News & Events

Recently several collections of Africa photographs were added to Wikimedia Commons by the ASCL. Hans Muller, Wikipedian in Residence, added hundreds of photographs to Wiki from several collections: the Dogon photo collection of Wouter van Beek, African postal stamps, and the Robben Island Collection of Aart Rietveld. These images are now freely available for anyone to use. 

Did you know Africa is the fastest growing destination for international migrants? What are the motivations of those who see Africa as a destination, and how do the hosts perceive the newcomers? The conference 'Destination Africa', to be organized on 22-23 March in Leiden, will centre on these questions. ASCL researcher André Leliveld gives a foretaste of what the conference has in store for you, in the latest contribution to the new ASCL Africanist blog!

Elvire Eijkman and Heleen Smits of the ASCL Library visited the annual book fair SIEL in Casablanca together with Marjan Nijborg of the Netherlands Institute in Morocco (NIMAR) and Tijmen Baarda, subject librarian for Middle Eastern Studies and the Islamic world at the Leiden University Libraries. Some 200 books from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt were bought.

On the occasion of the international conference ‘Destination Africa’, organized by the ASCL’s and AEGIS collaborative research groups ‘Africa in the World’ in Leiden on 22 and 23 March 2018, the ASCL Library has compiled a web dossier on this theme. The dossier starts with an introduction to the subject by ASCL researcher Mayke Kaag. It consists of selected items from the ASCL Library Catalogue, published in the last ten years, extended with online sources available through the UBL Catalogue, and a few open access sources. Read the web dossier!

The Anthropology department of the University of N’Djamena in Chad has had to close its doors after a decision by the Rector. In the four years of its existence, this young department has shown remarkable results. A small team of professors has implemented a programme that has taught young students to have a view on development and that has provided them with the necessary tools to do research. With this statement we would like to support our colleagues in Chad in their attempts to understand the situation and to renegotiate the recent decision. (Continuer à lire la version française).

Final-year students who have completed their master's thesis at a university in Africa or the Netherlands on an Africa-related topic: apply for the Africa Thesis Award 2018! You must have graduated with distinction, i.e. 80% or higher, or a Dutch rating of at least an 8. The thesis must be based on independent empirical research. Deadline: 8 July 2018.

This book is based on Leonor Faber-Jonker’s research master's thesis, runner-up for the 2016 Africa Thesis Award. In September 2011 twenty Namibian skulls were repatriated from the collection of the Charité university hospital in Berlin. The remains had been in Germany for more than a hundred years: they belonged to victims of the 'German-Herero war' (1904-1908) in German South-West Africa. Faber-Jonker analyses how these human remains became war trophies, anthropological specimens, and, finally, evidence, symbols, and relics.