News & Events

Loes Oudenhuijsen, alumna of the Research Master in African Studies, has won the 2018 MA thesis prize of Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS) for her thesis "‘You Have to Know How to Play, Otherwise They Will Catch You’. Young Women and the Navigation of Same-Sex Intimacies in Contemporary Urban Senegal". The jury unanimously argued that this is 'a blueprint for MA theses'. More great news about our Research Master students: Miriam Ocadiz Arriaga received a special mention for her thesis "(E)motion of Saudade. The Embodiment of Solidarity in the Cuban Medical Cooperation in Mozambique" from the Jury of the IDleaks Thesis Award 2018. Congrats to both!

How can we make sure that economic growth and development investments start benefitting the poor and those who are now excluded? Simply investing will not do the trick: the assumed trickle-down effect does not take place. Meanwhile, evidence has showed that too much inequality can be bad for societies. The World Bank and IMF explicitly advice policymakers to consider the distributive effects of their economic policies. Time to confront inequality, Marleen Dekker writes in the ASCL Africanist Blog.

The ASCL has invited four distinguished scholars to present their research at the ASCL in 2019. The invited scholars are: Karim Sadr (University of Witwatersrand) on the newly discovered Tswana city in South Africa; Ayodeji Olukoju (University of Lagos) on UAC - Government relations in British West Africa, 1929-1941; Hussein Solomon (University of the Free State), on the Islamist militancy in the Sahel ; and  James Ferguson (Stanford University) on the notion of sharing as a principle of distribution of social protection payments. You are very welcome!

Due to personal circumstances Prof. Hussein Solomon will not be able to come to Leiden to give his seminar on the Sahel. Therefore we have to cancel this ASCL Seminar. The Africa Journalists Meeting that was to precede it will be postponed to 1 May and will precede the seminar South African Elections Approach, by Barry Gilder. We apologize for any inconvenience and will try to reach all those who have registered for the 11 April Seminar and the Journalist Meeting.

The ASCL is delighted that James Ferguson, Professor of Anthropology and Director of African Studies at Stanford University, will give a lecture in Leiden. In a 2015 book, Ferguson analysed the notion of sharing as a principle of distribution of social protection payments or “cash transfers”. As current schemes of distribution are limited by principles of nation-state membership, he concluded that it may be possible to detect new logics of social obligation that work according to a principle of “presence”. This seminar will elaborate that idea.

In the 2018 Stephen Ellis Annual Lecture ‘What is prosperity for Africa?’, Prof. Henrietta Moore, Director of the Institute for Global Prosperity, questioned current ways of thinking about economic growth, prosperity and development. ‘How does economic growth translate into sustainable prosperity? Economic growth needs new academic modelling.’ The full text and a video registration will be published soon, but take a look at Prof. Moore's presentation and the pictures!