The two-year MA in Chinese Studies, a specialisation of Leiden University’s master's in Asian Studies, combines content courses with intensive and advanced language training, outstanding teaching, and extensive library resources to bring you the only qualification of its calibre offered in the Nethe…

Taught by top researchers from a wide range of disciplines, the MA Chinese Studies at Leiden University combines in-depth knowledge with advanced language proficiency with a year-long stay in China.

The project focuses on an intriguing aspect of André Chénier’s poetry, which has not received much attention in scholarship: Chénier’s indebtedness – in the form of translation, adaptation, borrowing, reference – to Hellenistic poetry; it interprets the role of this indebtedness in his poetical and…

Important dates in the Academic Language Centre calendar

In which way was literary celebrity constructed in the nineteenth century and what forms of fandom were there?

The Classics Master, a specialization of the Classics and Ancient Civilizations program at Leiden University, gives you the opportunity to study the Greek and Roman world with a focus on Greek and Latin language and literature.

How does global change across time and space lead to convergence and loss of variation or increasing diversity and conflict?

Our East Asia experts work across various disciplines on global issues such as migration, heritage, and colonialism.

Exploring cultural production in Europe, Latin America and Africa, the institute’s research programme focuses on the continuous interconnectedness of the Arts and Society in both the textual culture of literature, learning and public debate and the visual culture of art, architecture, film, photography…

Adhyāyas 96 – 112. The Varāha Cycle and the Andhaka Cycle Continued

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.

Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

The project investigates how bilingual speakers navigate lexico-syntactic features, including grammatical gender, classifier systems, and the linear order of adjectives and nouns, across Spanish and Chinese in both unilingual and bilingual contexts.

Lucien van Beek studied Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at Leiden University, focusing on Ancient Greek. As of February 2015, Van Beek will be project manager at Ineke Sluiter’s Greek-Dutch dictionary project.

How did people across Central and Eastern Europe imagine the future during the transitions of the 1980s and 1990s? The umbrella term ‘post-communism’ does not provide an answer to this question. This project explores how writers and cultural theorists saw the potential future of their societies during…

Leiden Asia Centres

English Language and Culture is a multi-faceted programme in which you’ll study the language in all its variaties, from Old English to the many different pronunciations currently in use. You’ll also be shown British, American and Canadian literature in their cultural-historical context.

All languages use melody in speech, primarily via rises and falls of the pitch of voice. Such pitch variation is pervasive, offering a wide spectrum of nuance to sentences – an additional layer of meaning. For example, saying “yes” with a rising pitch implies a question (rather than an affirmation).…

Haunted Europe offers a comprehensive account of the British and Irish fascination with a Gothic vision of continental Europe, tracing its effect on British intellectual life from the birth of the Gothic novel, to the eve of Brexit, and the symbolic recalibration of the UK’s relationship to mainland…

Operators in the Lexicon opens with an old chestnut: why are there no natural single word lexicalizations for negations of the propositional operator and and the predicate calculus operator all: why neither *nand nor *nall?

In comparing a selection of 18th-century histories to a representative sample of 19th-century histories of science, this project inquires: Which early modern vices persisted into the 19th century and to what extent were those vices embodied in anecdotes, conveyed through commonplaces, or symbolically…

The ‘empathic mind’ in children with Specific Language Impairments (SLI); what can children with SLI understand of other people’s minds and emotions?

HERLING (Research Lab for the Study of Heritage Languages of the Netherlands) is a new centre that aims to bridge the gap between scientific research and language communities.

Lecture, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars

Lecture

The project investigates epistemicity: how the knowledge of the speaker and hearer can be expressed in the grammar. This shows us how speakers organise their knowledge, and whether this is influenced by the language they speak.

There is a growing demand throughout the world for ways to understand and preserve cultural heritage. Heritage has a crucial role to play because it strengthens societies and promotes understanding among cultures. Leiden expertise in the area of heritage spans the whole world.

The English Language and Culture programme focuses on four areas, namely: philology, literature, linguistics and language acquisition. It also offers several specialisation options, ranging from renaissance literature to the use of metaphors.

The present project aims to provide valuable insights for the professional development of international teachers, and also for improving the quality of foreign language education.