Psychologist Bernou Melisse was shocked at the long waiting lists in the Netherlands for people with binge-eating disorders. The problem was not yet on the map in Saudi Arabia. She therefore decided to study how people suffering from binge eating can be helped better in their own region of the world.…

A new challenge for Felix Ameka. The senior lecturer at the Centre for Linguistics has been appointed professor by special appointment of Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Diversity in the World. ‘I am looking forward to promoting ethnolinguistic diversity and vitality.’

Information provided by the Tax and Customs Administration is something that concerns every citizen. So it is not surprising that the Tax hotline receives around 10 million calls each year. The Benefits Affair emphasised the citizen’s perspective in communications with the Tax and Customs Administration.…

The bachelor programmes German Language and Culture, Classics, Dutch Language and Culture, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Religious studies and Linguistics have received the predicate top rated programme from the Keuzegids.

PhD defence

Lecture, Descriptive Linguistics Seminars

Education

The Choose a Language Day was created to make high school students enthusiastic about choosing a linguistic profile and further education. Third-years were able to learn about different language studies at the Faculty of Humanities.

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.

Author and political scientist Mounir Samuel has spent recent years delving into the many ways that language can exclude people and bring them together.

Professor Claartje Levelt, together with Paula Fikkert (Radboud University), has received an NWO Open Competition grant for research into the development of word production in toddlers.

When it comes to literature, people mostly talk about what characters see or hear. Rarely is it about what they smell. That’s a shame, thinks university lecturer Jan van Dijkhuizen. He has been awarded an Open Competition grant from NWO to expand academic knowledge about scent in literature, and to…

On Wednesday, 21 February, a diverse group of students, staff, and representatives from 21 embassies gathered in The Hague for International Mother Language Day. Under the banner of 'a bit of fun and many serious topics,' language took centre stage.

A course that concludes with a video pitch, instead of a paper or examination: Italian Language and Culture students each recorded their own knowledge clip, speaking to a wide audience about Italian cultural expressions. We asked Goran Bouaziz, Cameron-May Bosch and Katja Timmer what they thought of…

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and researchers talk about their passion for their field. PhD candidate Meike de Boer knows everything about the word ‘uh’.

As you may know, a draft profile for a broad BA programme in Languages and Cultures has been in development for some time. On 21 December 2021, the Faculty Board decided to end the design process of that broad bachelor’s degree programme. However, as the Faculty Board and partners in the discipline…

How did Scottish speakers sound hundreds of years ago? University lecturer Mo Gordon thinks the answer to that question can be found in church archives. 'It can be a boost to your identity to know the history of your language.'

'Consider languages in their shared context.' That is the message of Professor and Arabist Beatrice Gründler, who will receive an honorary doctorate from Leiden University on 8 February. ‘I would like people to learn that Arabic history has a close connection with Europe.’

University lecturer Alex Reuneker has won the Frans van Eemeren Prize for his paper 'Assessing classification reliability of conditionals in discourse'.

A friendly chat is more complicated than you might think. As soon as the other person finishes talking, you already have an answer ready. But how do we know when it's time to change turns? University lecturer Johanneke Caspers has been awarded an NWO Open Competition grant to investigate the role of…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Marleen Hogendoorn (36) studied Dutch Language and Culture at Leiden University and is now editor-in-chief of the feminist monthly OPZIJ.

When university lecturer Martine Bruil was on exchange in Ecuador as a teenager, she fell in love with the area's ancient languages. Now, more than 20 years later, she is starting a research project on the kinship of the language Awapit with the Quechua language that was spread by the Incas.

‘If it rains later, then I’ll take the car.’ In order to reason, we use sentences containing ‘if’ every single day. But how does that work exactly in the Dutch language? Alex Reuneker wrote his 628 page dissertation on the subject. Ceremony on 26 January.

Lecture, LACG Meetings

For two decades, language experts were certain that babies were able to learn language rules from as young as the age of seven months. However, recent research carried out by a consortium of four Dutch baby labs led by researchers from Leiden cast doubts on this certainty. We spoke to researchers Andreea…

Lecture, Discussion

Lecture

Organisation

Around seven per cent of children have difficulty learning their mother tongue because they have some form of developmental language disorder (DLD). World DLD Day on 15 October called attention to this disorder. Development psychologist Neeltje van den Bedem explains why this is important.

Claartje Levelt is professor of First Language Acquisition. She researches how babies and toddlers learn their mother tongue. Besides her work, she enjoys being involved with music.

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and researchers talk about their passion for their field. University lecturer Maria Del Carmen Parafita Couto speaks about bilingualism.

Library, Research

Lecture, Leiden Lectures on Arabic Language & Culture

Aafje de Roest turned her hobby into her job. She went from a teenager who enjoyed listening to hip hop music to a PhD candidate who focuses on how Dutch hip hop music shapes the cultural identity of young people in the Netherlands.