Two thousand years ago, the Middle East found itself caught between the rise of the Roman Empire in the west and the Parthian Empire in the east. PhD candidate Nolke Tasma has been awarded an NWO grant to investigate how local inhabitants experienced these changes.

Alette Vonk holds an MA in Development Sociology and Practitioner certificates in the fields of Intercultural Management, Organizational Development, Organizational Culture and NLP. She has more than 25 years experience in both organizational and community development in international settings: she…

Surya Suryadi is a Lecturer at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies.

Language is omnipresent: when you talk, app or meet in Teams. Understanding how we communicate with one another and what communication does to us is essential. In her inaugural lecture, Nivja de Jong will call to redress the balance between the sciences and the humanities.

Yuchen Lian defended her thesis on AI and language evolution at Leiden University.

Ksenia Fedorova is a university lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. Within the Modern and Contemporary cluster of LUCAS, she is affiliated with the Environmental Humanities sub-cluster.

Annelies Schulte Nordholt is a University Lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

Kate Bellamy is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Linguistics. Her research focuses on P’urhepecha, a language isolate spoken in Michoacán, Mexico. She is particularly interested in its lexical semantics and morphological composition, as well as how it is used – and varies – in language contact…

Dr Aktürk Hauser is Assistant Professor at the Department of Heritage and Society.

Marc Buijnsters is a Lecturer at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies.

Jürgen Zangenberg is professor for the History and Culture of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity.

LUCL member prof. dr. Holger Gzella has been elected as member of the Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe).

Rik van Gijn is professor by special appointment of ethnolinguistic vitality and diversity in the world at the Centre for Linguistics. His interests focus on the indigenous languages of South America, and in particular on the question of the historical development of the stunning linguistic diversity…

Lecture, Book Launch

As Professor of African Linguistics, Nancy Kula increases our knowledge of variation across languages. Her inaugural lecture is on Monday 23 March.

Aafje de Roest turned her hobby into her job. She went from a teenager who enjoyed listening to hip hop music to a PhD candidate who focuses on how Dutch hip hop music shapes the cultural identity of young people in the Netherlands.

Bernhard Rieger is a Professor of European History at the institute for History.

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.

Like spoken languages, sign languages evolve organically and do not always have the same origin. This produces different ways of communication and annotation. Manolis Fragkiadakis wrote his PhD thesis on this.

Paz Gonzalez Gonzalez is a University Lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics.

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and researchers talk about their passion for their field. Professor of African Linguistics Maarten Mous explains the importance of hearing your language at school.

Festival, Graduation Ceremony

Dr. Mahmood Yenkimaleki is a guest researcher in LUCL at Leiden University, The Netherlands.

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.

The central question of my research is: Which syntactic properties do all languages have in common, which properties are variable and which associations are there between these syntactic variables? The goal of this research is to contribute to a theory of natural language that explains the range and…

Ab de Jong is Professor of Comparative Religion at the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Religion (LUCSoR), Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS).

I have always been fascinated by the cultural and linguistic interaction between Arabic speakers and Bantu speakers in Eastern Africa up to Southern Somalia as well as by the Islamic influences and their impact along the East African coast. These interests motivated my choice of studying Classical Arabic…