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…

Sumerian is a dead language that is not related to any other language. Howeverr, Bram Jagersma managed to compile a grammar of the language, based on inscriptions and clay tablets. Traces of the Sumerian number system can still be seen in our sixty-minute hour. Jagersma received his PhD on 4 Novembe…

A year ago, assistant professor Paz Gonzalez received a Comenius grant to start an academic journal for and by students. Now the first double issue of The New Scholar is a reality. ‘We want to show the faculty’s diversity.’

Just one year ago, nobody would have given Trump a cat's chance in the US presidential elections. Now he will be the next President of the United States. Professor of Journalism and New Media Jaap de Jong explains the rhetoric that has got Trump so far.

A century ago, the French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure proposed that the relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is fundamentally arbitrary. In a new study, a team of researchers from European and American research institutions, including Søren Wichmann from Leiden University Centre…

What does it mean to innovate education? And what motivates professors to innovate? How does innovation work at the University?

The international World Cultural Council (WCC) has awarded Nadine Akkerman, Victoria Nyst and Alicia Schrikker with Special Recognition Awards given to young scientists at the university organising the award ceremony. Leiden University organises the 34th WCC award ceremony this year.

Researcher and lecturer Susana Valdez investigates how migrants make use of online translation technology in medical situations. Her research suggests that they often encounter obstacles when using machine translation in these settings. Potential problems include a lack of understanding or trust.

Associate Professor Paz González had two things she wanted to improve for students: collaboration and publication opportunities. Her solution? A scientific journal for and by students. She received a Senior Fellow Comenius grant to put the plan into action.

When Daan van Esch, master’s student in Chinese Studies, travelled through China last summer, he noticed that he often did not understand what the inhabitants of the different villages and cities were talking about. There turned out to be huge differences within the language. He decided to map this…

The pews of the Walloon Church were filled on Friday 23 May, as more than 120 former students of the French Language and Culture programme gathered to attend mini-lectures, a short theatre performance, and a discussion about the state of the discipline.

Many members of Chicago's P'urhepecha community did not even know they lived a stone’s throw from some of their own historical heritage. Researcher Kate Bellamy organised a meeting to introduce them to books hundreds of years old.

The way in which written language is processed in the brain is a hot topic in cognitive research. Cognitive psychologist Rinus Verdonschot studied a Japanese script in which a single character can have up to three possible pronunciations. He discovered that all three are simultaneously activated in…

Lecture, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

In 2021 many of our students and staff won fantastic prizes and were awarded important research grants. This is our traditional review of these successes as the end of one year marks the beginning of another.

Leiden University has a long tradition of Asian language education. Chinese, Japanese and Korean partners are essential in providing a practical side of learning education.

Lecture

Lecture, INVISIHIST event

Wija Wijayanto and Arum Perwitasari both were Indonesian PhD students at Leiden University, funded by the Leiden-DIKTI Graduate Scholarship Programme. With the help of this scholarship, literally thousands of students travel abroad to write their dissertations. During their research period, Arum and…

Peter Jurgec has been awarded a Rubicon grant to do research at LUCL. His project is entitled The unique sounds of Slovenian. His project aims to provide a complete description of Slovenian phonology and stress systems.

Sign the petition to save the Bachelor Celtic!

Candidates are invited to submit their ‘own proposals for doctoral projects, which can come from the following eleven subjects: Ancient History, Old Testament, Ancient Oriental Studies, Christian Archaeology and Byzantine Art History, Greek Studies, Historical-Comparative Linguistics, Classical Archaeology,…

The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics has been badly affected by the corona crisis: the research in the four labs and the fieldwork has come to a standstill. What are the implications?

Evelyn Bosma, researcher at the Fryske Akademy and LUCL, is the winner of the first science prize Campus Fryslân.

David Shakouri has been awarded a PhD-position by NWO for the PhDs in the Humanities Programme.

The School of Celtic Studies (DIAS) is organizing a conference on medieval multilingual manuscripts. The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars working on medieval bilingual or multilingual sources from a variety of linguistic backgrounds, geographical areas, and literary genres. It will…

From 25 March to 15 April, the photo exhibition 'NATO and the Netherlands: A Journey' will be on display on the third floor of Wijnhaven.

The Central Asia project, funded by Asian Modernities and Traditions, has engaged in strengthening the Leiden University library collection in the areas of material culture, history, languages and geopolitics in Central Asia. UNESCO International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS) and the Embassy…

Every year The Young Academy (a sub-group of KNAW) nominates ten talented researchers to join their ranks. This year two of the nominees are from Leiden University: Quentin Bourgeois and Frans Snik.

Students from Londen, Amsterdam and Leiden visited presentations and talked to students, tutors and alumni to find out more about the Master’s Programmes Leiden University has to offer.

Assessing Learning in Higher Education addresses what is probably the most time-consuming part of the work of staff in higher education, and something to the complexity of which many of the recent developments in higher education have added. Getting assessment ‘right’– that is, designing and implementing…

Het Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens oordeelt unaniem dat Rusland verantwoordelijk is voor het neerschieten van vlucht MH17. Nabestaanden spreken van erkenning en opluchting. Hoogleraar Internationale Geschillenbeslechting, Eric De Brabandere, duidt in een NOS-podcast het belang van deze uitspraak…

Volgens het Europese Hof van Justitie zijn de regels van de FIFA die de basis vormen voor miljoenentransfers in het wereldwijde profvoetbal in strijd met de Europese wetgeving. Stefaan Van den Bogaert, hoogleraar Europees Recht, sprak met het AD en RTL over de mogelijke gevolgen.

‘The Oscars of the natural sciences’, is what they are called: the Breakthrough Prizes awarded annually in America by the Breakthrough Foundation. Part of this are the New Horizons prizes for early-stage researchers. Sebastiaan Haffert, researcher at the Observatory, is this year's winner.

On a stormy Tuesday evening in June an Alumni Seminar was held for alumni and students of the (International) Leiden Leadership Programme for which a special international guest had been invited: Dr. Anna Dolidze.