Maarten Mous, Professor of African Linguistics at Leiden University, looks back on the 50th edition of the Colloquium of African Languages and Linguistics (CALL) and explains why this birthday was a celebration like no other.

A large interdisciplinary NWO research project attempted to discover the cognitive origin of the human ability to learn linguistic rules. This is not so simple, according to linguist Andreea Geambaşu and her colleagues. PhD defence on 11 December.

New and reemerging infectious diseases call for innovative and efficient control strategies of which fast vaccine design and development represent an important element.

How can novel bioimaging technologies and vertebrate model species be used to gain a better understanding of early cellular behaviours with the ultimate goal to increase our understanding of human development and disease processes?

This dissertation provides a description of Makonde, a Bantu language spoken in Tanzania.

Wrenching poverty, global inequality, violent political and ethnic strife, deadlocked, unresponsive or even collapsing governments, growing dissatisfaction with democracy and missed opportunities for innovation – these are merely some of the challenges of governance and development with which our programme…

What is lobbying? How does it work? Starting February 2 Leiden University professors, Jaap de Jong and Arco Timmermans will introduce high school students to the language of lobbying. Digital classes together with a teacher's kit will be available in Dutch from February.

What are the key issues in conducting LCA of bioenergy systems? What is the environmental sustainability status of second generation bioethanol? How much would the final results of biogenic carbon neutrality assumptions deviate from the true values based on a complete inventory? How to assess the impact…

This project seeks to close the gap between the three main players in the field of prescriptivism: the linguists themselves, the prescriptivists (as writers of usage guides) and those who depend upon such manuals.

Lexicographical description of Greek; production of Greek-Dutch dictionary

On 30 September 2021 Babette van Hazebroek defended her thesis 'Understanding delinquent development from childhood into early adulthood in early onset offenders'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.W. de Keijser and Prof. A. Popma (VUMC).

This study investigates the perception and production of emotional prosody by native and non-native listeners and speakers, i.e. Chinese and Dutch listeners and speakers, including Dutch L2 learners of Chinese.

Important note: upon careful consideration, we have decided to resume our Dutch language courses.

What are the social, cultural, and/or educational consequences and challenges linked to the introduction of the international bachelor's programme in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology?

On 25 January 2024 H.J. Pak successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

In this opinion article published in World Development, the authors present five research and policy priorities. While it is clear that ‘pluriversal’ designs need to guide the way forward (Kothari et al 2019), defining a set of key pillars can provide direction and purpose across this pluriversality.…

One of the major limitations in culturing complex tissues or organs is the lack of vascularization in the cultured tissue. Development of a functional capillary bed could overcome this problem.

The predication of the effect (efficiency and toxicity) of a drug in a patient is very important in (i) clinical decision support and (ii) the development of novel drug treatments.

How can we culture an artificial vascular network to support tissue development ex vivo?

Promotor: Jan van der Greef; Co-promotors: Mei Wang; Eduard van Wijk

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…

Suzan Verberne has been appointed professor of Natural Language Processing at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) from 1 October. Verberne has been at LIACS since 2017 as group leader of the Text Mining and Retrieval group.

The book on Turkey. A Modern History written by Professor Erik-Jan Zürcher, Professor of Turkish Studies, is now available in nine different languages. Arabic and Polish versions have now been published.

The study of orchid flowers, fruits, and inflorescences is crucial due to the remarkable diversity of orchid species and their unique adaptations to pollinators and seed dispersers. However, our understanding of the evolution and development of these organs within the orchid family remains limited.

Promotor: J.A. Bouwstra Co-promotor: A. El Ghalbzouri

Promotor: B. van de Water, Co-Promotores: J.H.N. Meerman, F.J. Verbeek

Low-carbon (LE) technologies have a significant potential to reduce the total carbon emissions in China.

In this dissertation, a corpus of 595 seventeenth-century letters (mainly private ones) written between 1664 and 1672 is examined from a sociolinguistic perspective.

Promotors: Prof.dr. E. Bouwman, Prof.dr. E. Drent

During the past year online meetings and lectures have become a firm feature of university life. One of the highlights of the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics’ online activities has been the online seminar series ‘Language policy and practices in the Global North and South’ organised by guest…

This study looks at the diverse phonological systems found within Central Chadic, and reconstructs the phonological system of their ancestor language.

This thesis aims to address offshore wind energy (OWE)-related environmental impacts.

This thesis reports on the influence of induction programs on beginning teachers’ well-being and professional development, and the essential characteristics of an induction program. These topics were explored by means of an interview study and large scale survey study.

We aim to gain a better understanding of the natural disease progression of ALS in order to improve clinical trial design and analysis and to support drug discovery and clinical development of new drugs.

Miriam Cohen defended her PhD dissertation entitled “Reparations for International Crimes and the development of a Civil Dimension of International Criminal Justice” on 28 June 2017. She wrote her thesis under the supervision of Professor L.J. van den Herik and Professor C. Stahn.

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

The Voices of Africa platform is ten years old and has just recently won the annual popularisation prize of the Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics (LOT). High time for a chat with Jenneke van der Wal, Maarten Mous and Nina van der Vlugt about the importance of the platform and plans for the…

This project examines the intriguing relationship between Greek literary criticism and Latin literature in Rome (first centuries BC and AD).

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.'

How can zebrafish research help to understand and fight human cancer?

Supervisor: P.J.J. Hooykaas Co-Supervisor: R. Offringa

Promotor: J.N. Kok, Co-promotor: F.J. Verbeek

This thesis describes the design and development of subunit‐selective inhibitors of particular catalytically active subunits of human constitutive proteasomes and immunoproteasomes.

The new CML minor Sustainable Development started on Monday 7 September 2009 with an official opening by the Vice-Rector Prof. Rietje van Dam.

This article discusses the coevolution of several species of the tribe Phyllantheae and moths of the genus Epicephala.

How are digital risk-profiles developed and used in practice?