The purpose of this programme is to join knowledge and insights from linguistics, literary analysis, and rhetoric, for the purpose of developing a set of methods for the stylistic investigation of any type of text in Dutch.

The second and final volume of this co-authored study has just been published by J.B. Metzler. This second monograph explores the history of the concept of barbarism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Competing Claims to an Idealized Past in Humanist Latin Poetry

In the field of Western art music, improvisation has become a much discussed topic. In this interdisciplinary study I argue that in this context, improvisation is not to be seen as a quasi-autonomous skill or art form, but as an aspect of music-making in general.

The early modern and modern Europeanists at the Leiden Institute of History approach the past from comparative and transnational perspectives, frequently placing the history of our continent in global contexts. Our research covers the geographical and thematic breadth of Europe since ca. 1500, with…

Perec’s Lieux project consists of texts describing the author's places of memory, photographs, personal documents and ephemera collected in the street.

LUCIS’ research on Islam and society is guided by three overarching themes, which are fundamental to our research programmes.

Bringing together scholars from a broad range of theoretical perspectives, The Language of Argumentation offers a unique overview of research at the crossroads of linguistics and theories of argumentation.

To make successful communication possible, people need much more than their knowledge of the language system.

What do scholars do when they talk about virtues (impartiality, accuracy) or vices (dogmatism, prejudice)?

The aim of this project is to study the influence of Longinus’s treatise ‘On the sublime’ on practice and theory of architecture and theatre in seventeenth-century Paris and Amsterdam.

In Renaissance Florence, humanists wrote Latin poems fashioning their city as the new Rome, and members of the Medici family as Roman rulers. How can we explain this practice?

While there is a general consensus on the need for climate action among elites and the public, the public overall willingness to pay for such efforts is much lower.

From Crisis to Critique

LUCIS publishes two peer-reviewed book series, “Leiden Studies in Islam and Society” (Brill) and “Debates on Islam and Society” (Leiden University Press).

The Animated Image addresses the entire range of contexts in which images were described by Roman authors as being animated, as well as the accounts that Roman writers produced to explain the animation of inanimate matter.

This study presents the findings of a laboratory-based experiment testing hypothesised processes implicated in the prevention of violent radicalisation through counter-narratives. The central aims of the study were to contribute to counter-narrative theory, whilst highlighting the value of experimental…

The Turn of the Soul: Representations of Religious Conversion in Early Modern Art and Literature

This is special issue of the journal Language & Communication. The papers of this issue delve into the multifaceted realm of (non)belonging.

This book investigates how gay-identified immigrants and refugees experience feelings of inclusion or exclusion within a sexually-charged online subculture. Explores the response of ethnic minorities to demonstrations of racism and xenophobia within an intolerant European climate. Challenges political…

Experience, Narrative, and Criticism in Ancient Greece pursues a new approach to ancient Greek narrative beyond the taxonomies of structuralist narratologies.

The socio-political and cultural memory of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire played a very important role in Antiquity and later ages. This book is the first to systematically chart these multiform ideas and associations over time and to define them in relation to one another, as Persianism.

In this paper, Sibgatullina and Abbas aim to illuminate the complex connections between the European right-wing movements and Islam and discusses how the adoption of Muslim identity may function as a politically strategic opportunity for European conservative forces.

In contemporary India, the regional state of West Bengal has often been perceived as somewhat of an aberration in the wider context of a rather chaotic democracy, as the Left Front (spearheaded by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, CPIM) demonstrated a rare instance of political stability, decisively…

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami caused immense destruction and over 170,000 deaths in the Indonesian province of Aceh. The disaster spurred large-scale social and political changes in Aceh, including the intensified implementation of shari‘a law and an end to the long separatist conflict. After the Tsunami…

Verbal compounds abound in Hausa (a Chadic language).

On 30 January 2024 Jurre van der Meer successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This volume contributes to the scholarly debate regarding the reception of Cicero and focuses on one particular moment in Cicero’s life: the period from Caesar's death (March 44 BCE) up to Cicero’s own death (December 43 BCE).

In this article, Maria-Elena Kisyova, Yannick Veilleux-Lepage and Vanessa Newby shed some light on how a small but highly visible group of influencers are actively working to promote a dangerous far-right ideology.

The aim of this research is to define the relationship between sources of articulation for different kinds of instrument in the period between the beginning of XVI century (first extant indications) and the end of XVIII century.

In this article, Dimitrova, Gürkan and Koops presents a general framework for capturing and systematicallyanalysing critical junctures and degrees of change in EU policies.

From fake news to COVID-19 conspiracies, debates about truth claims have become more prominent during the past decade. Taking a global, comparative perspective, the minor Disinformation and Strategic Communication in Global Media focuses on the broad spectrum of contested narratives subsumed under the…

How does Russia use propaganda and what characterises Russian propaganda in terms of language and argumentation?

Assistant professor Ronny Boogaart, associate professor Henrike Jansen and assistant professor Maarten van Leeuwen have received the popularisation award from the National Research School of Linguistics for their book Maar zo bedoelde ik het niet (That's not what I meant).

This network brings together scholars whose work explores how contemporary frameworks of crisis produce experiences of the present, rehash or disrupt established narratives of the past, and broker specific outlooks on the future. We collaborate in studying these crisis-scapes and exploring how they…

LUCAS hosts a wide variety of research. Here we outline some of the most important research themes.

In the History of the Roman Emperors, what does Herodian’s method of composition consist of and how does it relate to his writing intention, particularly in terms of political and moral idea(l)s?

How German Jews used photographs to document their experiences in the face of National Socialism.

Dialogue is a multi-dimensional communication mechanism whose processes can only be examined by means of an interdisciplinary approach.

This project studies the theory and practice of moral education in the (Neo)Platonic tradition.

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 article provides a comprehensive analysis of the Islamic State's use of images taken by drones, drawing on a dataset of ISIS propaganda images from October 2016 to December 2018.

EUMOTIONS explores the role of emotions expressed by political elites (at EU- and member state-level) in framing the EU’s policy options during international crises.

On the 2nd of September Jiyan Qiao successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Research at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) focuses on linguistic variation and diversity. In order to create more awareness and scientific understanding of this topic, research activities are clustered around six (overlapping) umbrella programmes. Many of our researchers are active…