The 10th edition of the World Congress of African Linguists (WOCAL), hosted by Leiden University, will be held online from 7 – 12 June. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) researchers give us an insight into how important and special this event actually is.

How do psychology, culture, politics, and upbringing influence our lives in a rapidly changing world? What is the role of education and development, and how do cultural differences shape our society? In the minor "Introduction to Social Sciences: Human Behavior in a Changing World" (30 EC), you will…

Interested in Area Studies? Then Leiden is the place to be! Join our Online Area Studies Week from 2-5 June to find out more. From Africa to Brasil and from Korea to Russia, Leiden covers all areas and fields, both in language, literature, history, politics and socio-economics. Join our live Q&As!

Words originally intended to indicate space, such as ‘out’, are also regularly used to indicate cause and effect. Why does this happen? And how does it work in other languages? PhD candidate Camil Staps decided to find out.

Research on flora and fauna with attention for economic interests and partnership with the local population. This is all bundled in a cooperation programme of the Anton de Kom University of Suriname and Leiden University. Working together on the basis of equality is key. ‘A thorny challenge, but one…

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

Professor Jenny Doetjes has received an NWO grant to research the cross-linguistic properties of quantity expressions and our brain's influence on language.

This dissertation provides a comprehensive overview of the grammar of Bantawa, a Kiranti (Rai) language spoken in Eastern Nepal.

The Leiden Summer School in Language and Linguistics is visited every year by many scholars worldwide. Four of the 120 participants of the 7th Summer School in 2012, share their view of Leiden.

Set up in 1991, this unique project aims to identify and describe the common lexical heritage of the most important Indo-European languages and language branches. The project has thus far resulted in twelve volumes published as The Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series (Brill, Leiden).

Graduates of International Studies are attractive candidates for international employers in a wide variety of fields – think NGOs, multinationals, humanitarian or governmental agencies. Your deep region-specific knowledge and language, academic and practical skills prepare you for a Master, as well…

Lecture

In QS’s World University Rankings of 2016, Leiden University’s History and Linguistics programme rank #19 and #28, respectively. This makes the History programme the best of its kind in the Netherlands, and Linguistics the second best.

This project investigates the influence that Arabic (esp. dialectal Arabic) has had on the Berber languages of Northern Africa.

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

On February 20th, Gulnaz Sibgatullina succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Gulnaz on this great result.

This dissertation explores how domestic political power struggles in Greece and Turkey during the Cold War engaged with the ongoing conflict in Cyprus and aims to demonstrate how socialist parties in Greece and Turkey struggled with the concept of the “nation” in battling for power and political positioning…

‘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.

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.'

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…

In September 2023 Social Justice Research, a journal from Springer Nature, published a ‘Special Issue on Veteran Reflections’. Eight ‘veterans’ analysed the current status of justice research and suggested new directions and refinements. Herman Steensma, guest member of the section Social, Economic…

The BOCA project explores new forms of communicating academic knowledge as a way to strengthen the connection between the university and society.

Most degree programmes at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences are based in the Pieter de la Court building on the Wassenaarseweg in Leiden. Besides this location, some degree programmes are based in The Hague, at Campus The Hague’s Wijnhaven building.

Understanding others’ emotional behavior is essential for navigating daily social life. But how is such an understanding achieved? The eye-tracking study by Yung-Ting Tsou and colleagues shows that children with hearing loss adopt a unique visual strategy that makes uses of explicit visual information…

Programs that aim to reduce symptoms of social anxiety in children generally include multiple components, such as exposure and cognitive restructuring. It is unknown if separate components yield positive intervention effects in children or whether a combination of components is required.

Attitudes towards cultural heritage have long been characterised by an ‘endangerment sensibility’ concerned with preventing losses. Recently, however, critical heritage scholars have argued that loss can be generative, facilitating the formation of new values and attachments. Their arguments have focused…