We study the link between the acoustic, behavioral and physiological health of birds and prominent pollution factors. We aim to explore causation through experimental studies on detrimental factors like traffic noise, particulate matter and chemical toxins. Our primary target is scientific progress…

A linguistic prehistory of the Tarim Basin in Northwest China

Silk Road Virtual Museum - A virtual museum of the art and culture of the regions that lay on the trade routes between Europe and Asia, popularly known as the ‘Silk Road’.

The research profile ‘Asian Modernities and Traditions’ (AMT) aims to raise the strength and visibility of research, teaching and dissemination on Asian studies at Leiden University. AMT focuses on those areas where there are clear strengths or exciting new developments ahead, bundled into five them…

In this project diverse aspects of the duchesses’ roles in the complex and dynamic relations between town and crown are studied on the basis of systematic research in the account books of four cities (Ghent, Bruges, Leuven and Mechelen) in the Burgundian Netherlands (ca. 1430-1503).

Dr. Moritz Jesse, associate professor of European Union Law at the Europa Institute Leiden, addressed the members and audience of the panel “Citizenship and the Refugee Crisis” at the World Conference of the Association for the Study of Nationalities in New York, which took place at Columbia University,…

Wearing All Stars and ‘just’ a pair of jeans, with a backpack slung over his shoulder. It was an informal Friday afternoon with Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General, at Wijnhaven. Perched on a desk, he took questions from students in the audience.

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.

Information about the situation in Ukraine

In Voices on Birchbark Jos Schaeken explores the major role that writing on birchbark – an ephemeral, even ‘throw-away’ form of correspondence and administration – played in the vibrant medieval merchant city of Novgorod and other cities in the Russian Northwest.

This collection of seventeen essays takes its inspiration from the scholarly achievements of the Dutch historian Jan Lucassen. They reflect a central theme in his research: the history of labor.

Almost all languages of Europe and of a large part of western Asia belong to a single language family, which is called Indo-European, and which includes modern languages like English, Dutch, Russian, Farsi, but also ancient ones like Ancient Greek, Latin, Hittite and Sanskrit.

Languages of The Hague is a collection of columns on languages and language which were published between 2016 and 2018 in the weekly newspaper Den Haag Centraal.

In this article, Gerrit Dijkstra and Jos Raadschelders from the Institute of Public Administration, focus on Russia’s role in Bosnia and raise some important questions.

This research cluster centres on regional, national, and global intersections between a variety of artistic and cultural expressions and their role in society from 1800 onwards.

Proceedings of the European Science Foundation Workshop at Tautavel (France), 1993

On the 6th of July, Anthony Jakob successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Anthony on this achievement!

The current project aims to revive the idea that sound inventories are structured according to a small set of universal principles by applying insights from current phonological theory and by making use of modern database technologies and data assessing methodologies.

Documenting and describing languages of the world.

On the 23rd of January, Anastasiia Ionova successfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Anastasiia on this achievement.

Pre-University Classes are intended for high school students who want to do more than is offered in the regular school curriculum. In the classes, students follow special lecture series and through that are introduced to the world of science.

The topic of Historical Linguistics and Philology at LUCL is language change in its broadest sense.

This project intends to provide an integrated linguistic assessment of the hypothesised migration route of the Tocharians.

Archaeologist Maikel Kuijpers participated in the development of the boardgame Epoch: Early Inventors. “This game is inspired by the major innovation that happened in prehistoric times. A topic that has my interest and that I teach here in Leiden.

The Central Asia project, funded by Asian Modernities and Traditions, has engaged in strengthening the Leiden University library collection in the areas of material culture, history, languages and geopolitics in Central Asia. UNESCO International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS) and the Embassy…

The impact of global connections and the formation of the Roman Empire (ca. 200-30 BC)

Leiden’s Institute for History has an exceptionally strong expertise in premodern European history in its global context, with specialists whose interests cover virtually the whole continent. We have a strong track record in leading larger research teams and work together with colleagues across Europe…

Subproject of

The aim of the project is two-fold: first, to further scholarly understanding of the human dynamics that shaped the growth of Dorestad in a broader, international context; and second, to test the potential of multi-isotopic analyses on an early medieval Dutch assemblage.

How did a circle of Soviet artists and writers virtually unknown until perestroika turn into Russia’s most influential contemporary art movement? This book reconstructs the cultural history and canonization of a group of painters and poets known as the Moscow conceptualists, who paradoxically did not…

This article reviews how external expertise supports intelligence production and crisis decision-making with Germany's response to the Russio-Ukrainian war.

On 15 February 2024, Alexandros Sarris defended the thesis 'International Law and Governance of the Arctic in an Era of Climate Change'. The doctoral research was supervised by Nico Schrijver and Freya Baetens.

James Shires has contributed a chapter to the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CyCon 2021), which gathers 20 articles from the law, technology and strategy domains.

On February 20th, Gulnaz Sibgatullina succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Gulnaz on this great result.

When researching languages in historical context, our goal is to understand the nature of linguistic variation in the past, and explain the extent to which the socio-cultural context of bygone times contributed to shaping linguistic variation and change.

Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) is dedicated to ground-breaking and interdisciplinary research dealing with the relations between culture and society.

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…

On 22 June, Najib Amin defended the thesis 'State-building, lawmaking, and criminal justice in Afghanistan: a case study of the prison system’s legal mandate, and the rehabilitation programmes in Pul-e-charkhi prison'. The doctoral research was supervised by Jan Michiel Otto and Pauline Schuyt.

This book is the first comparative study of estimative intelligence and strategic surprise in a European context, complementing and testing insights from previous studies centred on the United States. It does extensive empirical analysis of open-source material and interviews in relation to three cases…

Dr. Bakhtiyar Babadjanov is the first Erasmus Fellow within the Erasmus Mobility Plus Project between Leiden University and the Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies, in particular the Al-Biruni Centre of Oriental Manuscripts. The two-year project (2016-2018) envisages exchange of teaching staff…

Would you like to do something for the victims of the war in Ukraine? Several actions have been set up to help the people in Ukraine. Read below what you can do.

The research programme Language Use in Past and Present brings together linguists within LUCL whose central focus is both on actual language data, including language use in earlier stages of the language, and, taking a variationist perspective, on language change in various aspects.

The place of European states and institutions in world politics is the core focus of this pillar. Research on this theme concerns European actors’ ability to promote peace, security and justice in their neighbourhood and to shape the future of global governance by translating its economic size into…