News & Events

All members of LeidenASA are invited for a presentation on ‘visualizing landscapes of extraction’ on April 19, 11-13 (venue to be announced). The presentation stems from a methodological experiment that was carried out as part of the collaboration around Field Research and Training in Ghana (Ghana FR&T). The Ghana FR&T was partially financed by LeidenASA.

The ASCL is looking for a research assistant for the project 'Economics in Sub-Sahara Africa: Towards a meso-level perspective on (frugal) innovation for inclusive human development and environmental sustainability'. The aim of this vacancy is to develop a research project proposal. It is a joint initiative of the ASCL, the Centre for Frugal Innovation in Africa and the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen. Read the full text of the vacancy.

On Tuesday 17 April, LeidenASA visiting research fellow Nurit Hashimshony-Yaffe will give a lunch seminar titled Between Rural and Urban- Identity and organizations amongst the Pokot (Kenya).

The African Studies Centre Leiden congratulates its researcher Marleen Dekker with the subsidy she has been awarded by NWO within the Westerdijk Talent Scheme. Marleen Dekker is Professor of Inclusive Development in Africa at Leiden University. In 2017 the Netherlands Ministry of Education, Culture and Science made additional resources (5 million euros) available to appoint 100 female professors. This is because the percentage of female professors in the Netherlands is one of the lowest in Europe. The subsidy amounts to € 50,000 for each appointment.

So far, animals did not feature much in African Studies; African Studies’ genealogy is rather focussed on humans. What does the scientific evidence on human and non-human similarities and continuities mean for the discipline of African Studies? Are we accepting it and starting to focus less on ‘only people’ and include ‘more animals’ in Africanist research? African Studies has to ‘go animal’, writes Harry Wels in the latest contribution to the ASCL Africanist blog.

Land Reform Revisited engages with contemporary debates on land reform and agrarian transformation in South Africa. The volume, edited by Femke Brandt & Grasian Mkodzongi and published in the Afrika-Studiecentrum Series, offers insights into post-apartheid transformation dynamics through the lens of agency and state making. The chapters have been written by emerging scholars whose analysis highlights the ways in which people negotiate and contest land reform realities and politics.

A few days before he was sacked, Rex Tillerson, the outgoing American Secretary of State, warned African countries not to give up their sovereignty by accepting loans from China. Some sound advice, Prof. Chibuike Uche argues in the latest contibution to the ASCL Africanist Blog. Read the blog!