On the 24th of June, Martijn Wackers successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Martijn on this achievement!

Along with your application, you will have to submit a variety of documents. This information only applies to students who need to submit an application for admission. If you have a diploma that grants you automatic admission to this bachelor’s programme, you won’t need to submit additional document…

On Thursday 10 April 2025 Wahyu Widodo successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

To be eligible for Linguistics (research) at Leiden University, you must meet the following admission requirements.

What languages do you speak? According to Felienne Hermans, ‘Python’ could be an answer to this question. Hermans studies how people learn to program at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) of Leiden University. In an article of the NewScientist she explains why programming is similar…

In the Bachelor Honours Class ‘The Noble Art and Tricky Business of Translation’, Honours students learn about the tricky business of translation. To gain hands-on experience, students had to translate a poem for the seminar on poetry. For some translators-to-be, one language was simply not enough.

Festival

Análisis y Conversión del Vocabulario de fray Francisco de Alvarado (1593)

Stephan Raaijmakers has been Professor of Communicative AI since 1 May. Prior to this, he had held this position for five years as professor by special appointment. How has his approach to AI changed in that time?

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and researchers talk about their passion for their field. PhD candidate Meike de Boer knows everything about the word ‘uh’.

'Consider languages in their shared context.' That is the message of Professor and Arabist Beatrice Gründler, who will receive an honorary doctorate from Leiden University on 8 February. ‘I would like people to learn that Arabic history has a close connection with Europe.’

The high number of students that we are used to in the West would never have been possible if Latin were still the language of instruction in our universities. In his PhD defence on 16 September, Bert van Pinxteren will argue that Africa could gain a lot from a similar language switch in secondary e…

Author and political scientist Mounir Samuel has spent recent years delving into the many ways that language can exclude people and bring them together.

The bachelor programmes German Language and Culture, Classics, Dutch Language and Culture, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Religious studies and Linguistics have received the predicate top rated programme from the Keuzegids.

The pre-master's is a bridging programme for students who have applied for the MA Linguistics, but who, according to the Board of Admissions, still have deficiencies in their educational background. Once you have completed the pre-master’s programme, you will be admitted to the relevant specialization…

The pre-master's is a bridging programme for students who have applied for the MA Linguistics, but who, according to the Board of Admissions, still have deficiencies in their educational background. Once you have completed the pre-master’s programme, you will be admitted to the relevant specialization…

The Choose a Language Day was created to make high school students enthusiastic about choosing a linguistic profile and further education. Third-years were able to learn about different language studies at the Faculty of Humanities.

Lecture, Language and the Human Past

The Language Learning Resource Centre (Leiden University) is organizing a one-day conference (June 5th, 2020) on the interplay between second language learning practice, theory, and research.

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

What do ten-year-old children and chatbots have in common? PhD researcher Bram van Dijk studied language development in both children and AI language models. ‘It’s actually quite practical that we attribute human traits to a chatbot.’

On Wednesday, 21 February, a diverse group of students, staff, and representatives from 21 embassies gathered in The Hague for International Mother Language Day. Under the banner of 'a bit of fun and many serious topics,' language took centre stage.

Linguist Marian Klamer, associated with Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, is one of the 31 scientists to receive a NWO Vici-grant for her researchproject 'Language as a time machine'.

The Leiden University Centre for Islamic Thought and History aims to promote the study of Arabic and Islamic thought and history in a number of ways, both online and in person.

The project ‘Between the Holy Land and the World’ proposes a connected history of the Christian communities in the Near East (1900-1948) by means of a study of unpublished Franciscan and Dominican photographic collections.

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

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…

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…

This project analyzes to what extent hodegetical textbooks relied on each other in warning their readers against vicious habits, how much continuity their catalogs of vice displayed, and to what extent vices that persisted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries were associated with easy-to-remember…

On this page you will find more information about the selected projects of the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Fund for 2023.

This dissertation examines whether a cochlear implant provides congenitally deaf born children with sufficient auditory input to acquire low salient and syntactically and semantically complex functional items such as personal pronouns compared to their hearing peers.

Aafje de Roest turned her hobby into her job. She went from a teenager who enjoyed listening to hip hop music to a PhD candidate who focuses on how Dutch hip hop music shapes the cultural identity of young people in the Netherlands.

Linguist Wataru Uegaki received an NWO Grant of 58400 Euro for his research project 'In search of semantic universals in the modal domain'. With this money Wataru can compile a database and organise workshops. An interview with Wataru:

Lecture, Research Seminar Medieval and Early Modern History

Marleen Hogendoorn (36) studied Dutch Language and Culture at Leiden University and is now editor-in-chief of the feminist monthly OPZIJ.

The Genius of Invective is a peerless example of the breadth, depth, and complexity of the Arabic classical literary tradition. It was once one of the most popular works of Arabic literature, read across all regions from Mauritania to India, from Istanbul to Zanzibar. This volume marks the first English–Arabic…

This three-year programme offers you a unique chance to gain a specialised qualification in a rich, valuable area of knowledge, plus the freedom to tailor the programme to your own ambitions. And what better place to study than in Leiden, the international centre of Dutch studies?

Data sets available for scientific/research purposes.

The Leiden | Islam interview series contains short documentary-style videos including interview flashes with leading scholars in the field of Islam and Muslim societies. With this series, LUCIS aims to show the value of unconventional insights related to Islam and Muslim societies, and to relate them…