News & Events

On 27 June 2011, Mozambican writer, journalist and political activist Lina Júlia Francisco Magaia died in Maputo. While still at school she joined the Mozambican Liberation Front and was imprisoned for three months for political activities. Read the Library Weekly!

We are saddened by the news that fellow Africanist Paul Hebinck passed away on 21 June. Paul worked at Wageningen University until his formal retirement three years ago. He was involved in the ASCL as a teacher in the Research Master African Studies, in various conferences, and as a Community member.

On 20 June 1920, Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola was born in Abeokuta. When Amos was seven years old, he became a servant for F. O. Monu, an Igbo man, who sent him to the Salvation Army primary school in lieu of wages. Read the Library Weekly!

The ASCL calls for visiting fellows for a 90-day research fellowship in 2023. Visiting fellows use their time in Leiden for data analysis and/or writing, often on a joint project with one or more ASCL staff members. Preference will be given to applicants based in Africa. Application deadline: 24 July 2022.

Azeb Amha will be a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh in June and July 2022. Dr Amha is a grantee of IASH’s 2021 European Fellow Programme. She will work on her research on the language-culture nexus in the Omotic language family of Ethiopia.

On 14 June 1995, Congolese novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and poet Sony Labou Tansi, born Marcel Ntsoni, died at the age of 47 in Brazzaville. Tansi was born on 5 July 1947, in the village of Kimwaanza, just south of Kinshasa in modern day Democratic Republic of the Congo. Read the Library Weekly!

During the 2021 acquisition trip to Rwanda, the staff of the ASCL library received back copies of reports drawn up by the Cahiers du Bureau Social Urbain by the Catholic NGO Caritas. These copies offer a wealth of information on societal life in Rwanda from the end of the 1980s until 2002. They are the subject of our latest Library Highlight!

Rahmane Idrissa has been awarded the Ali A. Mazrui Senior Fellowship in Global African Studies at the The Africa Institute in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). Idrissa will devote the Fellowship mainly to write a book on the Songhay Empire in the global context of the birth of modernity. 

The ASCL Library has compiled a reading list which gives background information on Africa-Ukraine and Africa-Russia relations, and on what the present war means for Africa. It contains articles, blogs, infographics, podcasts and videos.

On 10 June 2010, Cameroonian diplomat, politician and author Ferdinand Léopold Oyono died in Yaoundé at the age of 80. Writing in the 1950s, Oyono had a brief literary career, but his anti-colonialist novels are considered classics of 20th century African literature. Read the Library Weekly!