Conference

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

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.

Lecture

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.

Sara Brandellero is a University Lecturer in Brazilian Literature and Culture at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). Her teaching and research focus on Brazil, also in global perspective, especially in its connections with the Portuguese-speaking world, Europe and Latin America.…

Suzan Verberne is professor of Natural Language Processing (NLP) at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science at Leiden University and a member of the interdisciplinary research programme Society, Artificial Intelligence and Life Sciences (SAILS).

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.

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.

Elsa Charléty is lecturer of Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden University and completing a PhD in Comparative Literature at Brown University and the Sorbonne University in Paris.

Andrea Malaya M. Ragragio is a PhD candidate within the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden University.

Elmer Veldkamp is an anthropologist of Korea and Japan, who focuses on the collective and individual processes by means of which people make sense of changes and developments in their everyday lives.

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.

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?

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.

Paul van Els is a University Lecturer at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies.

Marcello Bonsangue is scientific director, coordinator for the international students and relationships and member of the Scientific Council of LIACS.

(Anastasia) Chi Zhang is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Archaeology

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.

Festival

Patrick Degryse is a guest staff member at the Leiden Faculty of Archaeology, as well as full professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

Dennis Bos is University Lecturer at the Institute for History.

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

Willem van Wijk is a PhD-candidate and lecturer at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University.

Fitri Murfianti is a PhD Candidate at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University.

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.'

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.

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.

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.