News
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Award for a method that can create even better algorithms12 August 2025She develops algorithms that outperform leading optimization techniques and can be applied in many fields. For this work, Niki van Stein and her team ...
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After sixty years, German alumni are back in Leiden: ‘I presided over the meeting with a revolver’07 April 2025They 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 debati...
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Colours and symbols to support dyslexic students28 February 2025In the very first Korean class that teacher Eun-ju Kim taught, there were already students with dyslexia. With a background in special education and c...
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‘Humans are storytellers’: the power of stories in language development of children and AI models24 January 2025What do ten-year-old children and chatbots have in common? PhD researcher Bram van Dijk studied language development in both children and AI language ...
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Nadine Akkerman: ‘It’s an incredible feeling, rewriting such an iconic event from a country’s history.’16 July 2024Ever since Nadine Akkerman, Professor of Early Modern Literature & Culture, came across a woman spy in her research, secret agents have kept cropping ...
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Vici for Victoria Nyst: 'The history of sign language contributes to identity formation'14 May 2024Victoria Nyst's love for sign language was sparked when she accidentally ended up at a deaf school while studying African linguistics. The university ...
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In search of hidden voices06 May 2024Nearly all documents from the 16th and 17th centuries were written by more than one person but attributed to only one author. Professor Nadine Akkerma...
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‘Language is part of your identity; we need to teach children this from an early age’04 March 2024Language is omnipresent: when you talk, app or meet in Teams. Understanding how we communicate with one another and what communication does to us is e...
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New professor Alwin Kloekhorst: 'The origin of your language also says something about you'08 February 2024Where does Dutch come from? Newly appointed Professor Alwin Kloekhorst looks for an answer to that question in millennia-old languages from Anatolia, ...
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Children's stories as a window to investigate empathy17 January 2024Researcher Max van Duijn and PhD student Bram van Dijk apply language models to stories told by children to investigate empathy. For this research, th...
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Meet Dr. Rebekka Grossmann, LJSA Member20 November 2023Before coming to Leiden, Dr. Grossmann worked at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She first did her PhD and then she joined the Franz Rosenzweig Mi...
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Exhibition on scripts at Oude UB: Pseudo or Don’t09 October 2023What is writing? And what looks like writing, but isn’t? The Pseudo or Don’t pop-up exhibition explores the boundaries of scripts. The exhibition will...
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What influence did French really have on Dutch?15 May 2023Just as some people today dislike English influences on the Dutch language, in early modern times people also criticised the Frenchification of Dutch....
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Where does this Inca language come from? Verb conjugations should provide some answers02 May 2023When university lecturer Martine Bruil was on exchange in Ecuador as a teenager, she fell in love with the area's ancient languages. Now, more than 20...
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How do people best learn a language? 'It's incredible what you do when you talk'17 April 2023According to Nivja de Jong, second language acquisition is 'the most fascinating subject in linguistics'. As a recently appointed professor of Second ...