Words change their forms and meanings over time. The linguistic prehistory of Indo-European, the language family that includes English, Latin and Persian, is successfully reconstructed by comparative linguists. Yet, the etymology of abstract vocabulary remains a major challenge, as we lack good grip on the multiform pathways of semantic change. This project reconstructs the etymological origins of words for concepts related to Truth and Falsehood in the oldest Indo-European languages by taking into account metaphors involving motion through space. It innovatively combines methods from two subdisciplines, Cognitive Linguistics and Comparative Linguistics, and contributes to our understanding of the language-culture-cognition nexus.

The present-day anglicization was preceded by many centuries of supposed frenchification. Surprisingly, the frenchification between 1500 and 1900 has hardly been studied from a linguistic perspective. In this book, we analyze the influence of French on Dutch, the language choices made by multilingual individuals, for example in their letters and diaries, as well as the societal debates around this malign frenchification.

This project develops a language support program for students with reading difficulties (LD/dyslexia) who are learning Korean or Japanese as a second language to provide them with language-specific tools to achieve successful reading and learning. This will contribute to a more inclusive and supportive university-level language program that can level out unequal learning opportunities because of reading difficulties.

This project will shed radically new light on Roman urban history. By focusing on the impact of economic growth on urbanism and city life, it will fill a significant gap in our knowledge of the Roman world and connect two debates that play a key role in current Roman scholarship but barely engage with each other: the Roman urbanism debate and the Roman economy debate. "Building tabernae" starts from the idea that one of the best ways to understand the history of Roman cities is by investigating the development of urban commercial landscapes. Contrary to cities in all earlier societies, Roman cities were dominated by large quantities of shops along their streets. These shops, in literature usually referred to as "tabernae", appeared in increasing numbers from the second century BCE onwards, transforming the outlook and dynamics of urban thoroughfares and neighbourhoods. During the late Republic and early empire, investment in tabernae increased markedly in scale and ambition. This all points to fundamental changes in Roman urban economies, and shows how such changes had a deep impact on the physical fabric and social characteristics of Roman cities. However, scholars have not yet recognized the significance of these unique developments. Focusing on Roman Italy, this project will explore how Roman prosperity and growth fostered commercial investment on an ever larger scale, and how this completely transformed urban space, urban commerce and urban society. This approach proposed here integrates archaeological and textual evidence, and operates on the interface between social and economic history. It will be the first to explore, in a Roman context, how economic investment shaped and transformed urban life. In other words, rather than emphasizing how society shaped the economy, as is still common among Roman scholars, this innovative project will explore how the economy shaped society.

Digital Humanities for Digital Natives (DHDN) creates an online learning environment for high-enrollment cross-program learning of Digital Humanities (DH). An explicit formalization of DH knowledge and skills serves students by articulating their digital skills to their future employers and better communicate “Humanities Matter” to a larger community. Although a DH minor is available in Leiden, it requires substantial commitment and can only handle a limited number of students. DHDN will use the Non-Linear Learning (NLL) approach to course design to allow students from different technical abilities and academic backgrounds maximize their learning. Improvement in this area contributes to the ambition “Closer alignment with the labour market and society” of the national strategic agenda for higher education and research: Fit for the future. While offering a new DH course in each program in Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) undermines efforts to reduce workload and consolidate course offerings, and requiring a DH component in individual courses is cumbersome and may require invasive redesign of many courses, DHDN creates an attractive cost-effective alternative whereby education programs can formalize DH learning outcomes recommended by the Faculty. The DHDN infrastructure will be used to implement a course accessible to students in Middle Eastern Studies, Asia Studies, and International Studies in Leiden. It will be designed as flexible and expandable to other area programs offered by LIAS.