The Construction of an Imaginary Acoustic Space, a new work by ACPA PhD Candidate Gabriel Paiuk was premiered last Saturday at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg. The piece was commissioned by the österreichisches ensemble für neue musik for their second yearly concert series.

Legibility in the Age of Signs and Machines offers a compelling reflection on what the notion of legibility entails in a machinic world in which any form of cultural expression – from literary texts, films, artworks and museum exhibits to archives, laws, computer programs and algorithms – necessarily…

The history of sign languages of deaf people is severely understudied. The historical linguistics of sign languages offers a fundamentally new perspective on the history of human languages. This project addresses the dearth of knowledge about historical sign language linguistics through a large-scale…

How do sign languages change and spread over time, and how is this influenced by their transmission history?

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

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.A.G.J. Orrit

Currently the focus of the project is the development of a tool that utilizes dimensionality reduction techniques in order to analyze and interpret the lexical and phonological variation between different sign languages. Additionally, the application of deep learning techniques for the extraction of…

Geometric phases lead to a nontrivial interference result when an electron's different quantum mechanical paths choices encircle a magnetic coil in an Aharonov-Bohm experiment.

On the 23rd of November, Angoua Tano succesfully defended his PhD-thesis and graduated. LUCL congratulates Tano on this great result.

In this dissertation, electrophysiological (EEG) and behavioural measures are used to investigate how allophonic tonal variants and sub-phonemic features are processed during Mandarin and Dutch speech production, visual processing of written words and reading aloud.

Promotor: C.J. ten Cate, Co-promotor: H.W. Slabbekoorn

Do natural soundscapes affect migratory decisions of fishes moving up and down rivers and is this process disturbed by vessel sounds?

In a longitudinal study, Eichengreen and colleagues explored how the certain aspects of emotional intelligence impact the development of adolescents’ mental health, thus identifying potential warning signs and targets for intervention programs. Despite a higher risk for mental health issues and lesser…

Computer scientist Tessa Verhoef received a Best Paper Award during the ‘ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility’. The paper emphasised the need for interdisciplinary research in sign language processing. The authors state that linguists and computer scientists should collaborate with…

LUGO is setting up an online network for students from Leiden University that are interested in sustainability.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed by Professor Corinne Hofman of the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University and Professor Albert Feilzer from the Academic Centre for Dentistry (ACTA), University of Amsterdam and VU University, Amsterdam.

Animal Sciences’ contributions to the Biodiversity & Evolution research theme include evo-devo research, the evolution of cognitive and behavioural traits, and the evolutionary mechanisms of stress adaptation. This research involves both indoor and outdoor studies.

Anthropogenic noise has been shown to affect marine animals in various ways, this may have fitness consequences at individual and population level. This thesis aims to increase insight into the quantification of sound-induced behavioural responses that are relevant to fitness, and into factors that…

On October 31st, Margarita Gulian succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Margarita on this great result.

Promotor: Carel J. ten Cate, Co-Promotor: Hans W. Slabbekoorn

Animal Sciences’ contributions to the Development & Disease research theme include the mechanisms and evolution of embryonic development, the development of cognitive mechanisms, and animal models for understanding mechanisms of human disease.

Recently a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) - Leiden University and the Mulawarman university in Samarinda, Kalimatan province, Indonesia. The MOU will be effective for a period of five years and covers the intention to collaborate in…

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University’s Faculty of Science with the Anton de Kom University in Suriname.

Dr. Mikihiro Moriyama was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1960. He first came to Leiden for a year in 1988, and then stayed from 1992 to 1995 and was back again in June 2003 for his PhD. 'I’d never heard of the Sweat Room until I heard about it at a Leiden alumni meeting in Jakarta. When I visited Leiden in…

Promotor: M.A.G.J. Orrit

This dissertation aims at discussing the nature and the linguistic factors assumed responsible for speech intelligibility problems of Sudanese learners of English.

This thesis investigates the connection between tonal realization and tone change (tone sandhi) in Wenzhou Chinese, and whether and how such a connection is conditioned by prosodic structure and focus marking.

If, as the works of John Cage suggest, there is “no such thing as silence,” then what are the markers that show us we are experiencing silence? - what are the performative cues during musical silence? - what are the auditory and visual bookends of silence in performance, i.e. what anticipates and…

For many deaf Ghanaians, Ghanaian Sign Language is their first language. But for more deaf signers to be able to fully participate in society, more sign language interpreters, deaf school teachers and family members need to be trained. What better way to facilitate this by means of a Ghanaian Sign Language…

An overview of our infrastructure at the SPP division:

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…

Many students who graduated during the pandemic were unable to celebrate their graduation in style. To make up for this, they were given the chance to sign their name in the Sweat Room on Friday 26 May.

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Following a pilot introduced earlier this year, today nine high-ranking universities from across the globe, have signed an international agreement for a virtual exchange whereby they offer their students the option of taking online elective courses and gain credits for their bachelor or master degr…

Nadine Akkerman and her co-applicant David van der Linden (University of Groningen) are thrilled that “Signed, Sealed, & Undelivered 2.0: Revealing Hidden Letters” was awarded an Internationalisation in the Humanities grant from NWO.

Universities will be hit hard by the announced cuts to higher education. Essential disciplines and jobs will disappear. And a fine will be introduced for students who take too long over their studies. This will make studying increasingly difficult for young people, especially if they have to work to…

How can we understand the drum-set – and thus drummer – as technological? How have technological developments affected change in drum-set performance and drum-set construction? Are the relationships between new technologies and the drummer symbiotic, or one way? To what extent are instruments and (reactive)…

How do animals choose their partners? The answer is simple: it’s all about quality. While humans tend to wear clothes that happen to be in fashion, animals do nothing without a reason. Behind beautiful plumage or a deafening roar is only one message: I am in great shape. The evolutionary courtship displays…

Leaders of the ASEAN Member States, Australia, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand have signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement.

Leiden University and four other parties have signed a declaration in which they agree to improve the well-being of students in Leiden. They signed this Declaration on Student Well-Being on 5 April at the Leidsch Besturendiner, a dinner for student associations, universities, local government and bu…

ILS organizes a new lunch seminar series where all researchers from Leiden Law School can present their research. The idea is to hear in a simple and nice way what researchers from other research programs and institutes are working on. During a seminar two or three speakers will present their research.…

The Faculty of Science of Leiden University and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) signed an exchange agreement on Tuesday. This Erasmus+ student mobility agreement allows all students of the Faculty of Science and DTU students to follow courses at both universities from September 2017 on.

On average, the residents of The Hague Southwest (Zuidwest) are poorer, have more health problems and a lower level of education than the residents of other districts in The Hague. With the Southwest Pact, the municipality, the state, residents, entrepreneurs and professional parties are joining forces…

Speech Prosody is the biennial meeting of the Speech Prosody Special Interest Group (SProSIG) of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA).