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

The ability to create objects and structures with our hands has been essential to human development. This ability is something modern society is at risk of losing. Leiden archaeologists gather knowledge about ancient processes of ‘making and creating’ over the centuries, knowledge that helps our current…

A Paleoecological Study of Sittard, Stein, Elsloo and Hienheim

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…

PhD defence

Update : March 2020 Directors: Dr. Lara Weiss and Dr. Christian Greco Deputy directors: Dr. Daniel Soliman and Dr. Paolo Del Vesco

Reconstructing language history of individual languages (English, Italian, Russian) or language branches (Germanic, Slavic) by studying ancient written sources.

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'.

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…

On December 5th, Matthias Pache succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Matthias on this great result.

This paper explores the historicity of state and Buddhist accounts of the monk Xuanzang 玄奘 (602-664), arguing that in the reconstruction of Xuanzang’s life and career we ought to utilize the former to help adjudicate the latter.

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F. Smets

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 aim of this research area is to be able to predict human drug response on the basis of mathematical models that are developed using preclinical experiments and prior knowledge.

Bacteria caught red-handed, deeply frozen just as they were about to cause Lyme’s disease. Ariane Briegel is wildly enthusiastic about the wonders she observes thanks to three elements: a freezing technique, a camera-equipped microscope, and AI. ‘It’s fascinating. Every single cell is different.’

A palaeogeographical reconstruction of Bronze Age West-Frisia (2000-800 BC)

The project Deconstructing Stability aims to improve reconstructions of late prehistoric landscapes and predictive models for the purpose of archaeological heritage management.

Lecture

Lecture, Digital Archaeology Group

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…

In donut-shaped buildings, particle accelerators take super-detailed X-ray images. Yet those images are not good enough to learn how to drive on hydrogen for example. Mathematics PhD student Allard Hendriksen has developed an algorithm that improves the images without having to learn from data from…

Lecture, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars

PhD defence

This dissertation offers a reconstruction of the propositional contents of the writings of Karl Popper, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt while bringing these into discussion with their performative meanings, such as polemical forms of reasoning, analogical and metaphorical uses of language, and hidden…

This dissertation investigates A'-dependencies in Standard German, Zurich German and Dutch where the dislocated constituent is indirectly, i.e. not transformationally, related to the position where it is interpreted. The analysis is carried out within the Principles & Parameters framework.

How did a circle of Soviet artists and writers virtually unknown until perestroika turn into Russia’s most influential contemporary art movement? This book reconstructs the cultural history and canonization of a group of painters and poets known as the Moscow conceptualists, who paradoxically did not…

Much attention has been paid to the exchange of objects, ideas, and people in the Caribbean. Networks of interaction connected local communities across pan-regional scales, shaping indigenous socio-political integrations and their responses in colonial situations. This work examines the poorly understood…

In this thesis, we extend the concept of null models as canonical ensembles of multi-graphs with given constraints and present new metrics able to characterize real-world layered systems based on their correlation patterns.

Almost all languages of Europe and of a large part of western Asia belong to a single language family, which is called Indo-European, and which includes modern languages like English, Dutch, Russian, Farsi, but also ancient ones like Ancient Greek, Latin, Hittite and Sanskrit.

Considering Mesoamerican Precolonial books as material objects

Tracking early human behaviour through plant processing and -exploitation.

The research programme Descriptive and Comparative Linguistics brings together LUCL researchers who focus mainly on descriptive and comparative linguistics.

Symposium on the extraordinary excavations at Middenbeemster

PhD defence

Investigating domestic crafts and subsistence activities through experiments and material analysis

The following dissertation reconstructs Paul Natorp's philosophical psychology. It argues that psychology's main object is the lived experience of concrete subjects, understood as a transcendental structure of logical-reflexive conditions for the recognition, appropriation, and evaluation of objective…

Lecture, Anthropological & Descriptive Linguistics Discussion Group

Erik Danen is looking at how to inhibit tumours that do not respond well to medicine – and he is making some headway. The Professor of Cancer Drug Target Discovery studies the interaction between tumour cells and their surroundings. Inaugural lecture on Friday 10 May.

PhD defence

PhD defence

PhD defence

Research framework CIAS

PhD defence

Wouter Eekhout, our data magician, came in 3d place in the ‪#‎LinksSDGs‬ - Natural language processing and data visualization challenge.

The central question of this thesis is: What drives late Middle Paleolithic stone artifact variability? In its attempt to answer this question, this thesis is a contribution to understanding variability within and between late Middle Paleolithic assemblages of the European Plain.