In line with university measures, ASCL staff will work from home and can be reached by email. The Secretariat can be reached by email (asc@asc.leidenuniv.nl) or phone (+31 (0)71 527 3372). The library is open (reservation compulsory).
After an impressive start, early December, the Africa Knows! conference about knowledge production in and on Africa has resumed on 18 January. With fascinating panels on decolonising knowledge, films screened every evening, a conference magazine and a special blog by Prof. Jonathan Jansen of Stellenbosch University. The conference will last until 24 February. Registration is still possible!
Diana Wylie, Professor of History at Boston University, wrote a review of 'The Individual in African History: The Importance of Biography in African Historical Studies' - published in the African Dynamics series and edited by ASCL senior researcher Klaas van Walraven - for H-Net. 'The task of hoisting the complex life of a particular individual onto the level of social significance is indeed difficult', she writes, 'but it lies at the heart of the problem of biography. It is worth doing, as the authors persuasively argue, if we are to make African history familiar and palpable to a wide audience'.
Leiden University will confer an honorary doctorate on human rights and child rights activist Graça Machel on its Founcation Day, 8 February 2021. Ms Machel will receive the honorary doctorate for having committed herself to the rights of children all her life. The ceremony can be watched via livestream.
The African Studies Centre Leiden is delighted to announce the ASCL Seminar Series speakers for 2021. The ASCL Seminars are invited (online) lectures given by some of the most prominent researchers in the field of African Studies. Dr Jennifer Chansa, University of the Free State, will kick off the series with a lecture on regulating copper mining and the history of environmental management in Zambia.
Jan Abbink has written blogs and has been interviewed by newspapers, websites and radio stations in several countries, such as Deutsche Welle, Knack, Trouw and NOS. The interviews deal with the (aftermath of the) conflict between the Tigray region armed forces and the Ethiopian federal army, provoked by an assault of the Tigray army on two federal military bases (near Dansha town and near Meqele in Tigray) in the early hours of 4 November 2020. His ASCL blog 'Hopes dashed: sabotage and mayhem in Ethiopia' is very enlightening too.
