In the specialisation in Modern Languages you will explore the structure, acquisition, history and use of one or more of these five languages in depth: Chinese, English, French, German and/or Italian.

An in-depth history of Large Language Models—and what their ubiquity, disruption, and creativity mean from a wider sociopolitical perspective.

From ca. 1540 to 1600, thousands fled the war-stricken Southern Low Countries to the British Isles, Germany, and the Northern Low Countries. Research on this displacement crisis, central to the formation of the Netherlands and Belgium, reflects 21st-century debates on migration and language: language…

In The Golden Mean of Languages, Alisa van de Haar sheds new light on the debates regarding the form and status of the vernacular in the early modern Low Countries, where both Dutch and French were local tongues. The fascination with the history, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary of Dutch and French…

Early Modern Medievalisms: The Interplay between Scholarly Reflection and Artistic Production

This volume discusses practices of memory in early modern Europe.

The early modern and modern Europeanists at the Leiden Institute of History approach the past from comparative and transnational perspectives, frequently placing the history of our continent in global contexts. Our research covers the geographical and thematic breadth of Europe since ca. 1500, with…

The Leiden Institute of History approaches early modern and modern European history from comparative and transnational perspectives.

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections and interactions between a variety of artistic expressions and society. It focuses not only on objects (artistic, literary, cinematic, and medial), but also on practices (aesthetic, political, and cultural).

For early modern Europeans, the past was a measure of most things, good and bad. For that reason it was also hotly contested, manipulated, and far too important to be left to historians alone.

These courses deal with all language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary are discussed thoroughly.

The present investigation aims at exploring whether the instruction provided at secondary schools in the capital meets the requirements of Communicative Language Teaching and whether the aims of improving learners’ communicative proficiency are met.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Assembling State, Space and Society on the Urban Margins in Morocco

This series of publications brings together new material on wellconsidered themes within the wide area of Early Modern Studies.

During the master’s programme in Modern Dutch Literature at Leiden University you will learn to scientifically analyse literary texts, as well as other Dutch cultural texts, such as those found in hiphop songs and diaries.

The ultimate aim of the project is to find out whether there are such things as

Like any language, the natural sign languages (henceforth: SLs) of deaf communities differ from each other in their grammars and lexicons. A growing number of studies indicates that SLs make use of the gestures of hearing speakers to build linguistic structure. This implies that variation and similarities…

How do speakers adapt to multilingual contexts?

This project explores how Muslim authorities and writers use Russian to transmit Islamic contents, and whether this leads to a specific

The master's programme in Modern European Philosophy at Leiden University focuses on continental philosophy ranging from German Idealism and Phenomenology via Deconstruction and Poststructuralism through 21st century developments in the field. It explores different approaches to thinking in a critical…

Promotor: J.N. Kok, Co-promotor: M.S. Lew

How are new drugs developed? This question is central to the Minor Modern Drug Discovery (MDD), which covers the entire trajectory from disease to drug molecule and vice versa. The various research groups involved offer a complementary and interdisciplinary perspective by connecting the diverse subjects…

The ‘Locke drawings’ collection and the representation of Brazilian native peoples in global perspective

Humans can see the world through the eyes of other humans and imagine what they know, want, and intend. This competence is known as Theory of Mind.

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’.

This project focuses on the study of Neanderthal and early modern human behavior, primarily on the basis of stone tools, fauna and spatial patterns

This synthesis brings together strands developed in the four studies, sets out memories of the Revolt and presents the Low Countries as a case study.

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

A linguistic prehistory of the Tarim Basin in Northwest China

The research profile ‘Asian Modernities and Traditions’ (AMT) aims to raise the strength and visibility of research, teaching and dissemination on Asian studies at Leiden University. AMT focuses on those areas where there are clear strengths or exciting new developments ahead, bundled into five them…

When it comes to languages and cultures, Leiden University is the university. The global expertise present places our university at the top. In Leiden and The Hague, we study languages and cultures from all regions of the world and from prehistory to the present day. In this way we create a broad view…

Providing a valuable overview of regionalism throughout the entire continent, Regionalism in Modern Europe combines both geographical and thematic approaches to examine the origins and development of regional movements and identities in Europe from 1890 to the present.

How does Russia use propaganda and what characterises Russian propaganda in terms of language and argumentation?

The specialisation Global Conflict in the Modern Era of the master’s in International Relations at Leiden University engages you with the scholarly debates about global conflict today and in the recent past.

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

Risk has become one of the defining features of modern society. This course examines various types of safety and security risks, and how these are perceived and dealt with in a wide array of professional and academic fields, ranging from criminology, counter-terrorism and cyber security, to philosophy,…

Jews and Christians in the Middle East

An Introduction and Field Guide, Second and Revised Edition (15 December 2014)

This project investigates properties of quantity expressions across languages from the perspective of how quantity is represented in the human brain.

The Modern Devotion: pone of the most influential religious initiatives in the late medieval Low Countries.

On the 17th of January, Sarah Von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Sarah on this achievement!

From the smallest level of interaction among families and close friends, over the meso-level of schools, shops, churches, religious communities and companies, to the highest level of nation-states and international organisations: Language Policy and Planning (LPP) is everywhere!

Language connects us! We are here to help you! The Academic Language Centre (ATC) is the language centre of Leiden University. As the oldest university language centre in the Netherlands, we offer language courses in a wide range of languages, both for beginners and advanced students. All courses are…

Studying one another’s languages and cultures fosters understanding between groups of people, which leads to more equality, along with increased economic, administrative, and cultural cooperation.