Lecture, LUCL Colloquium

Data Science & AI student Nataliia Bagan combines a passion for mathematics, language, and artificial intelligence. Her exceptional bachelor’s thesis on improving reasoning in large language models earned her a nomination for the Leiden Science Young Talent Award 2025.

Spycraft, by professor Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman has been selected by History Today and The Economist as one of 2024’s best books

The faculties Humanities and Science have made a page with extra information on OER.

Alumni event, Lustrum

Degree programmes must be assessed and accredited once every six years to ensure they provide a high standard of education. You may be asked to speak to the assessment panel.

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.

The largest international conference on English historical linguistics is coming to Leiden. From 7 June to 11 June 2021, the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) organises the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL-21). Due to Covid measures, the conference takes…

Lecture, Language and the Human Past

When a foreign book is translated for the Chinese market, there is a good chance that not all of the text will make it into the new version. With an NWO XS grant, university lecturer Svetlana Kharchenkova will investigate how foreign authors deal with this censorship.

Online, hybrid, on campus... It was an unpredictable year, also for the Faculty of Humanities. Luckily, there were also non-corona related stories. Let's review 2021 with this list of the most-read news articles per month.

On February 10, 2026, emeritus Professor Dr. Takamitsu Muraoka (1938–2026) passed away, one day after celebrating his 88th birthday. From 1991 until his retirement in 2003, he held the chair of Hebrew Language and Culture, Israelite Antiquities, and Ugaritic at Leiden University.

Gijsbert Rutten has been appointed professor of Dutch Linguistics with effect from 1 July. In this position, he will focus on language change and language variation, with a particular emphasis on historical sociolinguistics.

Can we truly connect with each other through video calls? Yes, according to a recent study. Psychologists found our bodies synchronise almost as much in digital conversations as in real life. But this doesn’t mean we should skip in-person meetings altogether, says researcher Fabiola Diana.

Aprovechando la conferencia Spinoza, Nanne Timmer, Universitair Docent LUCAS, le hace unas preguntas a la escritora y Premio Reina Sofía Gioconda Belli sobre su poesía y su lugar en la Nicaragua de hoy.

Last week, the sad news reached us that Dr Jan Schmidt passed away on 11 August 2025. We wish his partner, friends and family strength and comfort as they cope with this loss. Jan Schmidt will be remembered as one of the most prolific and learned scholars in the field of Ottoman codicology and histo…

Lecture, Sign Languages & Deaf People

Translating poetry is notoriously difficult. Translating poetry in such a way that the humorous nature of a poem remains intact is even more difficult, even though it is precisely jokes that can encourage children to read more, notes PhD candidate Alice Morta.

The city centre of Leiden is covered in them: wall poems. When roaming around, you come across poetry written in the Latin alphabet, but also in scripts that might be more difficult to understand for the average person living in Leiden. In a new series of videos, Tijmen Pronk talks more about this.

Professor Claartje Levelt, together with Paula Fikkert (Radboud University), has received an NWO Open Competition grant for research into the development of word production in toddlers.

The number of books by U.S. authors released in China has drastically decreased in recent years. Assistant professor Svetlana Kharchenkova wrote an article about this for the Diplomat.

Professor emeritus Frank Pieke speaks on BBC and BBC Vietnamese about Xi Jinpings ongoing fight against corruption within the Communist Party.

PhD candidate Sulakhana de Mel discusses the link between geography, trade and food in Sri Lankan newspaper The Examiner.

The working language at Leiden University is Dutch. As not all employees at the University have the same level of Dutch language skills, there are various ways of working together.

Lecture

Three Humanities lecturers received the Senior Teaching Qualification (SKO) this year. Lecturer Hossam Ahmed is one of them. What does he think makes for good education?

Nadine Akkerman, associate professor of early modern English literature is receiving the Dr Hendrik Muller Prize 2021 for her work.

Cornald Maas was able to ‘pioneer’ in Leiden. This Dutch Studies graduate, presenter, programme maker and publicist combined an active student life with studying hard.

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our esteemed colleague Laura van Hoof on Wednesday 1 October, after an illness of more than a year. An alumnus of Leiden University, she worked in the Student Affairs department of the Faculty of Humanities, as the education coordinator for the…

The Executive Board has appointed Ineke Sluiter and Arnold Tukker as distinguished professors at Leiden University.

Several Spanish media paid attention to associate professor Eric Storm’s new book Nationalism.

Leiden University has a style guide to ensure consistency across all of its publications. It also has a Terminology List with the preferred translations of terms used within Leiden University and the academic world.

PhD defence

Full lecture halls, a crowded information fair and a queue for coffee in the basement: during the Open Day, the Faculty of Humanities was inundated with curious prospective students.

Sang-Ah Yoo is a freelance journalist and is following the lateral entry programme Dutch at ICLON Leiden University. She enjoys showing students what language can do for you.

Lecture, LUCL Colloquium

What is writing? And what looks like writing, but isn’t? The Pseudo or Don’t pop-up exhibition explores the boundaries of scripts. The exhibition will run at Oude UB from 9 to 26 October.

Five thousand years before the common era (BCE), Proto-Indo-European, the mother of many languages that are spoken today in Europe, Central Asia and South Asia, originated in eastern Europe. PhD candidate Axel Palmér has combined a 175-year-old hypothesis with new techniques to demonstrate how descendants…

Lecture, Sociolinguistics & Discourse Studies Series