It's a race against time for Charles Jeurgens, Leiden Professor in Archival Studies. He is investigating how the colonial authorities created the archives in the National Archive in Jakarta. ‘The acidic paper deteriorates rapidly in this hot and humid climate.’

This project examines the intriguing relationship between Greek literary criticism and Latin literature in Rome (first centuries BC and AD).

D.P. Kok defended his thesis on 10 October 2017

Islam exists in global history with its richly variegated cultural and social realities. When these specific cultural contexts are marginalized, Islam is reduced to an ahistorical religion without the ability to contribute to humanity. This limited understanding of Islam has been a contributing factor…

This subproject, carried out by post-doctoral researcher Dr. O. Nieuwenhuyse, investigates changes and continuities in the functional, social and symbolic uses of the material culture, c. 6800-5800 BC. A contextually oriented approach is adopted, which pays attention to the local socio-economic and…

How is social cognition shaped by our knowledge of language and stories?

Els Bogaerts defended her theses on 20 December 2017.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

In Women and Property Rights in Indonesian Islamic Contexts, eight scholars of Indonesian Islam examine women’s access to property in law courts and in village settings.

Are you thinking about studying Arts and Culture: Art History and Museum Studies? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

From ca. 1540 to 1600, thousands fled the war-stricken Southern Low Countries to the British Isles, Germany, and the Northern Low Countries. Research on this displacement crisis, central to the formation of the Netherlands and Belgium, reflects 21st-century debates on migration and language: language…

This study presents a full descriptive account of the grammar of Mualang, covering the major features of phonology and morphosyntax as well as issues related to pragmatics.

Port cities develop at the intersection of international trade and commerce and at the interface between sea and land. What does the future of port cities look like with urbanization, sea level rise, new migrant flows and the disappearance of old industries? This is addressed in the minor (Re)Imagining…

Over time Dutch and Indonesian composers, performers and music scholars have inspired each other and they continue to do so. The presence of the Dutch in the Netherlands East-Indies and Indonesia, but also the existence of large diasporic communities in the Netherlands have contributed to a mutual exchange…

On December 13th, Maaike van Naerssen succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Maaike on this great result.

Modern Japanese culture can best be described in one word: cute. Hello Kitty, the most important symbol of cuteness, can be found in all layers of society. Leiden Japanologists Ivo Smits and Kasia Cwiertka put together a volume of articles on this curious phenomenon.

The form and content of the course are determined by your answers on the intake form and, if necessary, an intake interview.

About 90 per cent of Austronesian and Papuan languages are under threat of soon becoming extinct. Marian Klamer is the only professor in the world who researches both these language groups. She records languages before they disappear and sheds new light on the history of Indonesia. Inaugural lecture…

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

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

On 17 August 1945, two days after the Japanese surrender that also brought an end to the Second World War in Asia, Indonesia declared its independence. The declaration was not recognized by the Netherlands, which resorted to force in its attempt to take control of the inevitable process of decolonization.…

In his dissertation Michiel Hooykaas outlines the results of six empirical research projects focused at biodiversity awareness in the Netherlands, specifically people’s knowledge about animals.

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of…

Vedran Dunjko (LIACS and applied Quantum algorithms (aQa) Leiden) and Tomoyuki Morimae (Kyoto University) are to collaborate with Qu&Co. Qu&Co is a leading European developer of quantum software.

On the 24th of October, Nurenzia Yannuar successfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Nurenzia on this achievement.

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 book project explores the changing dynamics of marriage and family life in postwar Japan based on an examination of the life histories of single mothers.

Tijmen Baarda defended his PhD thesis on 8 January 2020

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,…

This project examines changes in late eighteenth and nineteenth-century representations of the legendary twelfth-century general Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1159-1189) and how they reflect not only developments in themes of representation, but also changes in the focus of early modern and modern Japan’s…

This edited collection brings together canonical texts on intermedia and expanded cinema in 1960s Japan, most of which translated into English for the first time, in hope to introduce the local critical discourse on this subject to international readership.

Ruobin Han defended her thesis on 21 March 2017

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