What is the cost of visual complexity? This dissertation sets out to determine the effect of the complexity of word formation on the legibility of Arabic and the role that vocalization plays in reading.

In August 2006 a young American called Raed Jarrar discovered Arabic’s potency. Detained by four guards at New York’s Kennedy Airport for wearing a T-shirt with “We will not be silent” on it in Arabic, he was told that he may as well be entering a bank with a T-shirt announcing “I am a robber.”

Library of Arabic Literature: Critical Edition and Translation of Ibn Qutaybah’s Faḍl al-ʿArab.

In this research project Nizar Rohana analyzes and reflects on taqsīm recordings by two leading figures of ‘ūd playing who were pillars of modern Arabic music, namely the Egyptians Muḥammad al-Qaṣabjī (1898-1964) and Riyāḍ al-Sunbāṭī (1906-1981).

We offer General Language Courses and custom-made language training.

Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

This book contains the first three Leiden-Aramco Lectures on Arabic Language and Culture delivered by Petra Sijpesteijn, James E. Montgomery and Geert Jan van Gelder.

Knowledge and culture subproject 1:

Arabic studies in particular has a special place at Leiden, since it was the first university outside of the Middle-East where a chair for Arabic studies was established.

What are the critical elements in sonic materialization of fixed media electroacoustic music and how can these parameters be classified? How would interpretation be defined in performing fixed media music? What are the creative and new ways of presenting fixed media music by incorporating all the presentation…

This project investigates generational dialogues about the legacies and memories of labour, student and communist movements in the Arab world. The research focuses in particular on video and installation art by young makers born in the 1980s that address the generation of their parents and the events…

The institute offers private Arabic tutoring to the general public, taught by the NVIC staff teachers. We offer classes in both Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, on all levels.

If you are working or studying in Egypt, but find it hard to communicate in spoken Egyptian Arabic, then this course is perfect for you. In ten weeks’ time, you will be equipped with the communicative skills in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic needed to engage in basic social interactions. Scheduled in the…

Throughout the year, the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo organises Arabic Language courses for the general public. Please note: due to the Corona pandemic, Arabic group courses have been suspended for the time being,

The Institute organises Arabic courses for universities, but also for companies, international organisations and individuals.

How do we experience electronic music? How does electronic music operate on perceptual, cognitive and affective levels? What are the common concepts activated in the listener’s mind when listening to electronic music? Why and how are these concepts activated?

From The Cognitive Continuum of Electronic Music:

Arabic and its Alternatives discusses the complicated relationships between language, religion and communal identities in the Middle East in the period following the First World War.

The Leiden Academic Course Center offers a large variety of short and longer music courses. The music category includes various Singing courses, but also courses such as African percussion and Musical Workshop. A number of courses are offered at different levels. At the end of the course it is possible…

The music studio is a multipurpose room measuring 9.4 x 8.9 m, with marmoleum on the floor and 40 chairs. Music system and piano available.

This thesis investigated how microphones and loudspeakers could become musical instruments.

Music as a multi-faceted and integral part of our society.

Did you know that Arabic was for centuries the lingua franca in an area stretching from the south of Spain to the Chinese border? And that the Middle East under Muslim rule was the world’s beating heart of trade, but also of science and scholarship?

In the field of Western art music, improvisation has become a much discussed topic. In this interdisciplinary study I argue that in this context, improvisation is not to be seen as a quasi-autonomous skill or art form, but as an aspect of music-making in general.

Music can affect how we feel, think, and behave. But how do we learn about the specifics of people's responses to music so that we can apply this to health and well-being? By looking at characteristics of the music, as well as the differences between listeners, we hope to better understand as well as…

Research projects which are assisted by the NVIC in the field of Arabic studies.

How can classical music be restructured while still retaining the core of what we love about its repertoire and our ability to share it with audiences, while coming up with ways of making it financially viable.

Interpretation and Composition Outside the Work Concept

The edited volume 'Arabic in context: celebrating 400 years of Arabic at Leiden University' edited by Ahmad Al-Jallad is out. The volume contains the contributions to the 2013 conference with the same title, held at Leiden University and was published as part of Brill's the Studies in Semitics Language…

The aim of this research is to define the relationship between sources of articulation for different kinds of instrument in the period between the beginning of XVI century (first extant indications) and the end of XVIII century.

The Al-Babtain centre is a joint-project between Leiden University and the AbdulAziz Saud Al-Babtain Cultural Foundation.

From Sunday 11 till Tuesday 20 June 2023, NVIC organizes a new edition of the TAFL course. This intensive, interactive course is developed for (future) teachers of Arabic. It addresses both the practical aspects of teaching Arabic as a foreign language as well as the underlying linguistic and cognitive…

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

From the 1920s on, popular music in Southeast Asia was a mass-audience phenomenon that drew new connections between indigenous musical styles and contemporary genres from elsewhere to create new, hybrid forms. This book presents a cultural history of modern Southeast Asia from the vantage point of popular…

Developing new methods for performing improvised music

This thesis proposes multiple paths towards the development of a performance practice in Computer Music.

Composer Paul Craenen (1972) is actually a pianist, but as part of his PhD ceremony, he performed a composition on PVC pipes. Craenen studies the position and role of the body in music. ‘I am interested in what precedes the resulting sound’.

Tijmen Baarda defended his PhD thesis on 8 January 2020