The African Studies Centre Leiden is the only multidisciplinary knowledge institute in the Netherlands devoted entirely to the study of Africa. It has a research library that is open to the general public. The ASCL is an interfaculty institute of Leiden University.
The Leiden African Studies Assembly (LeidenASA) held its Annual Meeting on 6 December 2021 – online, because of the COVID-19 restrictions. LeidenASA is the network of Leiden based Africanist researchers. A lively panel discussion focused on decolonising academic education and research.
The African Studies Centre Leiden is delighted to announce the ASCL Seminar Series speakers for the first half of 2022. The ASCL Seminars are invited (online) lectures given by some of the most prominent researchers in the field of African Studies. Dr Barbara Bompani of The University of Edinburgh will kick off the series with a lecture on documenting loyalties, identities and motivations to political action in the Ugandan Pentecostal Movement.
Independent writer and researcher Nanjala Nyabola gave the 2021 Stephen Ellis Annual Research Lecture on 9 December 2021. The title of her lecture was: African Feminism as Method. In her presentation, she proposed a possible theoretical framework for African women’s work and African feminisms as political science method. You can now watch the video of the lecture!
Life and work on the Zambian Copperbelt - a concentrated industrialised mining region along the border with DR Congo - has been a perennial subject for Africanist historians. In this book, Duncan Money for the first time focusses on the white mineworkers who monopolised skilled jobs on the mines from the 1920s to the 1960s and became one of the most affluent groups of workers on the planet. Money argues that this group was a highly mobile global workforce which constituted, and saw itself as, a racialised working class.
Bertus Haverkort is de oudste zoon van een boerengezin op de zandgronden in Slagharen. Hij geniet van modernisering op de boerderij van zijn jeugd, omdat dit het werk verlicht en de opbrengsten verbetert. Met in zijn bagage een dosis moderne landbouwkennis uit Wageningen, trekt hij eropuit. In Colombia, India, Bolivia en Ghana werkt hij aan programma’s waarbij overdracht van westerse kennis het doel is. De resultaten vallen tegen. De aanpak blijkt niet te werken. Hij plaatst geleidelijk aan vraagtekens bij de toepasbaarheid van de westerse kennis in situaties waar de ecologie, economie en cultuur zoveel verschillen.
