LIAS aims to advance the globally conscious vision of area studies, both within and outside the academic community. Focusing on Asia and the Middle East, the institute is a meeting place of multiple fields of inquiry, theories and methods, historical periods, and areas.

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.

Over a billion people live in China, it has the most spoken language in the world and is a major player on the world stage. Do you want to broaden your knowledge about this fascinating and powerful country? Study the language, culture, economy and politics on a high academic level with China Studies…

Mei-Wen Chen defended her thesis on 29 June 2016

This research project focuses on the interaction of Buddhist institutions, Chinese central and local governments, and local gentry in the 'transforming temples into schools' movement.

Audrey Heijns defended her thesis on 28 June 2016

How such did the traditional text of the Sinews Transformation Classic remain interesting to a changing readership?

This study proposes a theory for the encoding of specificity and definiteness in the Chinese nominal based on Cantonese, Mandarin and Wenzhou data.

Chenyu Cheng defended her thesis on 6 April 2017.

Lu, Man defended his thesis on 28 September 2017.

Chinese Linguistics at Leiden University offers you an excellent opportunity to concentrate on the different aspects of the languages of China, especially their sounds and syntax.

Debtelin (’boekje’ in het Mantsjoe) is een initiatief van de Leidse sinoloog en mantsjoeïst Fresco Sam-Sin en is gevuld met artikelen van Leidse studenten en onderzoekers sinologie.

These courses address all language skills: speaking, writing, listening and reading.

This thesis presents a thorough survey of the central aspects of the phonology of Shaoxing Chinese from a synchronic perspective and on the basis of recent theoretical phonological developments, with the secondary goal of casting some light on current issues in Modern Chinese (Mandarin).

Yi-Wen Cheng defended her thesis on 28 May 2015

This research project focuses on the thoughts of ethnicity and political orthodoxy in Medieval China by investigating Wang Tong’s works.

Tonal bilinguals of two closely related Chinese dialects are amazing people. They handle two tonal systems in their mind; their two vocabularies are from closely related dialects, and they write translation equivalents with common Chinese characters. Their unique language situation makes their mind…

What are the differences between the trade in Chinese herbal drugs in Europe between 1800 and now? Can we see the major metabolic changes after 200 yours?

On 18 May 2022 Lan-Yi Yang successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Chinese organisations increasingly operate across the borders of China, and growing numbers of people from outside China are coming to live there. Professor Frank Pieke believes these movements have a significant effect on central and local government policy in China.

This study presents the first systematic investigation and detailed theoretical analysis of the temporal interpretations of sentences with bare (aspectually unmarked) predicates in Mandarin.

The Academic Language Centre Leiden offers Chinese language courses at three different levels and tailor-made Chinese language courses. The courses are practical in nature: focusing on the use of the language. More information can be found here >

This study examines the mutual intelligibility between all 225 pairs of 15 Chinese dialects, in two main branches, i.e., six Mandarin dialects and nine non-Mandarin (Southern) dialects.

This study will investigate the role of Henri Jean Francois Borel (1869-1933) as an ‘interpreter of China'.

When Henriëtte Hoffman was ten years old she was enthralled by The Last Emperor, a 1987 film about the twelfth and last emperor of the Manchu dynasty. It was an interest that eventually led to a five-month stay in Chengde in China for her Asian Studies research master’s programme. During her time in…

In this research, for the first time a detailed description as well as systematic and comparative analysis of the final particle system in Chinese are provided.

This remarkable statement appears in Yi-Wen Cheng’s dissertation on state monopoly and forms of competition in the Chinese tobacco industry. Cheng presents her conclusions and looks back on her fieldwork. ‘I had to accept a lot of drinks in order to establish a network of contacts.’

Daniel Stumm defended his thesis on 16 April 2020.

This thesis investigates the connection between tonal realization and tone change (tone sandhi) in Wenzhou Chinese, and whether and how such a connection is conditioned by prosodic structure and focus marking.