At the end of May, the Leiden English Language and Culture Programme, formerly known as the Department of English Language and Literature, celebrated its 75th anniversary (starting from the appointment of the first professor of English Studies). Over 220 alumni, staff present and past, and students…

What is it like to study at the Humanities Faculty of Leiden University? Soon-to-be students experienced a day at university during the Experience Day 2017 and found out what studying really is about.

The University of Bologna organizes a Summer School in Classical Languages, offering intensive courses in Latin and/or Greek (20 June – 23 July 2022). The deadline for applications is: 10 June 2022.

Lecture, Sign Language & Deaf People

The present project aims to provide valuable insights for the professional development of international teachers, and also for improving the quality of foreign language education.

Five thousand years before the common era (BCE), Proto-Indo-European, the mother of many languages that are spoken today in Europe, Central Asia and South Asia, originated in eastern Europe. PhD candidate Axel Palmér has combined a 175-year-old hypothesis with new techniques to demonstrate how descendants…

Claartje Levelt is professor of First Language Acquisition. She researches how babies and toddlers learn their mother tongue. Besides her work, she enjoys being involved with music.

When and how was alphabetic writing introduced to Greece and the wider Mediterranean region?

PhD Research Projects:

Lecture, Descriptive Linguistic Seminars

On 28 October, Leiden University received the first Javanese Culture Prize from Universitas Sebelas Maret in Solo, Indonesia. The jury praised Leiden University’s extensive collection of Indonesian and Javanese manuscripts.

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…

No fewer than three Leiden University Humanities scholars have been awarded funding from the NWO’s Free Competition in the Humanities programme: two grants of 750,000 euros and one of 705,000 euros. In total, twelve researchers have received a grant in the NWO Social Sciences and Humanities domain.

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and researchers talk about their passion for their field. University lecturer Maria Del Carmen Parafita Couto speaks about bilingualism.

The knowledge held by indigenous people is essential if you want to study the history or the language of a particular region. Leiden archaeologists and linguists are now looking for ways of involving local people more systematically in their research.

The BA in Linguistics programme draws on Leiden University’s renowned expertise in linguistics to bring students the widest range of subjects and languages offered by any institute in Europe. As a student, you will have the chance to study nearly extinct languages, to be involved in experimental research…

Building a sustainable, international and interdisciplinary consortium for developing evidence-based communication strategies about Antimicrobial Resistance. That is the objective of a new project between researchers from Leiden University, VU Amsterdam and Stellenbosch University in South Africa, made…

The next round of courses will take place from Monday, 26 September 2022 until Wednesday, 30 November 2022. In the upcoming course round, level 1, level 2, level 3 and level 4 will be offered. Classes will take place on Mondays and Wednesdays only.

The Classics Research Master, a specialization of the Classics and Ancient Civilizations programme at Leiden University, gives you the opportunity to study the Greek and Roman world with a focus on Greek and Latin language and literature.

The two-year MA in Chinese Studies, a specialisation of Leiden University’s master's in Asian Studies, combines content courses with intensive and advanced language training, outstanding teaching, and extensive library resources to bring you the only qualification of its calibre offered in the Nethe…

Leiden University Lecturer Lettie Dorst wins a prestigious Comenius Senior Fellow grant for a project about machine translation and its use in higher education.

Brain scanners have radically changed neurolinguistics. They are increasing our understanding of how the brain processes language. Professor Niels Schiller has produced a standard work on this.

The Faculty of Science

Papyrology+, founded in 2014, is a collaboration of Leiden scholars studying (Abnormal) Hieratic, Demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Arabic papyri from a socio-historical, economic and linguistic perspective. Papyrology+ aims to explore new opportunities and directions in the study of ancient…

Engagement between Asia and Europe is increasing. If these continents want to build a lasting relationship, they need to understand each other better in the economic, socio-cultural, historical and legal arena. Researchers from Leiden have already contributed to the body of knowledge on past and present…

The project

What are the advantages of speaking a second language? Why do some people find it easier to learn a second language than others? Does a dialect count as a first language? On 20 May, Leiden University is organising an English-speaking public symposium on bilingualism: Twee Talen - één BeTalen.

As a doctor, coming to a decision together with a patient: how do you do that in the best possible way? Researchers Geert Warnar and Roosmaryn Pilgram, who jointly teach a course within the MA in Dutch Studies, are entering into a virtual collaboration with the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa to find the…

Conference

PhD student Camil Staps is continuing his academic career in Berlin. He receives a Rubicon grant to do research there on demonstrative pronouns.

Psycholinguistic research

Do you want to know more about the Bachelor of Linguistics, and experience what it’s like to study in Leiden? Leiden University offers you a variety of introductory activities to help you with your choice of study:

Leiden University is an internationally oriented Dutch university, where we communicate with one another in both Dutch and English. To ensure that we handle this bilingual convention with due care, the Executive Board has established a set of guidelines on language policy. These guidelines set out the…

Dialogue is a multi-dimensional communication mechanism whose processes can only be examined by means of an interdisciplinary approach.

How do you write a job advertisement that appeals to both men and women? This question is particularly pressing in French, where every noun has a clearly visible grammatical gender. University researcher Benjamin Storme investigated how employers can best deal with this issue.

Sara Petrollino, a university lecturer in linguistics, strongly believes that language influences the way we see the world. An NWO Open Competition (XS) grant will enable her to test this hypothesis among the Ethiopian Hamar people. ‘The idea that everyone thinks in geometric shapes is culturally de…

Humans share meaning through language. Over time, repeated interactions have shaped languages into forms that match our cognitive preferences, making them structured, expressive, easy to learn, and ultimately, meaningful.

This project looks at the Ancient Greek language from the perspective of the ordinary writer. A large corpus of more than 60.000 Greek texts on papyrus, from private letters to petitions and contracts, offers an excellent opportunity to study the Greek language as written by non-literary writers in…

What is the name of the medieval Persian poet Nezami (✞ ca. 1209) doing on the cover of an Eric Clapton rock album? Asghar Seyed Gohrab, associate professor at the Institute for Area Studies, talks about it in a new blog for the Leiden Medievalists Blog.