Ornately decorated head pieces and jewellery, images of imposing mosques and photos of local people. The 'Splendours of the Silk Roads' exhibition depicts life and different cultures along this important trade route.

Conference

According to Russian propaganda Ukrainians are Nazis and people from the West are Satanists. Egbert Fortuin thinks we should take this propaganda seriously.

They first entered the Academy Building fifty to sixty years ago. On 28 March, they were back for an afternoon: the members of the Dr Pfiffikus debating society of the German Studies programme. Former chair Hans van der Veen looks back on his student days.

Victoria Nyst's love for sign language was sparked when she accidentally ended up at a deaf school while studying African linguistics. The university lecturer has since been awarded a Vici grant to research the history of these languages.

Professor of Indonesian and Javanese Language and Culture Ben Arps has received the Anugerah Kebudayaan Indonesia (Indonesian Culture Award) from the Indonesian ambassador for his services to the field.

Professor Sjef Barbiers is leaving his job as scientific director of LUCL for the position of scientific director of the Institute for the Dutch Language (INT) from 1 September.

It was while wearing clogs at a Dutch theme park in Japan that Cindy Heijdra really got to know Japan. Over 20 years later, she is studying again: to be a primary school teacher.

On 26 September – the European Day of Languages – we will shine a spotlight on our rich array of language and culture programmes. The faculty is organising the Evening of Languages, and we warmly invite you to join us. With an inspiring event we offer the public the opportunity to discover your area…

The Academic Language Centre (ATC) is one of the cornerstones of Leiden University. Director Gea Hakker explains how this organisation is providing quality (online) language courses and meeting new demands.

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?

Fifteen hundred years ago, the north-west of what we now call China was a jumble of peoples. How did those Indians, Khotanese and Tocharians influence each other and each other's languages? Associate professor Michaël Peyrot has been awarded an ERC grant of almost two million euros to unravel this 'web…

Professor Remco Breuker plays the leading role in the new documentary ‘Big in Korea’. Over three Sunday evenings, viewers can follow his journey through South Korea. How has the country developed over the past decades? And what is the impact of last December's failed coup?

Festival

Three researchers from Leiden University have been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council. The subsidy will allow the researchers to set up their own projects and put together a research team.

In September, the Una Europa ELSEA project, Enhancing Scholarship in Eastern Africa, officially started. Now that the project has been running for a couple of months, it’s high time to check in and see how the project is going.

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.

Where does Dutch come from? Newly appointed Professor Alwin Kloekhorst looks for an answer to that question in millennia-old languages from Anatolia, the Asian part of present-day Turkey. 'A new interpretation in one of the Anatolian languages can have consequences for dozens of other languages.'

In a well-filled Telders Auditorium, university learners of Korean competed with each other to see who speaks Korean the best.

Master’s student Anna van Ark has landed her dream internship at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. For three months, she’ll be shadowing the curator and conducting research on Japanese prints for the acquisitions team.

According to Nivja de Jong, second language acquisition is 'the most fascinating subject in linguistics'. As a recently appointed professor of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy, she studies the question of how best to teach people a new language.

Debate, LUCL Fireside Chat

Author and political scientist Mounir Samuel has spent recent years delving into the many ways that language can exclude people and bring them together.

Sometimes fascination can lead to in-depth research. Such is the case with Wahyu Widodo, who came across the Islamic Walikutuban ritual in Java in 2019, on which he subsequently wrote his PhD dissertation. Widodo: ‘Besides community, it also breeds political loyalty’

Now that it is becoming increasingly easy to digitise texts, it seems almost obvious to do that with everything that has ever been written. University lecturer Verena Meyer thinks that is too simplistic. ‘We need to look more closely at the political and cultural effects of digitisation.’

Roman philosopher and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero is still used as an intellectual example by politicians and speech writers today. But, he did not go unchallenged in his own day, as a statesman in particular. Classicist Leanne Jansen conducted research into how classical historians judged Cicero’s…

On Wednesday, 21 February, a diverse group of students, staff, and representatives from 21 embassies gathered in The Hague for International Mother Language Day. Under the banner of 'a bit of fun and many serious topics,' language took centre stage.

The earlier you introduce children to a language, the sooner they can be captivated by it and see that there is more than just Dutch and English. That is the basis for the language lessons for primary education that Alisa van de Haar, university lecturer of French, collaborated on. ‘Deans from different…

In a conversation, you provide all sorts of information to the listener. For example, you can indicate that you're certain about something, or that you heard it through someone else. Associate Professor Jenneke van der Wal has been awarded a Vici grant to investigate whether the way people do this is…

Language can be a time machine: we can learn from ancient texts how our ancestors interacted with the world around them. But can language also teach us something about people whose language has been lost? PhD candidate Anthony Jakob investigated whether the languages of prehistoric populations left…