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?

Chenyu Cheng defended her thesis on 6 April 2017.

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

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).

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

Yi-Wen Cheng defended her thesis on 28 May 2015

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?

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Daniel Stumm defended his thesis on 16 April 2020.

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.’

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.

Today, knowledge is the most crucial element to stimulate organizational competitiveness and economic development.

China is a one-party regime, yet elections are held for the local congresses. PhD candidate Wang Zhongyuan investigated how the Communist Party uses this democratic instrument to strengthen the authoritarian regime. PhD defence 31 January.

This project is a three-year collaborative research between European and Chinese researchers (2015-2018). As a part of the China-Europe “Understanding Population Change” Collaborative Research Initiative, the project utilizes multidisciplinary research methodologies (social and cultural anthropology,…

This project proposes to connect two discourses highly present in contemporary literary criticism in China, as well as on the world literary scene and academic circles: the discussion on emigration literature and the concept of ‘essayness’ derived mainly from (post)modern Western theories of the ess…

How and to what extent the historic house (re-)constructs identity through image-making in China.