This programme video is presented in Dutch

Taal als sleutel tot het begrijpen van de mens.

What actually goes into the development of a massive open online course, a MOOC? University lecturer Tijmen Pronk developed the course 'Introduction to Comparative Linguistics of Indo-European Languages' independently. He talks about his motivation and experiences.

Tim Koopmans is one of the great minds in the history of Dutch and European legal scholarship. He taught law as a professor in Leiden and other universities, among which Ghent, Cambridge, Utrecht. He practiced it as a judge in the European Court of Justice and Advocate-General in the Dutch Supreme Court,…

Besides being a linguist, George Saad is also a photography fanatic. He shares his most beautiful and telling pictures, shot during his field research in Eastern Indonesia.

Fifteen hundred years ago, the north-west of what we now call China was a jumble of peoples. How did those Indians, Khotanese and Tocharians influence each other and each other's languages? Associate professor Michaël Peyrot has been awarded an ERC grant of almost two million euros to unravel this 'web…

When we hear the word ‘bird house’, do we process it as a whole or does our brain see it as ‘bird’ and ‘house’? PhD student Jiaqi Wang explored this for speakers of Mandarin Chinese.

On the 26th of February, Joane de Lima Santiago successfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Joane on this achievement.

Since November 2019 Stephan Raaijmakers is Professor by special appointment of Communicative AI (Artificial Intelligence) at LUCL. Raaijmakers investigates how linguistics can help make Artificial Intelligence smarter.

Zijn sociale aspecten van anxiety-like gedrag bij zeer jonge zebravissen al aanwezig? Zijn deze afhankelijk van de coping style (persoonlijkheid) van het individu? Zijn deze gedragingen endocrien te moduleren, bv door oxytocine?

Het is een wijdverbreid idee dat (post-)middeleeuwse steden een sterfteoverschot hadden en zij slechts in leven konden blijven door de toestroom van migranten; een fenomeen dat bekend staat als het ‘urban graveyard’-effect. Over details valt te twisten, maar duidelijk is dat de stad en de dood dichter…

The Department of Civil Law teaches and conducts research in the field of civil law. It is responsible for the master’s degree programme Civiel Recht (Civil Law LL.M.) which attracts many students each year from Leiden and elsewhere.

The Private International Law department offers several courses in the bachelor-, master- and advanced master programs.

Four scientists from Leiden University have each been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant, worth up to two million euros, gives researchers the opportunity to head up a research team for five years.

Below are some of the scholarly works published within the context of the Institutions for Conflict Resolution programme.

Efficiently responding to others’ emotions has great survival value, especially for social species, such as primates, who establish close, long-term bonds with group members. The closest living relatives to humans are the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Studying these species, and comparing them on the exact…

Leids onderzoek naar bestraffing komt tot stand uit verschillende disciplines. Het onderzoeksproject kent een juridische, criminologische, sociaalwetenschappelijke en filosofische invalshoek.

Dutch Studies is a unique bachelor’s programme in which you will quickly acquire fluency in spoken and written Dutch at a high academic level, at the same time gaining deep understanding of the culture and history of the Netherlands.

Since reintegration officer Bart Reedijk started work in Dordrecht three years ago, ex-convicts in that municipality have reoffended a lot less often. There is much interest in Reedijk's method throughout the Netherlands, but experts have reservations.

ELS lab member Helen Pluut concluded this year’s lecture series on Empirical Methods in Legal Research. Helen discussed diary studies as an example of multilevel research designs.

NWO has awarded eleven Leiden researchers a Vidi grant of 800,000 euros. The research subjects range from Cicero and muscle dystrophy to the archaeology of bogs.

AI has huge societal and economic potential and is widely used. But it also brings challenges: how do we combine human values with AI, how do we make AI more transparent and understandable, and what can AI and human cognition learn from each other, for example about language learning?

Research shows that including administrative fines in the screening process for a Certificate of Conduct (in Dutch: VOG) is not currently feasible.

Er is een nijpend cellen- en personeelstekort in Nederlandse gevangenissen. En dit is niet voor de eerste keer. Miranda Boone, hoogleraar criminologie en vergelijkende penologie, sprak met Trouw over de problematiek: ‘Het aantal gevangenen is het resultaat van beleid.’

Door aangescherpte verlofregels kunnen gedetineerden niet met verlof, terwijl dat hun re-integratie bevordert.

The Humanities Faculty bachelor’s degree programmes in History, and Greek and Latin language and culture were rated by students as the best. The master’s programmes in Classics and Ancient Civilisations, Dutch Studies and North American Studies also received the highest scores. These were the results…

The Institute for Philosophy has a new Academic Director: on 1 February, James McAllister was succeeded by Douglas Berger. We asked him about his plans.

University lecturer in Chinese and Comparative Philosophy Jingjing Li has been awarded a Veni grant for her research on feminist theories within the Buddhist philosophy of consciousness-only. Jingjing Li explains her plans and the importance of her research.

How would you convert Egyptian hieroglyphs into Latin script? And what is actually the correct translation of dishes on a Vietnamese menu? On Saturday 28 January, high school students from all over the Netherlands will come to Leiden to ponder a series of language-related puzzles. Their goal? To win…

In welke mate hebben domaniale structuren de machtsvorming en nederzettingsontwikkeling in en van het gewest Holland bepaald?

On 22 June 2022, the research group on Institutions for Conflict Resolution organised its second annual overarching PhD lab. During this meeting, the PhD researchers connected to COI presented the current status of their research projects.

Types of supervision for prisoners on conditional release include the requirement to report regularly to a parole officer, electronic house arrest or community service. These are all serious measures for the person on whom they are imposed and for society. But it is a subject on which little research…

The university is home to many pearls of research institutes that do not make the news every day. The Executive Board visited one such pearl, the Institute of Philosophy, on Tuesday 1 July. It resulted in an inspired conversation.

More focus on diversity in Antiquity, workshops for students with disabilities, and a card game to share stories about diversity: these and other projects will receive funding from the JEDI Fund in 2023.

From the new street language Smibanese to 17th-century manuscripts: the first national Dutch Studies Open Day explores a wide range of topics. The Open Day will take place on Saturday 7 March in Leiden. Frits Spits will broadcast his radio programme ‘De Taalstaat’ (The Language State’) from the Kamerlingh…

Op maandag 1 april 2024 stierf onze leermeester, vriend en gewaardeerd collega Dr. Alexander Hendrik de Groot (Sander).

The BLRN members have published extensively in recent years. In addition to the BLRN book series, dissertations of BLRN members published in the E.M. Meijers Institute Series, you will find below a selection of our publications. For a more complete overview of publications of each BLRN member, please…