English Language and Culture lecturer Mili Gabrovšek has won the Education Award 2015. In the report, the jury praised Gabrovšek's humor and enthusiasm. Each year the award is presented to the most inspiring lecturer of the faculty at the opening of the academic year.

Language Use, Usage Guides and Linguistic Norms will be of interest to scholars of language use in both the past and the present, as well as to anyone interested in the interplay between actual language use and prescriptive attitudes towards language.

It was more than twenty years ago that the plan for a Japanese-Dutch dictionary was born. Now it contains over 65,000 words, and completion is tentatively coming into view. Dictionary makers Oscar Veltink and Hetty Geerdink-Verkoren talk about their enthusiasm for this decades-long mammoth task.

Thijs Porck, teacher at English Language and Culture, has won the faculty teaching prize. He was lauded for his enthousiasm, his creative ways of teaching, and his commitment to his students.

This collaborative research group (CRG) facilitates the synergies of researchers engaged with African languages and documentation of texts conducted in East Africa, paying particular attention to ‘endangered archives’ and ‘endangered languages’.

The main question of this research project concerns the extent to which light verbs in West Germanic languages participate in processes of language change.

How did nineteenth-century non-Anglophone translators and authors creatively engage with the poem Beowulf?

Digital edition of the correspondence between the philosopher Gerardus Johannes Petrus Josephus (Gerard) Bolland (1854-1922) and the philologist Pieter Jacob Cosijn (1840-1899), consisting of 46 letters covering the period 1879 to 1899.

Since the 16th century, religious concerns have motivated the study of Old English and its speakers. In the 19th century, scholars turned to the study of Old English literature in particular to find traces of pre-Christian, ‘Germanic’ religion, as discussed in Eric G. Stanley’s seminal work The Search…

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of…

Vedran Dunjko (LIACS and applied Quantum algorithms (aQa) Leiden) and Tomoyuki Morimae (Kyoto University) are to collaborate with Qu&Co. Qu&Co is a leading European developer of quantum software.

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.

In close collaboration with the Center for Medieval Studies (Fordham), Centre for Medieval literature (Odense and York) and Centre for Medieval Studies (York), the University of Ghent organizes an Autumn School for PhD- and MA-students in Medieval Studies (18-22 October 2021). It will be organized in…

Knowledge and culture subproject 1:

The research programme Language Use in Past and Present brings together linguists within LUCL whose central focus is both on actual language data, including language use in earlier stages of the language, and, taking a variationist perspective, on language change in various aspects.

Professor Roberta D’Alessandro, Chair of Italian Language and Culture at the Leiden University, has been awarded one of Italy’s highest honors: she is now a Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy (Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia). D’Alessandro was presented with the honor on June 2, the…

This project creates a comprehensive audiovisual documentation of the Sanye language, the sociolinguistic situation, and cultural practices of the Sanye (Dahalo) community in coastal Kenya.

Promotor: C.J. ten Cate

“Very French and very impressive.” Those are the words drs. Isabelle van de Calseyde used to describe the reception at the French embassy residence in The Hague on 2 June 2015. There, she and dr. Sjef Houppermans were presented with an distinction for their remarkable services to the French language…

The role of religion in the identity construction of LGBTQIA+ folks

Vulnerability and the associated levels of social resilience is what fascinates the researchers at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology. What links a Japanese fisherman after the tsunami at Fukushima with a Ghanaian goldminer in an increasingly industrialised work environment?…

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…

The new Japanese Ambassador, Michii Rokuichiro, visited Leiden University on 2 March.

This project investigates the influence that Arabic (esp. dialectal Arabic) has had on the Berber languages of Northern Africa.

Exploring the language of the lower classes in the nineteenth century

Alternative perspectives and sources of colonial literature haven’t received much attention before now. School books have long ignored the violence that accompanies colonialsm. How can we paint an honest picture?

This project proceeds from the observation that since the second half of the twentieth century, forgiveness and reconciliation have become pervasive themes in western culture, both on a political level and in personal relations.

This interdisciplinary study focuses on (trans)national ethnic and popular networks, combining historical-ethnographic and computational methods to understand the ‘workings’ of networked conflict interfering in the increasingly violent conflict in the Sahel (Africa) and beyond. The project focuses on…

On March 12th, Jonathan Brown succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Jonathan on this great result.

Lecture, Sign Languages & Deaf People

Stylianos Irakleous defended his thesis on 6 February 2020

A fascinating description of a global language, A Grammar of Mandarin by Jeroen Wiedenhof combines broad perspectives with illuminating depth.

The present study comprises a classification and analysis of the syntax of the non-verbal clause in Qumran Hebrew, i.e. the linguistic variety (or varieties) found in the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls. The corpus consists of the non-biblical texts written in Hebrew; biblical texts and texts written in…

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

Conference

Alumni event, Lustrum

Prof. J. (Jos) Schaeken, Professor of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Cultural History, will be the interim Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 1 March 2025. He will succeed the present Vice-Dean, Mirjam de Baar, who will complete her second term on that date.

Open access, online talks on African Sign Language Studies, in International sign and English

International scholarly publisher Brill has released the most complete and up-to-date reference work on the Chinese language available today. Prof.dr. Rint Sybesma oversaw the project as Editor-in-Chief.

Study information

To what extent do aspects of fluency fluctuate throughout time? And how do raters take the dynamicity of fluency into account when rating performances?