The MA Classics and Ancient Civilizations at Leiden University covers the entire range of present-day research on the civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Syria and Palestine, Greece and the Roman Empire. In chronological terms, the program covers thousands of years, from the early origins…

This research cluster aims to analyse and interpret the formation and transmission of Graeco-Roman culture by exploring the relationships between cultural products (texts, objects, practices) and their societal and historical contexts.

This PhD project investigates specific types of allusions used by Russian native speakers, namely references to classical Russian literature. The research includes the analysis of 1) how native speakers use allusions, 2) what type of discourse allusions are frequently used, and 3) how we can implement…

Different ways in which physical environments impacted on the cultural imagination of Greco-Roman antiquity.

The aim of this thesis was to study the link between hearing loss, language skills, and social functioning in deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children. Sufficient language skills are an essential prerequisite to develop appropriate communication skills, in order to join in conversations with others.…

How do speakers adapt to multilingual contexts?

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,…

We live in a data-drenched society awash with numbers. An inhabitant of the democratic polis of Athens (5th and 4th centuries B.C.E.) increasingly found himself surrounded by numerical data. This project aims to analyze the communicative functions and the political meaning(s) ascribed to these public…

This thesis investigates the processing of words written in Japanese kanji and Chinese hànzì, i.e. logographic scripts.

This master’s programme combines Physics with Data Science. You will learn how physics has its own tricks to deal with big data and how techniques from machine learning and deep learning can be applied to classical and quantum data. The first focus of attention is on classical data, including data mining,…

The Laiseang archiving project ensures the preservation of unique records of languages in the region which have been gathered by more than two dozen linguists at, and in collaboration with Dutch universities over the last 40 years.

This book presents an in-depth grammatical description of Kumzari, a mixed language spoken in remote villages on the Musandam Peninsula in northern Oman.

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.

In ancient Greece and Rome, nighttime encompassed a distinctive array of cultural values that went far beyond the inversion of daytime. Night was a mythological figure, a locus of specialized knowledge, a socially significant semantic space in various literary genres, and a setting for unique experi…

Given the accelerating appearance of antimicrobial resistance, there is an urgent need for more fundamental research into novel antibiotic strategies. The work in this thesis helps to address this global problem by developing new antibiotic compounds, inspired by the antibacterial mechanisms of the…

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.

Chinese Linguistics at Leiden University offers you an excellent opportunity to benefit from our long-standing expertise in Chinese linguistics

This project investigates how sign languages change and spread over time, and how this is influenced by their transmission history.

In early medieval England, there was an interest in the history of the Roman Empire and kings adopted such imperial titles as 'imperator' or 'basileus'. How can we explain this interest and what functions did imperial ideas and the reception of the classical world serve in early medieval England?

All the data stored and processed by our computers is encoded as sequences of zeros and ones, called bits. Quantum computers offer an alternative to this traditional way of encoding and manipulating information.

This book explores the production and use of medieval manuscripts that contain classical Latin texts. Six experts in the field address a range of topics related to these manuscripts, including how classical texts were disseminated throughout medieval society, how readers used and interacted with specific…

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!

This thesis investigates how quantum, quantum-inspired, and hybrid quantum-classical computation can enhance key points of the automated machine learning (AutoML) pipeline under the constraints of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices.

This proposal aims at the construction of a comprehensive and authoritative scientific grammar for Dutch and Frisian in the form of a virtual language institute: het Taalportaal/the Language Portal.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Ubbink

The recently published book 'Tense-Switching in Classical Greek A Cognitive Approach' by Arjan Nijk provides classicists and linguists in general with a complete account of the 'historical present' in Classical Greek.

Are you thinking about studying Classics and Ancient Civilizations? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

This project examines how speakers store and process regular pitch variation.

The LLMC is a Leiden-based centre of expertise that applies knowledge of language and AI to ensure the responsible, transparent and effective use of language models.

In Quantum mechanics, particles can be in multiple positions simultaneously. Yet, when a measurement is made, the particle is found only in one place. Technology has come to a point where we may design experiments that will tell us how.

This edited book presents case-studies and reflections on the role of languages and their analytic study in development practices across four regions: Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific.

A thorough description of the relationships among languages and their social environment in a given context, reflecting an ecological perspective, involves attention to the agency of local actors, and the policies, discourse, and ideologies that surround them.

It is our goal to deliver a convenient, enjoyable, learning experience that goes beyond the basics. All of the apps are an initiative of the HANDS! Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies at Leiden University, as part of the Language Socialization in Deaf Families project funded by the Leiden University…

Bringing together scholars from a broad range of theoretical perspectives, The Language of Argumentation offers a unique overview of research at the crossroads of linguistics and theories of argumentation.

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

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)…

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.

This thesis probes under what conditions quantum computing presents an advantage over classical computing.

Tonal bilinguals of two closely related Chinese dialects are amazing people. They handle two tonal systems in their mind; their two vocabularies are from closely related dialects, and they write translation equivalents with common Chinese characters. Their unique language situation makes their mind…

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…

The University of Bologna organizes a Summer School in Classical Languages, offering intensive courses in Latin and/or Greek (20 June – 23 July 2022). The deadline for applications is: 10 June 2022.

In the master’s programme in Dutch Language, Culture and Society at Leiden University you will study the language and culture of the Netherlands from the Dutch Golden Age – the time of Rembrandt and Vondel – until today’s dynamic and muliticultural society.

How can a CLIL approach, with a focus on disciplinary literacies, improve the teaching of the LLA programme’s literary component in senior bilingual education (TTO)?