In this project, the hypothesis that language contact crucially impacts the development of spatial grammar and phonology is investigated.

The languages of the Mbam-et-Inoubou District of the Centre Region of Cameroon have a unique position in Bantu linguistics. Being in between

Published by Brill Nijhoff and written by leading experts including national judges, academics and practitioners East African Community Law is the first comparative as well as open access textbook on EAC law. The book provides a key resource for the research, teaching, and practice of EAC law. It also…

African oral literatures, new media and technologies: challenges for research and documentation

How do speakers adapt to multilingual contexts?

How do Central African refugees navigate through uncertainty in a new and hostile environment in the DR Congo?

Study information

In the last couple of decades an ‘animal turn’ has taken place in the social sciences. This has led to a call to study social issues by including non-human animal perspectives. This Collaborative Research Group thinks it's high time that African Studies joins the chorus of minds that try to contribute…

Study information

This dissertation presents a description of Sandawe, a Khoisan language spoken by approximately 60 000 speakers in Dodoma Region, Tanzania.

This dissertation provides a description of the language Tadaksahak as it is spoken by the Idaksahak, a people group of about 30,000 living in the most eastern part of Mali and several isolated places in western Niger.

This project aims at studying the social media reception of African publications as covered by the most important “altmetric” sources.

In the South African context, certain iconic images have been a dominant source for public understandings of historical events. The emphasis given these images tends to overshadow the historical value of other more personal photographic sources – like studio or amateur photography. This project looks…

This project aims at describing the Khoisan languages !Ora (Korana/Griqua) and !Ui of South Africa.

The project Multimedia Research and Documentation of African Oral Genres: Connecting Diasporas and Local Audiences (Director: D.Merolla) focuses on multimedia as technology that allows scholars to share documentation and scientific knowledge with the cultural owners of the collected oral genres.

On the 4th of June, Andreas Joswig successfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Andreas on this great result.

Research combining a conceptual and practical perspective within the field of teaching and learning second languages.

Who is funding African science? How are different African and international funders interacting and contributing to develop scientific research in the continent? Are there potential inadvertent synergies among research funders that can be identified? These and similar questions are at the heart of this…

This study offers a comprehensive but balanced grammatical analysis of Ik (Icetod), Northeast Uganda’s last thriving Kuliak language.

This thesis investigates the grammar of Gaahmg, a Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic language spoken in the Blue Nile Province of North Sudan. The comprehensive description provides an analysis of the phonology, morphology, and syntax. Ten texts of various genre are given to help illustrated the grammar…

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

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…

On the 16th of September, Bert van Pinxteren successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Bert on this achievement!

The general objective of this thesis is to determine a typology of verbal derivation in Ethiopian Afro-asiatic languages.

At LUCL, researchers have established the Leiden Hands!Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies.

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.

The project

On 13 January 2022, Pie Habimana defended the thesis 'Harmful Tax Competition in the East African Community'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. H. Vording and Prof. S.C.W. Douma (UvA).

This dissertation is the first comprehensive description of Makalero, a language spoken by approximately 6,500 speakers in the Iliomar subdistrict, in the south-east of the Republic of East Timor. While previous sources considered it to be a dialect of the larger language Makasae, the present study,…

Across cultures, parents help their children master the social and linguistic codes needed in adult life. Recent research on language socialization found important cross-cultural differences, pointing out the need for more diversity for a full understanding of this process. Deaf communities form…

This thesis presents a detailed description of the phonology, the tone system and the grammar of Liko, a Bantu language spoken by about 70,000 people in the northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It provides numerous examples.

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

In this project we study the properties of statistical- and rule-learning mechanisms in relation to the acquisition and evolution of language. We ask to what extent these mechanisms are unique to humans - or to human language - by comparing the acquisition of vocal structure in two species: humans (infants)…

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.

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

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

On the 6th of January, Kefan Bao successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Kefan on this achievement!

On the 27th of June, Timothy Mac Hadjah successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Timothy on this achievement!

Across cultures, parents help their children master the social and linguistic codes needed in adult life. Recent research on language socialization found important cross-cultural differences, pointing out the need for more diversity for a full understanding of this process.

The AAM-LR project aims at building a demonstrator of a web service that will help filed researchers to annotate audio- and video-recordings.

A linguistic prehistory of the Tarim Basin in Northwest China

The way people view the world is shaped by much more than just language. Culture, religion, history, art, and philosophy also play a role. At Leiden University, you'll research societies from around the world - past and present. You'll explore current themes such as migration, identity, media, and heritage,…

The way people view the world is shaped by much more than just language. Culture, religion, history, art, and philosophy also play a role. At Leiden University, you'll research societies from around the world - past and present. You'll explore current themes such as migration, identity, media, and heritage,…

How do old and new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) relate to new social and political movements in Central Africa? What does this tell us about Africa and the Information Age?

Madeleine Hosli, Professor of International Relations at Leiden University, together with two other authors, wrote a chapter in Group Politics in UN Multilateralism. This chapter assesses the composition and functioning of the African Union (AU) within the United Nations.