Egyptian temple culture was thought to be declining in the Ptolemaic era, after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. Nothing could be further from the truth, says Egyptologist Carina van den Hoven. Temple culture was very much alive and kicking. PhD defence 16 February.

Professor Felix Ameka and university lecturer Maria del Carmen Parafita Couta have received an NWO Open Competition grant together with Enoch Aboh (University of Amsterdam) to do research on ‘code-switching’: switching languages by multilinguals.

The language learning resource centre unites all language teaching professionals working at Leiden University: teachers and researchers at the LUCL, ATC, LUCAS, LIAS, and ICLON. You can find a list of them, ordered by language and/or role, in the menu on the left.

Ariadne Schmidt will be appointed professor by special appointment of the Magdalena Moons chair at Leiden University. From 1 September 2018 she will carry out academic research and teach on the cultural history of the city, in particular of Leiden.

Lecture, LUCL Colloquium

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.

Every year a photographer portrays Leiden as Stadsfotograaf (City Photographer) of the Leidsch Dagblad. This year it is the honor to Leonie van der Helm, an alumna of cultural anthropology. Over the next 52 weeks, Van der Helm will visualize the meaning of 'home'.

The Hague Diplomacy Podcast aims at bringing the themes of the journal's research off the page, and onto the discussion table. Each episode will feature a guest who will share their insights and personal experience within their practice of or research on diplomacy. Available via SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts…

While Old Germanic studies might seem dated and, regrettably, occupies a less than secure position in various academic institutions, exciting new research presented by young researchers shows that the field is still vibrant and may have a bright future. On Thursday, the 7th of April, the ‘Junius Symposium…

Stephan Raaijmakers has been Professor of Communicative AI since 1 May. Prior to this, he had held this position for five years as professor by special appointment. How has his approach to AI changed in that time?

The Vici project Through the Hands of Signers invites everyone to participate in its kick-off symposium on the History of Sign Language Emergence, Transmission, and Change on July 10 2026.

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

A new book about Villa Isola in Indonesia reveals some of the shared history of the Netherlands and Indonesia. The book was presented on Thursday to Annetje Ottow, President of the Executive Board, and Mr Mayerfas, ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia in the Netherlands.

How can we monitor and protect biological and cultural diversity in Suriname best? What can we learn from local knowledge and customs associated with biodiversity? How can we understand current species, acoustical, behavioural, and ecological diversity from an evolutionary perspective? Can we predict…

How can the LEGO® Serious Play® method contribute to improved interdisciplinary collaboration and the development of joint research proposals?

English Language and Culture is a multi-faceted programme in which you’ll study the language in all its varieties, from Old English to the many different pronunciations currently in use. You’ll also study British, American and Canadian literature in their cultural-historical context.

The Palaeolithic period extends from the earliest stone tools (and in Europe, earliest occupation) to the beginning of the current warm period.

This project studies the theory and practice of moral education in the (Neo)Platonic tradition.

Investigating specific language and speech behaviour of people.

Research at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) focuses on linguistic variation and diversity. In order to create more awareness and scientific understanding of this topic, research activities are clustered around six (overlapping) umbrella programmes. Many of our researchers are active…

Would you like to teach at a secondary school, but don't yet have a teaching qualification and are not yet proficient in Dutch? ICLON Leiden University is developing a special programme for internationals.

Using a corpus of textual, literary, and other evidence to shed new light on the age at which medieval women gave birth.

In a new report commissioned by Science Europe, CWTS and the Know Center review academic and grey literature to examine how open science practices contribute to research culture.

This research develops and applies a new approach to study Aegyptiaca Romana from a bottom-up, Roman perspective.

Presenting case studies by both senior and emerging scholars, it makes mandatory reading for anyone interested in the challenges of governance, citizenship and development faced by the people of India’s North East.

The material and intellectual presence of Egypt is at the heart of Western culture, religion and art from Antiquity to the present. This volume aims to provide a long term and interdisciplinary perspective on Egypt and its mnemohistory, taking theories on objects and their agency as its main point of…

This dissertation presents the first full grammatical description of bago ts'amakkilo ('mouth of the Ts'amakko'), or simply Ts'amakko. It is a Cushitic language, spoken in Southwest Ethiopia and belongs to the Dullay cluster of Lowland East Cushitic. The number of speakers is about 10,000. The data…

Annelou van Gijn and Diederik Pomstra took part in the Shire Project in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, to contribute to an exciting mix of lithic and use-wear analysis, as well as ethno-archaeological and experimental studies.

How do local, non-institutional ideas about end-of-life care influence professional palliative care and vice versa? These questions will be answered by medical anthropologists Annemarie Samuels and Natashe Lemos Dekker in the coming years.

The Dutch childcare allowance affair has exposed the failings of the democratic constitutional state. Early in 2021, the government therefore pledged to establish a new public administration culture. There’s still a long way to go to achieve this.

In November 2013, Prof.Dr. L. Jan Slikkerveer, Director of the LEAD Programme was personally invited by the former President of Indonesia, Dr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to present a lecture on The Role of Traditional Ecological Knowldege in Sustainable Development in Indonesia in the World Culture Forum…

Tailoring teaching to students’ learning needs in speaking skills in modern foreign languages is desirable, but difficult to achieve in regular classes in secondary schools. Esther de Vrind, PhD, manager and teacher educator at ICLON, developed a method to make this easier. Defence on 25 November.

Leiden Law School offers four different Bachelor’s (LLB) programmes.

Do you want to discover a language and culture that is completely different from the Netherlands?

In this dissertation, a comprehensive portrait of the American-born Quaker Lindley Murray (1745–1826) is painted and the influence of Murray’s Quakerism on his language use is investigated by analyzing a corpus of 262 of his unpublished private letters.

Vocal learning is a trait shared by songbirds and humans. It is also a trait that is restricted by the brain rather than by a species' vocal apparatus. In this dissertation, functional MRI is employed in both species in order to explore potential common neural mechanisms underlying the ability to develop…

Leiden scholars succeeded in making Arabic accessible to Western academic communities as early as the sixteenth century. But how did they approach this problem?

Courts that adjudicate war crimes or other crimes against humanity are increasingly taking regional norms and cultural values into consideration. PhD candidate Seun Bakare examined whether this could also be an asset in cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The Jordan Times interviewed professor Peter Akkermans about this research on ancient tombs in Jordan's Eastern Desert. “The evidence of this flourishing culture can be seen, among other things, in the diverse and complex burial record which we are currently investigating.”

As part of Metamorfoze, the national digitalization project for the preservation of paper heritage, journals of The Van Vollenhoven Institute’s library have been digitized.

At the end of November/early December a delegation from Leiden Law School, led by Dean Joanne van der Leun, will a number of various partner universities and organisations in Indonesia.