early humans lived, says Leiden archaeologist Harold Berghuis.

A splendid milestone after seven years of collaborative research on the sustainable development of the Indonesian economy. Professor of Industrial Ecology Arnold Tukker has been appointed as a guest professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business of Universitas Padjadjaran (UNPAD) in the Indonesian…

From Apartheid in South-Africa to 9/11 in the United States: there is not a single culture that is not shaped by the memory of war or conflict. The minor Cultural Memory of War and Conflict focuses on how such memory cultures influence and shape societies today.

Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University studies the everyday practices of individuals and groups around the world in relation to the complex global challenges of diversity, sustainability, and digitalisation.

Rik van Gijn was appointed professor of Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Diversity in the World from 1 December 2024. He is keen to use the position to set up research on language vitality. ‘People almost never give up their mother tongue entirely voluntarily.’

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’.

What role do the Islamic courts play in protecting women’s divorce rights? How do they perform with regard to spousal support, child support and marital property? Stijn van Huis defends his PhD thesis on September 8, 2015

This grammar presents an in-depth linguistic description of one Papuan Malay variety, based on fifteen hours of recordings of spontaneous narratives and conversations between Papuan Malay speakers.

Visualizing the internal structure is a crucial step in acquiring knowledge about the origin, state, and composition of cultural heritage artifacts. Among the most powerful techniques for exposing the interior of cultural heritage objects is computed tomography (CT), a technique that computationally…

Until recently the Congo’s isolated Boa community had never read a single letter in their own language: quite simply, there was no alphabet to describe the language. A crowdfunding campaign by guest staff member Gerrit de Wit has changed that. He plans to use the rest of the money to work with a Congolese…

The history of sign languages of deaf people is severely understudied. The historical linguistics of sign languages offers a fundamentally new perspective on the history of human languages. This project addresses the dearth of knowledge about historical sign language linguistics through a large-scale…

As part of the VIDI 'Cultural innovation in a globalising society: Egypt in the Roman world', this research explores manifestations of Egypt in the material culture of Augustan Rome. This period was a crucial turning point for the urban landscape of Rome, which was characterised by cultural diversit…

This book presents an archaeological overview of the presence and development of Egyptian material culture in the context of Augustan Rome.

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The decades around 1800 constitute the seminal period of European nationalism. The lin­guistic corollary of this was the rise of standard language ideology, from Finland to Spain, and from Iceland to the Habsburg Empire. Amidst these international events, the case of Dutch in the Netherlands offers…

How do sign languages change and spread over time, and how is this influenced by their transmission history?

Teachers of English as a foreign language in China and the Netherlands have different notions of themselves as teachers in relation to cultures associated with the English language. This is stated in the doctoral thesis of Dadi Chen, who graduates from the Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching…