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

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

On the 13th of November, Hanna Fricke successfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Hanna on this achievement.

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

The presents thesis investigates the extent to which Chinese, Dutch and American speakers of English are mutually intelligible. Intelligibility of vowels, simplex consonants and consonant clusters was tested in meaningless sound sequences, as well as in words in meaningless and meaningful short sent…

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

This dissertation provides a description of Konso, a Cushitic language spoken by about 250,000 speakers in the South-West Ethiopia.

How do we process language and speech? How do we integrate information at different levels – intonation, sentence structure, meaning, tone, words, sounds - and how does information at one level interact with information at another level?

At LUCL we study almost all aspects of a wide range of African languages. From phonology to anthropological linguistics, from theoretical syntax to urban youth languages, we study it all.

Imagined Voices deals with a form of composition, music with on-screen text, in which the dynamic between sound, words and visuals is explored.

From where litter ends up to which languages are spoken in Leiden and The Hague: over 50 interesting, surprising, complex and entertaining questions were sent in for the Citizen Science project to mark our 444th anniversary. Not one but two Citizen Science projects will be starting this year in Leiden…

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.

If you are interested in an academic programme, but do you not wish to complete the entire programme? Then, you can choose one of the many à la carte courses the Faculty of Humanities offers.

The history of sign languages of deaf people is severely understudied. The historical linguistics of sign languages offers a fundamentally new perspective on the history of human languages. This project addresses the dearth of knowledge about historical sign language linguistics through a large-scale…

On the 21st of September, Carlos Benítez-Torres successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Carlos on this achievement!

A source of inspiration for readers who are curious to understand how people move and convince each other

The LAK offers various writing courses. Explore the world of story creation. Learn the basic skills of fiction writing and, as a writer, find your own voice, taking the first important step from idea to story. Or explore poetic techniques. There is a wide choice of English-spoken workshops! During…

What does it mean to be a migrant in a big city? According to assistant professor Kamila Krakowska Rodrigues, artists have the answer to that question. In a new ERC-funded project, she will explore the representation of contemporary urban diversity in films, performance art, written literature and spoken…

LIACS aims at being a diverse and inclusive research institute. To reach this goal, two instances are working on addressing diversity related issues.

Bachelor, Master

Astronomers have used data from the European Gaia Space Telescope to discover 55 high-speed stars launched from the young star cluster R136 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. This increases tenfold the number of known “runaway stars” in this region. The team of astronomers,…

As early as 2030, batteries in electric vehicles could fully meet the need for short-term electricity storage around the world. By connecting them to the power grid they can provide their stored energy, improving energy security and enabling renewable technologies in cleaning the grid.

Leiden PhD student Xuequan Zhou has designed a new promising molecule that efficiently kills cancer cells, but does not harm healthy tissue. The trick: the drug is only active when irradiated with light. Zhou’s new compound does this extra efficiently by cleverly self-organising into nanoparticles.…

Seagrass is a marine flowering plant with special adaptations to coastal and marine environments, playing a crucial role in providing a wide range of ecosystem services.

Dear friends of the NVIC

Platform for research about heritage languages spoken in the Netherlands

In the first year, the Linguistics programme will provide you with a sound basis for specialisation, while training your academic competences. In the second year, you will choose one of our four specialisations. While focusing on this track in your second and third year, you may also choose electives…

To be eligible for Latin American Studies at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

PhD Research Projects:

No more lectures and exams for the Radio Astronomy course taught by Michiel Brentjens. The corona crisis is a moment of reflection that has changed his whole way of teaching. Instead of being in front of the class, he lets his students build a radio telescope with paint cans.

The one-year master’s in Linguistics is concerned with the knowledge, structure and use of language, studied from a wide range of perspectives. It trains students to systematically identify, describe and analyse language phenomena and to apply this knowledge to a specific area of interest.

When we are in a conversation, how do we know exactly when to respond, and how do we manage to respond so swiftly, yet without interrupting our interlocutors? Can speech melody – in particular utterance final “boundary tones” – help us determine who will speak next, or are these cues too late in the…

The Tatiana Afanassjewa-lecture series is a series of public talks in Dutch by Leiden physicists on wednesday evenings, intended for everyone with an interest in physics.

Análisis y Conversión del Vocabulario de fray Francisco de Alvarado (1593)

This dissertation provides a grammatical description of the Awjila language, a small Berber language spoken in the Libyan oasis of Awjila.

In the spirit of 'unity in diversity', our objective is to promote insight into and appreciation for the wonder that the same physical laws and mathematical concepts apply to the whole of nature, from the largest to the smallest energy and length scales. We strive for the application of abstract theoretical…

This dissertation attempts to describe the linguistic history of Hittite on the basis of a systematic etymological treatment of its entire inherited lexicon, precisely analyzing the phonological and morphological developments.

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.

This PhD project investigates the forms, functions, meanings, and socio-cultural values embedded in Palenda, in order to understand how it reflects and shapes the worldview of the Muna people (Mieno Wuna) through metaphor.

After nearly 70 years, the Leiden Observatory has a new telescope. A crowdfunding action in March brought in the 20,000 euros required to build a solar telescope. On 19 September Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker officiated at the opening.

On Monday 9 May Mercury will pass between the Earth and the Sun. This rare event can be followed in the Leiden Observatory. The Observatory's new solar telescope produces a very clear image and offers a unique opportunity to observe Mercury at the highest magnification possible in the Netherlands.

Her specialist field is molecular astrophysics, and she is the most quoted scholar in her field. In this, the year of astronomy, she is the ideal person to give the Dies lecture at the university with the world's oldest astronomy institute; it goes without saying that the lecture will be on the newest…

Speech Prosody 2024 includes three workshops.

How are we celebrating our anniversary in 2025 on the faculty?

Leiden University provides ambitious students with the most recent and innovative areas of knowledge, and offers them the freedom to develop their own area of expertise.

Leiden is the ideal city for students. There is a wide variety of activities you can do next to your studies, to make the most out of your student life.