African oral literatures, new media and technologies: challenges for research and documentation

The project Multimedia Research and Documentation of African Oral Genres: Connecting Diasporas and Local Audiences (Director: D.Merolla) focuses on multimedia as technology that allows scholars to share documentation and scientific knowledge with the cultural owners of the collected oral genres.

How does economic downturn affect pre-existing democratic values and intergroup attitudes? Does economic downturn lead people to lose support for democracy and does it raise perceptions of intergroup threat? Is the potential effect of economic downturn on these political attitudes conditional upon earlier…

Pursuing Whiteness in the Colonies offers a new comprehension of colonial history from below by taking remnants of individual agencies from a whiteness studies perspective. It highlights the experiences and perceptions of colonisers and how they portrayed and re-interpreted their identities in Afric…

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F. Smets, Co-promotor: T.R. van Andel

In the media, we hear a lot of worrying news from Africa: refugees, attacks, Ebola, starvation, corruption... But Africa is much more than that: it is a continent in transition, with developments occurring at breakneck speed. African Studies scholars from different academic disciplines in Leiden conduct…

The project investigates epistemicity: how the knowledge of the speaker and hearer can be expressed in the grammar. This shows us how speakers organise their knowledge, and whether this is influenced by the language they speak.

This project aims to systematically investigate the influence of information structure on nominal licensing in a subset of Bantu languages.

Leiden University will deepen its cooperation with knowledge institutions in Africa. During a trip to Ghana, a delegation spoke with several African knowledge institutions about intensifying their collaboration.

The Leiden African Studies Centre (ASCL) will become part of the University from 1 January 2016.

North Korean workers designed and built numerous monuments, museums and other buildings in southern Africa. This is clear from research by history student Tycho van der Hoog for his master's thesis. These monuments can be an important source of income for a country that has become quite isolated on…

This book is the first systematic analysis of the changes in the use of goods and services by households of Black South Africans since the early nineteenth century.

Former President Kgalema Motlanthe of South Africa gave a public lecture on Campus The Hague on 7 July. His story was about the economic transformation of Africa.

‘Can he do it?’ Since the remarkable victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 Nigerian presidential elections, this has arguably been the most frequently posed question in Nigerian politics.

The project GRADIENTS investigates what it meant to be European in colonial Africa where identification as European often did not depend on skin colour and was understood on a spectrum with many gradients.

At the end of March, the first coronavirus infections were detected in southern Africa, which resulted in country after country rapidly closing their borders. Tycho van der Hoog witnessed this process at first hand during his PhD research in Namibia. He analyzes the state of the corona crisis from his…

Leiden University and four other Dutch universities will appoint 51 PhD candidates to conduct solution-oriented research for and with the African continent.

What are the conditions under which coercive diplomacy can compel a State to abandon its controversial nuclear (weapons) program? Based on the experience of the US coercive diplomacy against the nuclear programs of three countries, namely Iran, Libya and South Africa, Jean Yves Ndzana’s PhD research…

Africa needs a narrative that is consistent with the developments that are taking place all around the continent. In these developments, talented youth, creative tech hubs, and leapfrogging play a big role. We need to invest accordingly.

Chad-born youngsters in Paris come into contact with youngsters actually in Chad via Facebook: it would be difficult to find a better way to demonstrate the possibilities social media offer for people scattered across the world by war. Mirjam de Bruijn has been awarded a Vici grant for a study of the…

Strengthening the cooperation between Moroccan, other African, and Dutch institutions for higher education. This was the focus of a two-day seminar at NIMAR (Netherlands Institute Morocco) in Rabat in July, during which scholars of the African Studies Centre Leiden interacted with colleagues from NIMAR…

MA student African Studies Eline Sleurink is currently on an internship in Accra, the capital of Ghana. She’s sharing her adventures on The Leidener, a blog that is run by international students of Leiden University.

Africa is online. Leiden Africa expert Mirjam de Bruijn is fascinated by the fast development of mobile telephony and social media in Africa. She maintains a website on the topic, focusing on isolated, marginalised and conflict-ridden areas in Middle Africa.

Astronomy can help address the problems of South Africa, while benefiting other African countries at the same time. This was the message of Naledi Pandor, South African Minister of Science and Technology, on 26 February in the Academy Building.

The symposium “Human-Wildlife conflicst in Africa” was held on the 27th October in the Academie gebouw of Leiden University in honor of the retirement of Prof.dr.ir. Hans H. de Iongh

The winner of the Africa Thesis Award 2023 is Rachel Dubale, a graduate from the Research Master in African Studies at Leiden University, with her thesis “They think we can eat the condominium”. Chronicles of Economic, Social and Political Practices in Addis Ababa’s Condominiums.

This summer, PhD students Marta Maggioni and Rosa Winter went to Africa. Not just to enjoy the beautiful continent, but also to stir up the enthusiasm of young students for mathematics. They volunteered at math camps in Kenya and Ghana. ‘I think it is important they experience the fun of maths.’

The winner of the Africa Thesis Award 2022 is Robert Okello for his thesis on rural women’s legal empowerment through digital technology in Northern Uganda. Robert did his Master in Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

The project

In 1960, 17 countries on the African continent became independent. Sixty years later, the Africanists from Leiden University are reflecting on what independence has meant for Africa.

Covid-19 has transformed Africa Knows! into a unique international knowledge-sharing event: it will now be a three-month online event instead of a physical conference lasting just a few days. Senior lecturer and co-organiser David Ehrhardt is eager to find out how successful this format will be. The…

In September, the Una Europa ELSEA project, Enhancing Scholarship in Eastern Africa, officially started. Now that the project has been running for a couple of months, it’s high time to check in and see how the project is going.