News & Events

The ASCL is increasingly focusing attention on urbanisation in Africa, organising two major events in the coming weeks that deal with the African city: the conference ‘The future of the African City’ on 24 January (co-organised with African Architecture Matters); and the ASCL seminar ‘Before Johannesburg; a newly discovered Tswana city from around AD 1800’ by Prof. Karim Sadr (University of Witwatersrand) on 31 January.

We are happy to announce that the Knowledge Platform INCLUDE will continue working towards making Africa more inclusive. The ASCL is part of the Secretariat of INCLUDE, together with the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) and The Broker. Six years after its initiation, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has granted INCLUDE a new subsidy to support its efforts in policy making for inclusive development.

Many ASCL / Leiden University researchers are (co)organizing panels for the European Conference on African Studies, to be held in Edinburgh 11-14 June 2019. This year's overall theme is: 'Africa: Connections and Disruptions'. Check out the list of panels that invite paper proposals. Deadline: 21 January!

On the occasion of the upcoming South African elections, the ASCL has invited Barry Gilder to give a lecture. Barry Gilder is one of South Africa’s most important revolutionaries that fought against  apartheid. He served in the Secret Service and the National Intelligence Agency, from 2005 until 2007 as South Africa’s Coordinator for Intelligence. Gilder will speak about his acclaimed publications The List and Songs and Secrets. 

No continent will be struck as severely by the impacts of climate change as Africa. However, most predictions on the consequences of climate change focus on humans. But the threat of climate change is about a whole web of life that holds our planet together. Therefore, writes Harry Wels of the Collaborative Research Group 'Trans-species perspectives on African Studies', bringing climate change to the top of our attention requires a radical decentring of the human. Read his latest contribution to the ASCL Africanist Blog!