This collaborative research group (CRG) facilitates the synergies of researchers engaged with African languages and documentation of texts conducted in East Africa, paying particular attention to ‘endangered archives’ and ‘endangered languages’.

It is our goal to deliver a convenient, enjoyable, learning experience that goes beyond the basics. All of the apps are an initiative of the HANDS! Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies at Leiden University, as part of the Language Socialization in Deaf Families project funded by the Leiden University…

On the 27th of February, Marta Morgado successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Marta on this achievement!

Subproject of the ERC project 'Challenging the Liberal World Order from Within: The Invisible History of the United Nations and the Global South'.

Like any language, the natural sign languages (henceforth: SLs) of deaf communities differ from each other in their grammars and lexicons. A growing number of studies indicates that SLs make use of the gestures of hearing speakers to build linguistic structure. This implies that variation and similarities…

What categories exist in the languages of pastoralists? Do these semantic concepts reflect universal or languagespecific tendencies? What (environment? culture?) governs the similarities (or the differences) attested crosslinguistically in cattle colour systems?

This minor equips students from diverse disciplines with the knowledge and skills to critically engage with and strengthen Africa’s role in a globalised world through integrated and sustainable approaches. It builds on the ambitions of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nations’ Agenda 2030,…

The African Studies Centre Leiden’s Research Programme for 2025-2029 is called ‘African Trajectories: Past Dependencies and New Directions’. Building on its former programme, it extends the recognition of Africa’s pivotal role in world affairs. The continent’s global significance has become increasingly…

This book celebrates Maarten Mous, professor of African Linguistics at Leiden University.

How did African actors engage with the idea of Eurafrica?

Africa is fascinating! In today’s globalised world, the continent plays an increasingly important role in international, social and cultural developments. Would you like to explore the many sides of Africa and its impact on the rest of the world, while also learning one of its languages? Our African…

The master’s in African Studies combines world-class scholarship with practice-based learning.

Africa has a population of 1.5 billion people. By 2050, this number is projected to rise to 2.5 billion. The continent’s impact on the global economy, societies but also on the environment, will therefore increase drastically.

Are you thinking about studying African Studies? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Unlike the predominant and excessive focus on the problems of food production and food insecurity in Africa, this project views African culinary tradition as a vibrant and rich cultural heritage, intertwined with language use.

In this project, the hypothesis that language contact crucially impacts the development of spatial grammar and phonology is investigated.

The languages of the Mbam-et-Inoubou District of the Centre Region of Cameroon have a unique position in Bantu linguistics. Being in between

Published by Brill Nijhoff and written by leading experts including national judges, academics and practitioners East African Community Law is the first comparative as well as open access textbook on EAC law. The book provides a key resource for the research, teaching, and practice of EAC law. It also…

African oral literatures, new media and technologies: challenges for research and documentation

How do Central African refugees navigate through uncertainty in a new and hostile environment in the DR Congo?

How do speakers adapt to multilingual contexts?

Study information

In the last couple of decades an ‘animal turn’ has taken place in the social sciences. This has led to a call to study social issues by including non-human animal perspectives. This Collaborative Research Group thinks it's high time that African Studies joins the chorus of minds that try to contribute…

Study information

This dissertation presents a description of Sandawe, a Khoisan language spoken by approximately 60 000 speakers in Dodoma Region, Tanzania.

This project aims at studying the social media reception of African publications as covered by the most important “altmetric” sources.

This dissertation provides a description of the language Tadaksahak as it is spoken by the Idaksahak, a people group of about 30,000 living in the most eastern part of Mali and several isolated places in western Niger.

In the South African context, certain iconic images have been a dominant source for public understandings of historical events. The emphasis given these images tends to overshadow the historical value of other more personal photographic sources – like studio or amateur photography. This project looks…

This project aims at describing the Khoisan languages !Ora (Korana/Griqua) and !Ui of South Africa.

The project Multimedia Research and Documentation of African Oral Genres: Connecting Diasporas and Local Audiences (Director: D.Merolla) focuses on multimedia as technology that allows scholars to share documentation and scientific knowledge with the cultural owners of the collected oral genres.

On the 4th of June, Andreas Joswig successfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Andreas on this great result.

Who is funding African science? How are different African and international funders interacting and contributing to develop scientific research in the continent? Are there potential inadvertent synergies among research funders that can be identified? These and similar questions are at the heart of this…

This study offers a comprehensive but balanced grammatical analysis of Ik (Icetod), Northeast Uganda’s last thriving Kuliak language.

This thesis investigates the grammar of Gaahmg, a Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic language spoken in the Blue Nile Province of North Sudan. The comprehensive description provides an analysis of the phonology, morphology, and syntax. Ten texts of various genre are given to help illustrated the grammar…

Like any language, the natural sign languages of deaf communities differ from each other in their grammars and lexicons. A growing number of studies indicates that sign languages make use of the gestures of hearing speakers to build linguistic structure. This implies that variation and similarities…

On the 16th of September, Bert van Pinxteren successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Bert on this achievement!

When it comes to languages and cultures, Leiden University is the university. The global expertise present places our university at the top. In Leiden and The Hague, we study languages and cultures from all regions of the world and from prehistory to the present day. In this way we create a broad view…

The general objective of this thesis is to determine a typology of verbal derivation in Ethiopian Afro-asiatic languages.

At LUCL, researchers have established the Leiden Hands!Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies.

The present investigation aims at exploring whether the instruction provided at secondary schools in the capital meets the requirements of Communicative Language Teaching and whether the aims of improving learners’ communicative proficiency are met.

The project

On 13 January 2022, Pie Habimana defended the thesis 'Harmful Tax Competition in the East African Community'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. H. Vording and Prof. S.C.W. Douma (UvA).

This dissertation is the first comprehensive description of Makalero, a language spoken by approximately 6,500 speakers in the Iliomar subdistrict, in the south-east of the Republic of East Timor. While previous sources considered it to be a dialect of the larger language Makasae, the present study,…

Across cultures, parents help their children master the social and linguistic codes needed in adult life. Recent research on language socialization found important cross-cultural differences, pointing out the need for more diversity for a full understanding of this process. Deaf communities form…

This thesis presents a detailed description of the phonology, the tone system and the grammar of Liko, a Bantu language spoken by about 70,000 people in the northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It provides numerous examples.

The Leiden HANDS!Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies hosts research activities in the area of sign language linguistics and Deaf studies, with a focus on Africa. In addition to various research projects, we have our Deaf studies lecture Series in International Sign and offer various regular and…

The ultimate aim of the project is to find out whether there are such things as