News & Events

En 2012 les auteurs de ce livre sont retournées au Mali-Sud, où elles ont travaillé dans le programme Femmes et Développement de la Compagnie Malienne pour le Développement des Textiles (CMDT) entre 1987 et 1995. Elles étaient curieuses de découvrir ce qui avait changé pour les femmes dans la zone cotonnière depuis 1980. Les femmes ont-elles pu améliorer leur position économique? More information and English translation: read more.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the way it is linked to the climate crisis underlines the necessity to decentre the human and embrace a multispecies approach, also to African Studies. What does a multispecies perspective mean for the discipline in terms of its curriculum and teaching? Harry Wels outlines three major adaptations he considers crucial - in his latest contribution to the ASCL Africanist Blog.

Are you looking for a master's programme offering you in-depth knowledge about different aspects of the African continent? Find out all about the master's and the research master's programmes in African Studies during the Online Master's Week 10-12 March 2021! Online presentations on African Studies will be given on Friday 12 March from 15.30 - 16.30 (CET). Register now!

Jochem Scheelings, MA student African Studies, is doing an internship that is as fascinating as it is fun. With Angus Mol en Mirjam de Bruijn as supervisors, he is researching the role of video games in education, more specifically, in educating histories of Africa. Within the video game The New Order: Last days of Europe, an alternative world history has been written, but Scheelings noticed that Africa was missing from this game. 'I decided I would like to write that missing history’, he says in an interview.

The Africa Knows! conference (2 December 2020-25 February 2021) has come to an end. It straddled many boundaries: geographical (if only for its virtual character), disciplinary, but also between academia and practitioners. In their reflections, the organisers look back as well as forward: on the ‘lessons learnt’ in terms of decolonising academic minds and practices, and on five layers of impact of the conference.

Since the late 1970s, education-based migration from Madagascar to France has been joined by another form of migration: that of Malagasy women who largely come from the coastal regions of Madagascar and have migrated to France in the context of marriage. Prof. Jennifer Cole (University of Chicago) will talk about how these women find French husbands and get to France during the online ASCL Seminar on 22 April. 

Unlike what late Jan Vansina took as the point of departure for his magisterial work Paths in the Rainforest (1990), the life of the peoples in the Congo rainforest was not shaped by the continuity of a common tradition over four millennia. Discontinuities in the population history of Central-African Bantu speech communities urge scholars of ancient African history to rethink how to extract the past from the present, as Koen Bostoen (Ghent University) will explain during this online seminar on 17 June.

On Tuesday 30 March at 1.45 p.m., ASCL PhD candidate Gerda Hooghordel will defend her dissertation Reeds in the wind of change. Zulu sangomas in transition, at Leiden University. Reeds in the wind of change investigates the changing healing practice of Zulu sangomas in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Indigenous healing in South Africa is currently at a crossroads. While the latest healthcare legislation accepts the traditional healthcare system as equal to cosmopolitan healthcare, the accompanying institutional developments present obligations and challenges for indigenous healers. You can watch the PhD defence via livestream.

This volume by Jon Abbink and Shauna LaTosky explores the constitutive role of rhetoric in socio-cultural relations, and contains both theoretical chapters as well as fascinating examples of the effects of rhetoric used (un)consciously in social praxis. The elements of power, competition and political persuasion figure prominently. It is an accessible collection of studies, speaking to common issues and problems in social life, and shows the heuristic and often explanatory value of the rhetorical perspective. Of the thirteen chapters, seven are on African cases.

In January, the Zambian Government bought back two of the country’s copper mines which were privatised in 2000. The greatest impact of the mines on the daily lives of local residents is their impact on the local environment: air pollution and water contamination. The government’s decision to purchase the mines raises local expectations regarding its ability to ‘end’ pollution, Duncan Money and Jennifer Chansa write in their contribution to the ASCL Africanist Blog.