On the 26th of February, Joane de Lima Santiago successfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Joane on this achievement.

When professors become emeriti, it usually does not mean they stop working. The Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) will therefore soon have a first: a symposium is going to be organised where all the speakers are emeriti professors. 'Science will always be part of you are.'

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.

Tim Koopmans is one of the great minds in the history of Dutch and European legal scholarship. He taught law as a professor in Leiden and other universities, among which Ghent, Cambridge, Utrecht. He practiced it as a judge in the European Court of Justice and Advocate-General in the Dutch Supreme Court,…

When we hear the word ‘bird house’, do we process it as a whole or does our brain see it as ‘bird’ and ‘house’? PhD student Jiaqi Wang explored this for speakers of Mandarin Chinese.

Below you will find an overview of all PRE-Classes provided by the various programmes of Leiden University. For each section, you can find a description of the content and more specific information about the requirements for participation in the Class.

The Private International Law department offers several courses in the bachelor-, master- and advanced master programs.

Het is een wijdverbreid idee dat (post-)middeleeuwse steden een sterfteoverschot hadden en zij slechts in leven konden blijven door de toestroom van migranten; een fenomeen dat bekend staat als het ‘urban graveyard’-effect. Over details valt te twisten, maar duidelijk is dat de stad en de dood dichter…

The Department of Civil Law teaches and conducts research in the field of civil law. It is responsible for the master’s degree programme Civiel Recht (Civil Law LL.M.) which attracts many students each year from Leiden and elsewhere.

What actually goes into the development of a massive open online course, a MOOC? University lecturer Tijmen Pronk developed the course 'Introduction to Comparative Linguistics of Indo-European Languages' independently. He talks about his motivation and experiences.

Mr. J. Sun defended his thesis on 21 March 2018.

Inaugural lecture

Four scientists from Leiden University have each been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant, worth up to two million euros, gives researchers the opportunity to head up a research team for five years.

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.

Language can be a time machine: we can learn from ancient texts how our ancestors interacted with the world around them. But can language also teach us something about people whose language has been lost? PhD candidate Anthony Jakob investigated whether the languages of prehistoric populations left…

Below are some of the scholarly works published within the context of the Institutions for Conflict Resolution programme.

Leids onderzoek naar bestraffing komt tot stand uit verschillende disciplines. Het onderzoeksproject kent een juridische, criminologische, sociaalwetenschappelijke en filosofische invalshoek.

Dutch Studies is a unique bachelor’s programme in which you will quickly acquire fluency in spoken and written Dutch at a high academic level, at the same time gaining deep understanding of the culture and history of the Netherlands.

NWO has awarded eleven Leiden researchers a Vidi grant of 800,000 euros. The research subjects range from Cicero and muscle dystrophy to the archaeology of bogs.

The Faculty Board has reappointed Gijsbert Rutten as the Director of Studies for the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics.

A love of puzzles and the patience of a saint: these are two essential traits for linguists wishing to explore the Indo-European language family. Fortunately, Professor Michaël Peyrot possesses both. In his inaugural lecture he will take the audience on a voyage of discovery to the past.

Since reintegration officer Bart Reedijk started work in Dordrecht three years ago, ex-convicts in that municipality have reoffended a lot less often. There is much interest in Reedijk's method throughout the Netherlands, but experts have reservations.

ELS lab member Helen Pluut concluded this year’s lecture series on Empirical Methods in Legal Research. Helen discussed diary studies as an example of multilevel research designs.

Research shows that including administrative fines in the screening process for a Certificate of Conduct (in Dutch: VOG) is not currently feasible.

Door aangescherpte verlofregels kunnen gedetineerden niet met verlof, terwijl dat hun re-integratie bevordert.

Er is een nijpend cellen- en personeelstekort in Nederlandse gevangenissen. En dit is niet voor de eerste keer. Miranda Boone, hoogleraar criminologie en vergelijkende penologie, sprak met Trouw over de problematiek: ‘Het aantal gevangenen is het resultaat van beleid.’

Professor Sjef Barbiers will be appointed Managing Director of the Institute for the Dutch Language (INT) with effect from 1 September 2025. He will step down as scientific director of LUCL as of that date.

As of 1 July, Gijsbert Rutten is Professor by special appointment of Historical Sociolinguistics of Dutch at Leiden University. Rutten, who also works as Director of Education at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), will, among other things, research the historical relationship between…

Extensive research is being conducted at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology on developments in sentencing and punitive measures and how judges and other actors in the criminal justice system reach decisions. Another focus area is how punishments and measures are implemented and the effect…

The Institute for Philosophy has a new Academic Director: on 1 February, James McAllister was succeeded by Douglas Berger. We asked him about his plans.

University lecturer in Chinese and Comparative Philosophy Jingjing Li has been awarded a Veni grant for her research on feminist theories within the Buddhist philosophy of consciousness-only. Jingjing Li explains her plans and the importance of her research.

Brain research and statistics are advancing our understanding of language and language acquisition. Linguists are still essential, however, says Professor of Dutch Linguistics Sjef Barbiers. Inaugural lecture on 8 December.

A new position has been created at the Faculty of Humanities. On 1 September, Marian Klamer became the first Director of PhD Programmes at the Graduate School. ‘I want to find the balance.’

Where does Dutch come from? Newly appointed Professor Alwin Kloekhorst looks for an answer to that question in millennia-old languages from Anatolia, the Asian part of present-day Turkey. 'A new interpretation in one of the Anatolian languages can have consequences for dozens of other languages.'

The city centre of Leiden is covered in them: wall poems. When roaming around, you come across poetry written in the Latin alphabet, but also in scripts that might be more difficult to understand for the average person living in Leiden. In a new series of videos, Tijmen Pronk talks more about this.

In welke mate hebben domaniale structuren de machtsvorming en nederzettingsontwikkeling in en van het gewest Holland bepaald?

Linguistic research on a unique collection of Dutch letters allowed us to gain access to the every-day language of people from various walks of life. Private letters by men, women and even children have been elaborately explored in the Letters as Loot researchprogramme, initiated and directed by prof.…

The university is home to many pearls of research institutes that do not make the news every day. The Executive Board visited one such pearl, the Institute of Philosophy, on Tuesday 1 July. It resulted in an inspired conversation.

Ab de Jong, professor of Comparative Religion, was appointed as the new the academic director of the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) with effect from 1 September. We asked him about his plans for the future of the LIAS.

On 22 June 2022, the research group on Institutions for Conflict Resolution organised its second annual overarching PhD lab. During this meeting, the PhD researchers connected to COI presented the current status of their research projects.

Types of supervision for prisoners on conditional release include the requirement to report regularly to a parole officer, electronic house arrest or community service. These are all serious measures for the person on whom they are imposed and for society. But it is a subject on which little research…

During the first year of life, babies adapt to the language they hear around them. In the event of hearing difficulties, this can lead to a language deficiency, which is not so easy to resolve, says Professor of English Linguistics Janet Grijzenhout. Inaugural lecture 19 March.

More focus on diversity in Antiquity, workshops for students with disabilities, and a card game to share stories about diversity: these and other projects will receive funding from the JEDI Fund in 2023.

During Leiden City of Science 2022, Janet Grijzenhout and Hannah De Mulder will put multilingualism in the spotlight by organising multilingual storytelling afternoons. They hope to show parents that raising children multilingually is achievable as well as beneficial.

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This project focuses on a striking parallelism between two macro-groups of languages: southern Italian dialects and the so-called split-ergative languages, like Basque, Georgian, Dyirbal, Hindi/Urdu.