The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research has awarded dr. Roy van Beek a Veni grant. This grant offers young researchers the possibility to develop their innovative ideas for a period of three or four years.

This five year research project aimed to investigate the role of minor central places in the economy of Roman Central Italy.

The topic of Historical Linguistics and Philology at LUCL is language change in its broadest sense.

Linguist Marian Klamer, associated with Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, is one of the 31 scientists to receive a NWO Vici-grant for her researchproject 'Language as a time machine'.

Lecture, Special Topics in Dialectology (2023)

Reconstructing language history and prehistory in the context of the Indo-European language family.

This thesis develops statistical methods for the analysis of high dimensional data: high dimensional networks reconstruction (Chapters 1-4), incorporation of prior information in networks reconstruction (Chapters 2-4), incorporation of prior knowledge in genetic association studies (Chapter 3).

What if you could watch a CT scan live, instead of analysing the images afterwards? If it is up to the Leiden mathematician Jan-Willem Buurlage, that will soon be a reality. He is developing methods to make the algorithms behind 3D scans faster. Quite a challenge: ‘Just like mathematicians, computers…

What are the immediate and lasting effects of the colonial encounters on indigenous Caribbean cultures and societies and what were the intercultural dynamics that took place during the colonisation processes? How can the study of indigenous Caribbean histories contribute to a more sophisticated awareness…

Despite the field’s general agreement that pyrotechnology had a significant impact on the cultural evolution of humankind, our understanding of the origins and development of fire use and its role in humankind’s cultural evolution is very limited, blurred by strong disagreements over its chronology…

On the 25th of September, Alzenir Mendes Martins de Menezes successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Alzenir on this achievement!

The haplolepideous mosses (Dicranidae) comprise about 4000 species distributed over a wide range of habitats, with great gametophytic and sporophytic morphological variation. Their monophyly is well supported by the results of several molecular phylogenetic studies, which shed light on their relationships…

This dissertation examines how we can reconstruct physical activity by looking at variations in the shape of muscle attachment sites ( ‘entheses’) on the human skeleton. It evaluates two post-medieval contexts; rural Middenbeemster and urban Aalst.

The dissertation focuses on the work of German philosophers Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, founders of critical theory at the Frankfurt School. Specifically, it is a study of the “early” writings, dated between 1925 and 1940, to reconstruct the early stages of critical theory. The thesis argues…

On 10 January 2013, Quentin Bourgeois (Cum Laude) graduated with his thesis on the origin of barrow landscapes. Side Stone Press published his dissertation

This project aims to contribute to the improvement of documentation and archiving standards (conform the FAIR principles) for systematic Mediterranean archaeological field survey.

Landscape history, representation and identity in the Grenada islandscape

For a long time it has been thought that habitation and landscape organisation only changed significantly from the Roman Period onwards. However, many developments were already started long before Julius Caesar's Roman armies arrived in the southern Netherlands.

Numerous beads and pendants of amber, jet and bone have been found in Dutch Neolithic and Bronze Age context, both in settlements and in graves. Because ornaments are personal items, they are closely linked with people’s identity.

PhD defence

The genetic material of currently living Europeans is partly of Neandertal origin. Were our ancestors successful because they were hybridising and interacting with the local populations they encountered when migrating into new places? Reconstructing our evolutionary trajectory is key for rethinking…

A Paleoecological Study of Sittard, Stein, Elsloo and Hienheim

An environmental and palaeo-economic reconstruction.

The proposed research project examines the social role of two monk-bishops in seventh-century Egypt, Abraham of Hermonthis and Pesynthios of Koptos, by reconstructing their social networks on the basis of their archival documents.

On the 16th of February, Yunus Sulistyono successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Yunus on this achievement!

On the 16th of February 2022 Mr. Yunus Sulistyono successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Robert D. McChesney will be the Central Asia Visiting Professor in February-March 2017. Professor McChesney will deliver a guest lecture on 28 February and a master class on 6 March within the Central Asia Initiative at Leiden University.

How does the commodification and re-appreciation of the contiguous uplands of Northeast India, Bangladesh and Burma/Myanmar transform the relationship between these states and their upland citizens?

The Pontine Region Project (PRP) is an on-going archaeological project that aims to study the long-term history of settlement and landscape in the Pontine region

In the master’s programme in Archaeology, you can follow courses on the archaeology of the Mediterranean, deepening your understanding of this fascinating region. From the many faces of ‘Hellenism’ to the early rise of the Roman Republic, to the voyages of European Crusaders in medieval times. The archaeology…

Mission Director: Dr. Carina van den Hoven

In the master’s programme in Archaeology, you can follow courses on the archaeology of West Asia, deepening your understanding of this region’s fascinating past.

The lipid matrix of the skin's stratum corneum plays a key role in the barrier function, which protects the body from desiccation. The lipids that make up this matrix consist of ceramides, cholesterol, and free fatty acids, and can form two coexisting crystalline lamellar phases: the long periodicity…

The Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society focuses on the relationships between past and present, the role of heritage in society, and how heritage conceived broadly can contribute to improving quality of life.

Ancient historians have long been aware that patterns of coin circulation can shed light on levels of economic integration in the Roman Empire. More than forty years ago, Hopkins argued that large amounts of tax money were spent in the frontier provinces and that the non-military provinces recouped…

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami caused immense destruction and over 170,000 deaths in the Indonesian province of Aceh. The disaster spurred large-scale social and political changes in Aceh, including the intensified implementation of shari‘a law and an end to the long separatist conflict. After the Tsunami…

This project investigates the rich linguistic history of the crucial language groups in East Africa and includes a search for words that indicate earlier lost languages. These outcomes, combined with recent archaeological and genetic research, will contribute to a new understanding of East Africa’s…

Practical applications for the reconstruction of the past

This study explores the role of linguistic data in the reconstruction of Dolgan (pre)history by analyzing contact-induced changes and using them to infer information about the nature of the contact settings in which they occurred.

It is late June, and on a windy meadow north of Leiden known as the Vrouw Vennepolder a group of archaeology students just hit the last ice age. Considering this involves manually pushing a ground core to a depth of 10 meters, this is no small feat. Even so, the taking of ground samples in this, at…

Time, Religion and Sacred Discourses of the Ayuuk People

In the light of the fragility of current liberal democracies, this dissertation aims to contribute to rethinking political order by reconstructing Hegel’s account in the Philosophy of Right.

The study of language in change.

On the 12th of May, Rita Barrera Virhuez-Eloranta successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Rita Barrera Virhuez-Eloranta on this achievement.

A Functional Analysis of Pre-Columbian Shell and Stone Artefacts from Anse à la Gourde and Morel, Guadeloupe, FWI

The Assyrian Empire was the first state to achieve durable domination of the Ancient Near East, enduring some seven centuries and, eventually, controlling most of the region. Yet, we know little about how this empire emerged from a relatively minor polity in the Tigris region and how it managed to consolidate…