When Daan van Esch, master’s student in Chinese Studies, travelled through China last summer, he noticed that he often did not understand what the inhabitants of the different villages and cities were talking about. There turned out to be huge differences within the language. He decided to map this…

Lecture, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars

Due to technological and societal developments, we are being flooded with more information than our brains can process. How does this affect our decision-making, both as individuals and as a society? And can we learn to make better choices? This is what Lotte van Dillen will explore with her profess…

Researcher Max van Duijn and PhD student Bram van Dijk apply language models to stories told by children to investigate empathy. For this research, they received the Best Paper Award at the Computational Natural Language Learning Conference in Singapore.

A collaboration between linguists, geographers and anthropologists aims to uncover how languages spread across South America over thousands of years. Associate Professor Rik van Gijn is responsible for the linguistic side of this NWO project.

The impact of war extends beyond destroyed buildings and torn families. In bilingual Ukraine, the ongoing war with Russia is a major driver for increasingly discarding the Russian language. What does this mean for the position of Russian in Ukraine?

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and academics talk about their passion for their field. Student Aline-Priscillia is particularly curious about how language is processed in the brain.

Communication is the transmission of information. All day long we are busy explaining and making things clear to each other, but exactly how we do that varies from language to language. Associate Professor Jenneke van der Wal delved into African Bantu languages for a Vidi project.

After having been cancelled in 2020, this year the Summer School in Languages and Linguistics is going online. From 12 – 23 July, language and linguistics enthusiasts from all over the world can once again learn about a variety of rare languages and linguistics topics. Director Sasha Lubotsky tells…

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…

Lecture, This Time for Africa! series

Lecture, Sociolinguistics & Discourse Studies Series

Lecture, Sociolinguistics & Discourse Studies Series

Lecture, Sociolinguistics & Discourse Studies Series

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and researchers talk about their passion for their field. Professor of African Linguistics Maarten Mous explains the importance of hearing your language at school.

Professor of Cognitive Psychology Mariska Kret has been awarded the Dr Hendrik Muller Prize by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) for her pioneering research into emotions. Kret: ‘This prize offers a wonderful opportunity to give a boost to emotion research.’

Leiden University will continue to offer its BA in Italian Language and Culture. The Board of the Faculty of Humanities has reversed its decision to stop admitting new students as of the 2026/2027 academic year.

De Regenboog primary school in The Hague has a high percentage of children whose first language is not Dutch. In the ‘Children of the City’ project, Education and Child Studies students help primary school children practise their Dutch.

Last Tuesday, the Herta Mohr building was filled with secondary school pupils. During the profile choice afternoon, they were introduced to various aspects of language studies. 'It’s really exciting to be here.'

Conference

A newly opened museum in China appears to be devoted to the origins of the Austronesian-speaking peoples, who some 5000 years ago spread from East Asia across the Pacific, seeding it with a distinctive culture and some 1200 languages. But those displays are also a statement in the long-running dispute…

When deciding what to study you undoubtedly read a lot of information about your study programme. Leiden University employs various systems to provide information about programmes and courses and to facilitate communication between lecturers and students.

A European project should help reinvigorate Latin teaching in secondary schools. 'By focusing on citizenship, we want to show that Latin is relevant to discussions about citizenship and migration.'