News & Events

Pitching your research becomes increasingly important to researchers: how to convince a subsidy provider, a future employer or, for example, a policy maker of your great research plans and/or findings in only a few minutes?? In the training called "Pitch Your Research Project", given by Karin Nijenhuis, you will learn how to tailor a message for a specific audience and how to deliver the pitch. And don't be afraid: it will be fun!

Recent travels to Chad, Cameroon and Mali confronted Prof. Mirjam de Bruijn with the conflicts in these countries as well as in the Central African Republic, and the youth’s involvement in them. How are researchers to analyse these developments? Are the protests the result of a youth that - through ICTs - is more informed about the world and its inequality - or is there more to it? Read Prof. De Bruijn's latest contribution to the ASCL Africanist Blog!

The ASCL library holds the archives of legal scholar Petrus Johannes Idenburg, one of the founders of the African Studies Centre. Idenburg (1898-1989) specialized in Constitutional Law. From 1947 he taught African Studies at Leiden University. Of special interest are e.g. the material on the Mandates Commission South West Africa (1937-1940), papers on the Bukavu Conference (1955), and notes about trips to Moscow and Washington (1960-1961). The archives can be consulted in the ASCL Library.

Language is uniquely human. Through language, humans express their understanding of the world. Different human groups employ linguistic and cultural practices to navigate and handle coordination problems in interaction. Language is the key to understanding human nature. It can therefore be used as a tool to address existential and sustainable human development issues. Yet, international as well as national development agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN, or Agenda 2063 of the African Union, or the 40-year Development Plan of Ghana ignore and neglect the role of language in shaping and directing human lives. This workshop is organised in the context of a wider research agenda of making languages matter in African Studies and in the conception and implementation of strategies to eradicate inequality in all spheres of human life in Africa.